The First Customer - Why Networking is a Developer's Best Friend with Codingscape CTO Jimmy Jacobson

[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Jimmy Jacobson of Codingscape. I got it. I

[00:00:36] Jimmy: Thanks, Jay. 

[00:00:38] Jay: Hey man, how are you buddy?

[00:00:40] Jimmy: I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on here.

[00:00:42] Jay: Ah, you were the only guest that showed up. sick on the prescreening just to get through because you wanted to be on so bad and you look so much better today. You look great and, I

appreciate the dedication to being on the show. So, you're out in Las Vegas. Did you grow up there or where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:03] Jimmy: Yeah, great question. I've loved listening to your other guests answer this type of question. so I actually grew up, in Houston. My dad was a professor, at a university, which doesn't usually lend itself to being an entrepreneur. and, I discovered programming because he brought home a computer from his lab, a Macintosh, a lot like this one that you can see in the background here.

And, I fell in love with programming, but, Jay, I didn't know it was a job that I could do. Like I thought it was just like people that programmed just did it for fun and that's what you did. So I went through high school, went through most of college without knowing that you could be a programmer.

And then once I discovered it, I think programming has really, like, sparked my entrepreneurial journey. I switched to computer science. I started writing programs and like web websites for people. And you know, I always had a day job that paid the bills. Like I worked at Overstock, in a couple of other e-commerce companies and then eventually landed in, at Zappos, which is in Las Vegas.

And that's what brought me to Las Vegas. And Zappos was an incredible place to work and a place where. everybody was encouraged and not punished for like, taking risks and chances. And I think that's really where like I, I caught the entrepreneurial bug. ended up starting a couple of companies after that.

[00:02:15] Jay: Beautiful, education by parents or in the parents? career path does seem to be a trend.

I. Teachers and professors. I've heard lots and lots and lots, and maybe that's my subset of around 200 people I've talked to. But it definitely, there may be something to it, so tell me, when did you start your first company and which one was it?

Was it go HUNT or was it Codingscape?

[00:02:40] Jimmy: Oh man. So good. So, this is actually the second version of Codingscape. right now, the first version, if you go to the way back machine, I think you can find Codingscape.com in like 2004 or 2005, back then, which is why the domain name sounds like something your parents would've used. but, coming college it was a.

In the early two thousands was a really bad time to be in technology. Like we had the nine 11 recession, we had the dot bomb, the post 1999 dot bomb recession, and nobody wanted to hire junior developers coming out of college. and you know, I was putting my resume into Monster. I was emailing it to people and nothing.

So, I decided, I was working night shifts. Doing tech support while finishing college because, I'd had a kid with my wife and needed to pay the bills and was learning all kinds of interesting web programming things. and so I decided to kinda do some freelance work. And so, the first version of Codingscape started like in 2004.

And I was doing, rent decoder guru.com and all kinds of like freelance projects. Off of there. And, ran that until the economy recovered and I started getting job offers from other companies. and then I kind of put Codingscape on the back burner and didn't really think about it too much, until, you know, I was, had been working at Zappos for a couple of years and, the CEO of Zappos, Tony Shea made a really interesting offer to, engineers working there, which was if we would quit and start a technology company in Las Vegas, that he would fund it.

[00:04:13] Jay: Wow. does that mean he is like a partner in Codingscape or a business person in there, or how did that work?

[00:04:21] Jimmy: Yeah. So, that first company, actually, I don't think we talked about this on the pre-screen, so if you need to edit this out, you can. here we go. Here we go. Raw, uncut. 

[00:04:29] Jay: do it live. 

[00:04:30] Jimmy: this is gonna put you on par with Joe Rogan. Jay, my first technology company, the company that caused me to quit, Zappos.

And that Tony Shea invested in was called wedgies.com.

[00:04:42] Jay: wedgies.com.

[00:04:44] Jimmy: wedgies.com 

[00:04:45] Jay: Wow. 

