I'm Paul Ford. I'm Rich Ziyadi. This is the Aboard Podcast, bro. No, no, we're renaming it. Oh, no. The Aboard Ziyadi and Ford Advisors aboard.com Podcasts. We are not renaming it. That's a joke because we've renamed the podcast four times. On YouTube, there are some embarrassing videos. Actually, they're kind of great. We should leave them up there. We tried YouTube as another channel, even though we have a wonderful audience that listens to us on the podcast.
I do appreciate one thing about us, Paul, in the year 2023. What did we learn in the year 2023? We are okay with shitting our pants in public. Yes. I love it. You throw it over the wall and you humiliate yourself just like any idiot, and then you learn. You have to. I think it's great. How long have I been advocating? You actually, this is funny, because I think people think of you as the raging bull in this relationship. Yeah.
Yeah, and there's a lot of truth in that you are the raging bull in this relationship But how how long have I been advocating for us to go out and sell our product to companies so that they can just laugh in our face and spit on us You do like to go out there and which is and you're like hold on a minute
I'd rather not humiliate myself in front of people who might one day give us money. Yeah, I'm like no I want to be debased like a worm and stopped Well, maybe that's a little too much Yeah, we don't want to go that far, but I do and we're gonna be under over to I think the one big thing that we both I think learned in 2023 and I think the tech world is also learning. Oh my god. Can the tech world learn without a large language model?
It's been even though AI sort of took the wheel and showed this incredible second wind after the big you know crypto shit stain of the last five years On a can we just pause for one sec about how how rapidly it is like they have a giant Wayport that they used to erase history at like a 16z crypto is now the ex-girlfriend you run into sometimes a traitor Joe's yeah, you know, you know what she has just a void eye contact She has in her arms your twins Okay 14 doge coins
It's just like oh no, no, no, it was always AI. Yeah, yeah But I want to put AI on the side for a second here. It's actually been a very very rough year for tech A lot of businesses a lot of SaaS products a lot of consumer tech products And mostly on the software side because that's what we pay attention to have been taking an absolute battering They're down to 80% the ones that are still private Their valuations they're running out of money. I'm hearing this from from VCs and
Entrepreneurs who have pretty healthy companies. It's been a rough rough go as soon as you lift the AI veil back It's been a rough year for tech Besides AI AI just rocket ship, but even AI got a little too frothy and there's only startups riding on top of other startups Mm-hmm that are doing AI stuff So it's gonna I think it's already overheated, but it is it's it's fascinating. We've talked already AI is no joke We've always thought crypto was kind of a joke
We don't think AI is a joke. There's something pretty magical going on here, and it's interesting But I want to talk about what I learned this year. Okay. What did you learn this year? And what I think a lot of people are learning this year too. Okay, as a a counter narrative to AI Spanish with Duolingo We put out a board.com for Public consumption out in the world. Okay, a board is our data management platform. Yes We don't always call it that in public
Yes, but that's for the listeners of this podcast. It is a data management platform If you go to a board.com you can sign up for free and try a board.com We recently thousands of you have thousands of you have you can also put out we also put out the mobile app Which you can download and try for free
It's a really cool tool. It does some nice things and starting in about the fall you and I Came to realize the importance of talking to people Yes, this is real um The dream the Silicon Valley dream the AI dream in a lot of ways is that you can automate away relationships
And it turns out whether you're charging five dollars a year or five million dollars a year uh connecting with people somehow some way Is key and I think this is a this okay, let me pause you for a sec because There's a thing going on here It's a very it's very interesting because it it actually passes a lot of ideological and social and cultural lines so And it is the desire to remove certain kinds of interaction from the loop Um, it happens in the remote work discussion
It happens in the Silicon Valley where all the money is going to come from by getting people out of the loop It happens and then you know it it there's all these different contexts a lot has been eliminated I used to call car service. Yes. I don't talk to people anymore. Yes. I used to or I used to call a restaurant to order takeout I don't call people anymore
I used to call a restaurant to make reservations. I don't call people anymore Well, let me describe that as there used to be we used to live in a world where kind of you had to be close to something that was connected to a wire In order to do certain things. Yeah, okay before that you would have to run around with a piece of paper
Yeah, right? So we got to a wire world and now we're in wireless world And so what happens is any job where If there any job that was specifically like whoop the wire doesn't reach that far Yeah, I'm gonna, you know, I'll call the car service where they have a wire
And then they will tell the other guy to go get you. Yeah, like those jobs are gone that world is gone Not just those jobs right like no and frankly very few people really want to go back to that Yes And and I think there is I think there is a a A direct correlation between the growth of automation and the importance of relationships
I'm going to give you an example that happened in 2023. Okay. Um, we watch the SaaS uh Product category a lot because we're we're a SaaS product software as a service you spend money every month to slack Air table my understanding is that air table is one of the golden boys Where billions and billions of dollars and billions and billions of dollars founded by xc Google people It's a data management platform that that now is sort of like a low-code app platform