[00:04:47] Jimmy: wedgies.com was, there's a lot. We really should be drinking a beer to be talking about a lot of this, but, So it was, we, my partner and I, and my business partner and I, who is the CEO at Codingscape now, we invented a way to do surveys and polls on Twitter and other social media sites embedded, back in 2012.

So way before Twitter came out with their own Twitter polls and, we got, we called it wedgies because they were fast and fun and you could give them to friends, is how it started out. But we ended having, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times. Tinder was a client,had a bunch of like big names using it because it was a great way to gather analytics, and engagement metrics on social media that didn't exist at the time.

[00:05:28] Jay: And what happened to that company?

[00:05:30] Jimmy: that company, you know, oh, one of our clients was also the White House, too. So, For one of the state of the unions. But, that company kind of, you know, it was venture funded. Tony Shea was an investor there along with other investors and venture funded companies are just, a little, well, I don't love it.

it's difficult to run a company and be raising money all the time. And so we kinda hit a point where we were a profitable company, but our growth had slowed. And investors don't love that. And so, We continued to run the business and then ended up selling it to match.com.

[00:06:02] Jay: Wow. All right. Well that's a nice exit. How did that happen? I mean, we don't have to dig into it too long, but how did you, did, was that like a vent? Did the venture people want you to sell it and they helped you find a suitor, or were you like, I'm out and I need to find somebody, and you found it?

[00:06:19] Jimmy: Yeah. actually we had, we had a lot of usage from like big social media platforms and Tinder, which is owned by the same company that owns match.com and, They were driving a lot of traffic through our platform to power, like swipe the vote type of, advertising on the Tinder platform. And so, you know, there was a really strong synergy there and, we were able to sell it to them and pay back our investors and, they became our first customer for Codingscape.

[00:06:50] Jay: I love that. And look at you tying it back in.

I also love that you said the word synergy. I say that word all the time now. I feel like it's, it was like beat to death in the, you know, corporate world in the whatever, eighties, nineties. I. Early two thousands and then like, nobody wanted to say it, but I feel like it's coming back.

I feel like it's not a dated term. It's like a great, it's a great word. I just kind of, I think people hated it because of overuse and now it's coming back. I'm a huge synergy guy. I mean, we're talking about partnerships before the show. Like that's, I mean, that's all synergy. I love it.

[00:07:18] Jimmy: let's bring Synergy back in 

[00:07:20] Jay: makes synergy great again, right?

This is

the year, Let's talk about Codingscape. So you sold your business, and that was venture backed by the Zappos guy, right?

and then you started Codingscape after the purchase of the other company? Or was it like kind of the same time? Where did it come from as that other company spun down?

[00:07:45] Jimmy: Yeah, it was, you know, there's never like a black and white like finish line type of thing. in fact, if you're in startups, one. One kind of thing I like to say to people is like, Hey, when do you cross a finish line? That's actually like a mile wide, is it with the first step or the last step? and so, 

[00:08:03] Jay: I like 

[00:08:04] Jimmy: so we were, you know, the kind of, the things went hand in hand.

and, but really one of the kind of. most influential moments of starting Codingscape 2.0 was, reading a book called Built to Sell. I'm not sure. Are you familiar with that? 

[00:08:20] Jay: Oh, am I? It's one of my,

it's, I think anybody who runs a business should read that book like five times. It's a great book.

[00:08:29] Jimmy: Amen. and so, my partners and I, we read Built to Sell and our takeaway there was that, If you build a business that can be sold, then you've also defacto built a business that can run itself sustainably. And so we decided that, you know, after selling wedgies to, match that we didn't really have any good ideas for startups, but that we wanted to keep working together.

And we had this intuition that there were a lot of people out there that wanted to work with us. and so we used built to sell as a foundation to build a. Profitable cash flow, business.

[00:09:04] Jay: Love it. Love it so much. I feel like if everybody read that book, like all the startup, business coaches would probably be outta business,

right? I mean, it's the same thing. It's the same concept. It's like you can't do it all yourself. Build a team with the right functions. It can be autonomous. Like do all the, it's yeah.