Do anything with it run your business high quality product. Yep and by any measure We had one of the founders many years ago an air table was just a baby on our podcast Uh, I open tech crunch which I often do at two in the morning on on saturday. Yeah, uh and uh I just get I get I'm floored they've cut half their staff And I'm always thinking wow everybody wants to be air table and and then you keep reading and I think my interpretation is is
Probably stands alone in terms of what I read what they said was this We're gonna cut half the staff We're gonna focus on our enterprise customers which all I read was We've rung the automated get your credit card out towel dry And the now what is left is humans connecting with humans relationships
Right, and so here is the pinnacle of automated software Bowing down to the fact that humans need to talk to each other for the real value to show up And that to me was a lesson for us for frankly for a lot of The world I think that as AI rises
And I said this in a previous podcast and I don't think I articulated it well as AI AI rises the value of the relationships between organizations between companies between entities Human relationships is actually going to mean that much more Door dash automated deliveries
But they have an absolute army of a sales force that visits every single restaurant shakes hands asks you what you need and it's at the foundational level You need plant food and plant food even in tech is still relationships sure And I think that's gonna be for us personally for a board that's gonna be really important for us as we look ahead Well look we started October 2022 we launched a board as a kind of an enterprise-y product
We were gonna take it to work in his instance and then you and I looked at each other and we said It's not good enough yet like we want to make it that's right And the way that I put it is that it was built on the web but not of the web And that's when we started with all the link parsing and the bookmarking and all that stuff Well so polish the product up a lot make it make it pretty make the cards visual all of that all of that okay So that ended up being frankly harder than we thought
Yes, it does a lot of work. It turns out the web we knew the web was a mess But we didn't know how much yes, and we didn't want to do a lot of hand-wavy stuff
Like just say hey, it's sloppy eye all over it and be like look at us. Yeah, but Ultimately what are our roots our roots are in the agency world in New York City That's our bias right we like to go we like to go get that meeting Yeah, so there's an element of this and I will say I watched I watched slack try to say what is an enterprise product Okay, a consumer product is hey, can you get out your credit card and buy this it's that you can buy it like you could buy it at a store
Yeah, okay an enterprise product means someone else is buying it for lots of other people Yes, they're going to buy it for their team of 5,000 or 50 or 10 and whatever right but like still But there isn't what happens when you're buying something for 5,000 people you're expecting to be able to make a phone call You're expecting for certain things to be customized your logo is going to be on the top left You might have a way that people sign on yeah, and the company is going to
The the software product is gonna have to kind of like lean into that. Yes, they're not gonna unless it's like Google or Apple Yeah, you're gonna we're gonna bend to you. Yes, not the other way around. Yes, and I think you and I are all are looking in an interesting way for that Compromise and we keep looking for it and one of the things that we went out and pitched VCs at one point And what was not in 23 and 22 way back and what was funny about these conversations God bless everyone
But they were like oh, this seems interesting. You really have something there
First of all, they really go get thousands of users and then get in touch. We're like well, okay But second of all what was clear to us is they kept telling us where they were gonna add value Not just in the money was they were gonna help us build out our enterprise sales culture Right, yeah, and it was like well, we have that like they couldn't they were looking at us And we're 2000 years old as far as they could tell is too too
Methusel is selling them software. We are already optimized for relationships And we're like we know we're gonna get there. We just have to make really good software first Don't you worry about me selling to big organizations. I love it send me into the bank. I love those guys
Offering coffee if anything. We're sort of the reverse. It's we're the opposite of a startup. Yeah, yeah, you're okay And that is I think it took us a minute It here's what I think is very frustrating about our industry is that well you and I said was I want to build really good Kind of fundamental software and I wanted to be beautiful and I wanted to work well for everybody in an organization
And outside of an organization. Yeah, I wanted to be something people can pick up and it actually turns out in a really weird way There isn't a lot of context for that. I gotta say I feel like we are on our own path. We are stubborn men I know us very well We do pretty well with our stubbornness. Yeah, but we are on our own path that we're gonna win or we're gonna lose
Based on our stubbornness here. I think that's right and so like I refuse to acknowledge and believe that tools That there is a special kind of tool that you have to use if you're a sea level person at IBM And like they get a golden hammer, but it's really ugly and heavy yeah And everybody else gets a little hammer, but you can only hit one nail. Yeah, right? I feel that like it's software
We want to empower people figure stuff out. Anyway, I'm ranting a little bit here, but it's like that was the lesson for me which is Categories has seemed it's kind of the categories of the industry that we're in just kind of don't Make sense with what we're building Well, I think this may by the way outside looking in this may sound like an insane podcast because if anyone is familiar with a board They all do Sure, they all do every time looks like we built a glossy consumer product