[00:09:25] Jimmy: Just a great, Have an. Can, people can look at the box and say, yes, I need that.

[00:09:33] Jay: dude. How many, oh my God. Don't get me started. Don't get me started. I, it's

[00:09:37] Jimmy: I wanna get you started here. 

[00:09:38] Jay: don't. It's one of my pet peeves, man. It's like, it drives me bananas. So many very smart, successful people. I talk to 'em and I say, well, what is it? And it's like this whole, it's, you either hear it's everyone, everything for everyone, which is like 95% of the people, or it's some long, convoluted ass answer that.

Like, you can't even get the end of it. You're like, well, well then what are you, what is that? What are you doing? so yeah, I'm very much a like. And I am, you know, unashamedly hard on my agency owner, friends who have that problem. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, you have a great business and a great product.

Like, just keep, you know, focusing in on what you're doing, not trying to be everything to everyone. So anyway, that's as far as I'll go. You didn't get me too far. I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna keep moving here. So, one of my favorite questions, who is your customer when Codingscape? Codingscape started and who are they today and how has that changed?

[00:10:35] Jimmy: Yeah, that's a great question. so I think most consultancies and agencies that start off like, you know, with a very small, like your first customer is often somebody you know, and that was true with Codingscape, right? It was like people that came from my network from. Porter and Pavel's Networks.

my partners, you know, they found out that we, you know, we put our shingle out, we hoisted the flag and people are like, oh yeah, come work with us on this project. and you can grow a business to a certain level like that. but if you want to de-risk growth and stability, then you really have to change who your customer is or how you're finding them.

And, you know, before the show, we were talking about partnerships and, That's one way to do it. another way is like through sales and marketing. and so, our focus has really been on building out over the last 18 months during the tech apocalypse where there have been a lot of layoffs.

we've been focusing on, you know, taking. Investing in our marketing and sales machine. and now our customers are really people who have heard about us, through LinkedIn, which is where we're pretty heavily focused, as well as have come to our website and, gone through kind of the marketing funnel.

[00:11:47] Jay: So when I have agency owner friends, I love to ask this question because as I mentioned, you know, all we do is qi. So we have lots of partners that are in development, and I have heard the same problem over and over again, and I equate it to a game of whack-a-mole, right? So software development companies in general, are standing there with their mallet and then somebody pops up and says, I have a project in money, and like 7 million other people with mallets are trying to hit the same guy on the head, right? How do you get outta that? How do you find the next, you know, money that's gonna come available for a project? Or how do you get in front of these things so you're not just like in this sea of onshore slash offshore, you know, just cattle rush to the next, available project. Like, how do you get ahead of that and identify some way to get in front of these folks? Before they raise their hand up, which for me is not that hard, right? 'cause we have a service agency that lives inside of existing products for the most part, or new builds that are already announced or whatever, right? They're looking for testing help. That's where we come in. For you guys, it's like the ideation phase is very important and kind of at the start of where you guys may interact with some customers.

How do you live in that space? It just seems like such a. Hard space to get in front of unless you're doing some of these other things, which I think may hopefully, and maybe you are, of partnerships and networking and events and stuff like that. Like how do you get ahead of it so you're not just another spammer on LinkedIn saying, Hey, I saw you got whatever, like, can we come work with you?

[00:13:22] Jimmy: Yeah, great. Great question. I think that our strategy can really be summarized by saying we try to make friends at scale. And you know, the example you laid out is, the worst case scenario. Like when, you know, when you find out about a project and it's basically time to submit a proposal and everybody is, you know, making a lot of noise.

The probability of standing out in a situation like that is pretty low. And so what we try to do with our LinkedIn marketing and we attend events and we, are very active all over the place, is we want to educate and already be in somebody's network before they need a project. And that way, that way, you know, maybe we've been talking for a year about, in a, you know, in a non-transactional way about trends in, cloud computing or in the, you know, how AI.

Is being deployed in enterprise and, you know, with various data sets, like we'll have had these conversations with stakeholders before because we're, you know, we're trying to be sincere and provide non-transactional value outside of the sales process, like with our marketing so that when somebody does have a project, you know, they'll post it as well, but we'll also get an email or you know, or a text message or a phone call that says, Hey, can you come take a look at something for us?

[00:14:45] Jay: So that feels like a little bit of a luxury of being an established business and some funding and some legs and some like time in the space. So if you were to rewind that to somebody who. You know, has a small dev studio or was doing consulting and did the conversion over, like where, how do you eat and play the long sales game at the same time?

You can't, right. There has to be some sort of like intermediary, keep the lights on. Like how do you attack that when you're early?

[00:15:18] Jimmy: Yeah, I think to sell kind of has the answer to that, which is you've gotta keep your focus, on. On some, not saying yes to everybody. And actually this is a, I'm glad you, you brought this up. it kinda sparked something here. Something that we do a lot is say no at Codingscape. if we are not a good fit for a project or if we feel that, you know, if a project doesn't pass our risk assessment, then we say no to it.

And that's rough because it could have been, It could have been a project, it could have been invoices sent out, but we've found that when we say no to somebody that, you know, wants a discount or, you know, doesn't want to pay our rate or for whatever reason isn't a good fit, it gives us time to find somebody that is a good fit.

And so say no,is really how you carve out time as like a small, dev shopper agency owner to find those right clients.

[00:16:13] Jay: You talked a little bit about events and marketing and all that sort of stuff. you seem to be a little bit of a, an exception to the rule. Like most CTOs, I'm not gonna say most, a lot of CTOs are introverts. I. And they don't like to go out to events and they don't wanna speak and they don't wanna do whatever. I think some of those people can be some of the best or are some of the best, engineers and like business owners that I know. But it takes time to get over that sort of. Hes, he hesitancy to put yourself out front, right? So, did you have that at all? Did you, like when you're going to these events and you're putting your face out there and you're doing like, that is a big blocker for a lot of people going from like one to two really?

I mean, I don't know what scale, not that book zero to one, but like, you know, one person to more than one person. It's a real. It's a real problem. How do you, like, is it just something that you have to get over as a, an introverted person or somebody's a kind of tech nerd? Like, I consider myself very much a nerd and I'm very much an introvert. and this is very much a character I have to play on tv. but like for you, was that a problem and, you know, did you have to overcome it? And what are some kind of thoughts on people who do have to kind of step outta their comfort zone a bit?

[00:17:22] Jimmy: I, I'm absolutely an introvert. And I'll give you one data point that might help a little bit here in a second, but I'm absolutely introvert. I would rather be on my couch eating cereal and playing god of war, than 

[00:17:32] Jay: My man. 

[00:17:33] Jimmy: or at a 

[00:17:34] Jay: My man. That's it right

there. 

[00:17:36] Jimmy: Yeah. So the way that, the way that we solve it is, you know, I surround myself with some incredible people who absolutely push me and sometimes bully me into, these types of things.

So, I'll give a shout out to Noelle Hurst, who are, is our head of accounts, but she, she has A-A-K-P-I that she wants to, increase the number of like speaking opportunities that, that I have during the year. 'cause I think she feels kinda similar to you, that if I get a chance to talk to people, they'll like what they hear and they'll come talk to us about opportunities at Codingscape.

So she, But she also knows that I'm a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to preparing to talk. And so, and it frustrates her. So she got even with me once, last year by signing me up for a bunch of, to be considered for a bunch of awards. I. and I ended up winning one that is in Las Vegas, and it was really awesome.

It was in the Raiders stadium where they had the award ceremony and everything. I did not know that I had won this award. Jay, like she convinced me to go to the award ceremony so I could meet other people in Las Vegas in the IT 

[00:18:40] Jay: And she set you up for a win. You

[00:18:43] Jimmy: He set me up, I want, so I did not know until I saw a video that I did not know that they had made about me being played across the entire, all the jumbotrons in the 

[00:18:52] Jay: That's the greatest. I have to meet her now. That is Incr. That is

a great person to have, forcing you into

the spotlight. What a 

[00:18:59] Jimmy: yeah, that's how you get around. you get 

[00:19:01] Jay: need to hire somebody that sends you to an award show that you don't know that you won at a

stadium. Okay. All right. Well that's,

we should I, very easy to do.