Yeah, we actually built a software platform and we built a glossy consumer product on top of it That said we are learning that professionals and other organizations are interested in how this thing can be useful for them And that gets us excited for most for many people who want to automate revenue right into the bank It's not exciting. It's burdensome to like wait you're in Cleveland. Yeah, does that mean you want me to visit you? Yes, and you're like yes I'm ready to commit to you
But come visit me. Yeah, and a lot of the world works In that way and and I don't think that's going to change Paul and I will say I'm going to double down on this I will I would even posit that It's going to require even more if you think you're going to automate away a whole legal department with AI you better go visit them Yes, you better go say hi now, but this is you know, you know, how this works I wrote about this for the the the board newsletter
Everybody neglects that last 20 percent they believe that it's easy and you and I are guilty of this too Everybody thinks everybody else's job is easy And so what is a lawyer a lawyer somebody moves contracts around yeah, well A large learning model can internalize a million contracts. Yeah, and now I will have a statistical model of every contract ever Okay, well, what do I need a lawyer for right? Yeah, that is the kind of logic that makes actually perfect sense if you've never met a lawyer
Yeah, right. Yeah, and it's the same the same is true of art and the same is true of it The that the desire to get the human out of the loop frankly is based on ignorance and it actually neglects the fundamental truth that the whole point of human existence is to interact with other humans
There is no other point there is no goal if there is If there is one thing to take away right from this technology pod It's that's it is that people want to see people they want to see people and and what a tool is what is the context of a board right and this is again
I wrote about this like a board is our op-ed it's us saying hey because everybody's like wow you build another data platform Well, who needs that right especially in the tech industry everybody loves to be like everything you do sucks And I hate you so why are you doing it and they're like and they act like you're they're your friend I kind of I'm tired of that attitude in the tech industry um Why would we build let me ask you why build another thing because the thing we do the thing we do
You can do it with any other tool you can go use google sheets and organized data and you could we can say like ours is prettier No, I think I think That did we build something I know what we built we didn't build something that just rendered a whole category obsolete We didn't do that we didn't go that far right did we build something that We can Put under our arms and walk into relationships and talk to people about and and and show them why
It's good for them. I do believe we built that We there is a consumer or a turnkey story around this thing And I do believe it can be useful for a lot of people I think we're pretty close to something that is generally useful for a lot and lots of uses our data is showing it
Yeah, we haven't slammed the gas on marketing spend yet, but the engagement levels are very very good It's true if we could get a million people to use this thing like that's that's the actual I mean for for anyone that's in the investment or VC world like we're in the we're in the like close to 10%
engagement after 60 days once people lock in it's really good. Yeah, that's right. Um, and I'm sharing that In full you know in the spirit of full transparency however, it's nice to share good stats in this area It's nice to have good stats. No, how do you get people to latch on and commit It's that Last mile that you are calling it 20% I call it human relationships A lot of it has to do with going visiting listening understanding what people's problems are by the way
I'm not saying oh my god. They're going to do enterprise sales again We may be at an interior design conference as it with a booth showing that this is a nice way to organize sofas You're meeting people. Yeah, but there is a non trivial chance that we're eating tiramisu and Detroit next year that that is just get ready I like Detroit and I like tiramisu. I know me too. That actually sounds fine with both of those
I love a good short flight. I love a one like a like a you get there in the morning. I've never been to Detroit
I'm Detroit. It's exactly what you'd expect If you could sum up what we learned in 2023 and I think what tech is learned too right is it's that people matter Even in the wildest of innovations people still matter and people's really people human relationships still matter And you can't shortcut it you just can't do it you just can't and and We learn that I think the world is learning that I also think
I'm going to make a generalization here. Maybe that's a little controversial I think that I think we're still kind of waking up groggy from the pandemic I think we need to see each other more. I think it matters when we see each other. I think it's healthier for us I'll go right there You know there's all these articles right now about what is gonna look like when Trump gets the the um
nomination while you did go right there. Yeah And like I realized like I was just I felt like I've been hit in the head with a brick reading these And I still do a little bit, but I realized what I was associate I was associating the pandemic Like those moments were so hard. Yeah, and he was such a horrible
leader through the pandemic. Yeah, and I'm just like it was a hard time. I can't go back I can't go back to someone tell me to drink bleach while laughing as the president of the United States There's banana cake right and and we might we might have to deal with that as a society. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's a different podcast But the um, hey Jim, but the um um Like I know that's like a lot to just sort of throw into the middle of this. What I'm saying I think you are right. I think that the
Fundamental shift in reality from something that was going to be too bad weeks turning into like two of the worst years that we've ever known. Yeah um And now you know we and then you know the vaccines happen everybody's like I'm going to the park Yeah, and meanwhile like my kids stare at a screen for a year and yeah
And like I it's just like there's a lot to undo. Let me let me share a piece of advice to close this out We've been having a lot of calls with different people that offer services to a board whether it's an agency or a software Product, I can't do it all add spend can't do it all
Um, I have one piece of advice for all of them. Okay, stop selling to me from your bedroom Yeah, come outside Come on out Come visit some of them are in New York by the way I Would always general rule If you were in New York City I would come to I would ask to come to you. I gotta tell you man. It is easy to say no on a zoom What do you mean? It's easy. You're talking to somebody and you're like hey, we'll talk soon
Exactly click exactly. Oh, I once you've looked into their eyes exchange fear moans you offered coffee Yeah, pull the little you know pull the hair off the side of their jacket We we're you know, it's funny. We have been on both sides in pretty intense ways as sellers and as buy as prospects And it is the easiest thing to say well, thanks so much. We were this is really great. We'll get back to you soon Because you're just gonna it's like changing a channel. Oh, yeah
Yeah, he's like changing a channel. It is presence is Incredibly powerful. It shows intent. It shows all sorts of things That's um and you know, I mean if if any of our agency friends are listening to this like you're fine You were not we're not upset, but I'm telling you it is real like I am much more likely because I'm gonna feel bad saying no in person It's it's meaningful. Yeah, it's just straight up meaningful and and that is
That is I think it's it's it goes back to what you're saying before humans need to see other humans. Oh, well You know just also zoom as a piece of software is one of the most surreal things Inexistence. I do enjoy when it makes you install the whole new version every time there when you open up
But anyway, it's timing is always perfect so bad. You're just desperately trying to get on the call and it's like hold on a minute How about I sing you a song can I read you the specials now I think um You're getting a song a very fundamental which is that When you're on eight when you present yourself purely digitally You come out of ties yourself No matter how much you think you're not you are a two-dimensional rectangle
Yep, and now that doesn't mean that like some people can't leave the house. I got it. Okay But that doesn't mean that you can kind of say well, I did my part I think that's right and I think look I think this is a remnant of the pandemic I think for a lot of people
It is immensely convenient to like not have to put on clothes and get on a train There's this big argument over remote work and empty offices and I don't want to commute and so on and so forth All of that's fine have that argument all day long
But if but like if you want to make a compelling case and have people Feel the consequence of saying no to you or rejecting you rather than feeling very low Consequences for people you have to be present and I can't fix that because that's what monkeys are like Okay, and if you want to get on this isn't a revelation if you want to do your own 90 episode podcast about how monkeys should be different
Go for it get male chimped to sponsor my sponsor. I think they should but like do I that This is I find that this is this is the struggle a lot of times and I'm and we'll talk about this in the future, but um Certain aspects of human reality have not changed in tens of thousands millions of years me. Yeah hundreds of thousands of years and people See a state in which they could be different and it's an attractive state where they no one leaves the house unless they want to
I I and they expect that culture will adapt to that big idea. Yep and Culture moves even slower. Yeah, and government technology just moves very very to the point that if you look back at what it was like in ancient Rome Not that different. Yeah, yeah I think this is a remnant of the pandemic. I think people like well You know these computers are incredibly powerful. I've got chat over here. I've got video calls over here um and One last bullet point as to why you should do this
I actually think for that person that is in their bedroom or is in their dining room. It's healthier I think it's just healthier to get out. Uh, so what we it's good for you too. It's not just about closing the deal So what we've learned as a company is that it's time to put on a belt and go talk to people You know It sounds like wow the big takeaway from 2023 but it's kind of bananas that that's it We also built an enormous amount of really good software. It's great software
And we'd love to see you. We're going to throw parties in 24 pull it is party time party time everybody listening to this is invited By the way, we're not that kind of company. We're not coy. You come on out. We want to see you. Yes Um, we hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday. That's right. We'll see you in the new year I'm working on I decided to not do resolutions But to like identify the things I'm working on right now and make a board
That shows that allows me to track progress. So not like radical change, but just like okay I'm trying to learn music theory right like let's get a still a bit in place Resolutions are setups for disappoints. That's right. No, this is just I just want to be more of me Yeah, that's what I'm looking for and you're going to get more of me rich more of me if you'd like more of us Please subscribe to this podcast. Give us five stars
Reach out at hello at a board.com and please check out a board.com. It's a very cool very powerful tool to help you Collect information organize it your way and share it with others on a personal note Uh People have stuck with us through many different podcast brands identities all sorts of stuff Just so I say thank you. We get we get a lot of feedback from the audience and you guys are wonderful It's great you people are wonderful. We enjoy doing this have a lovely holiday Paul. Yes
It will see everyone in the new year and like hopefully see yes. All right. Have a great week. Bye You