Very. We will, I'll, we'll write up some notes after the show. We'll tell people how to do that. That's incredible. That's a great story. But I mean, have you, do you still struggle with like. Content and like putting stuff out and like being consistent. I mean, everybody struggles with that except for the people that like, you know, have a hundred thousand followers who pretend like life is great and that they love everything that they do.

Do you still struggle to like be consistent with the content you're putting out?

[00:19:35] Jimmy: Yeah. Yep, for sure. You know, the things that I'm good at are problem solving, working with other engineers, you know, all the nerd stuff. And so when it comes to. What you're talking about is where I really lean heavily on our team to, you know, I adopt a humble attitude and I just take, all the crap they want to feed me there as far as like, you know, if they give me a checklist of things I have to do, I'll do them.

as long as they know I can't be given something that I'm gonna overthink, 

[00:20:04] Jay: Right. 

[00:20:04] Jimmy: right? Like, if they're like, Hey, like, come up with five topics, I'll spend all week thinking about it. But if they're like, will you. you know, sometimes they give me, this is kind of a fun one, and maybe we should do it sometime, but, they'll give me like five Reddit posts from the R programming and they'll be like, what do you, what's your take on this?

Like, don't answer it, like, what's your take on it? And so I'll just give them my hot take on those posts and then it turns into content that, 

[00:20:27] Jay: That's great. you have a great, I love the creativity. That's fantastic. that's an next level. That's really good.

[00:20:35] Jimmy: It's fun to work with them.

[00:20:36] Jay: That's great. Good for you, man. Well, I feel like, I mean, we're, I feel like we're gonna be friends after this, so we'll have plenty of time to talk, but,

[00:20:43] Jimmy: we're definitely gonna, you know, two introverted, you're coming to Vegas for a conference 

[00:20:46] Jay: Yeah, I definitely will. I a hundred percent will be doing. all right. I have one question that I'm sure you know, if you've seen any of the episodes. I always say it's a mystery question, but it's becoming, very quickly, not a mystery. you, Jimmy, just being Jimmy, not business related at all. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:21:06] Jimmy: Such a good question. I would definitely,

I would definitely want to be, a teacher of some sort.

[00:21:13] Jay: Love that. Very genuine.

Any teacher, specifically anything that like you would love to teach.

[00:21:21] Jimmy: science and math and programming. Of course. I think, you know, I had a lot of, teachers that really inspired me and spent plenty of time with me. And, you know, I feel like kids, kids need more of that coming up. And I, you know, the without failing part I think is super important. just because, you know, the education landscape has changed so much in the last five or six years with technology.

And so, you know, being in a position to. Do things in a unique or novel way, I think is also important as part of that.

[00:21:51] Jay: I wanted to be a history teacher and then realize, and then I found out that teachers don't make any money and I went and did

something else. But I think I love history. I would think I should, we should teach at the same college. I'll be the history teacher down the hall. We can grab lunch, you know, in the teacher's lounge.

It'll be a good time. I think we've got

it in our future. 

what time period are you, is your favorite? That's a, good question. I don't know, man. I love. Just about everything, man, from like ancient, you know, civilizations to the renaissance, to the all the crazy war periods, to like recent stuff. It's all just, there's a great documentary on, Netflix called, I think it's Ukraine and the Bomb or something.

There's, anyway, it's, but it's about just the real history of like. Why Russia? Wants to bring the Soviet Union back together and like the real history of like the, you know, the how the leaders kind of, it all brought us back to where we are today, which is why I think all that stuff's interesting anyway.

Like, I'm always like super fascinated, like why things got named, the way they got named and like, who they're named after. Why was that? You know, and who was that? you know, why was that decision made? Like somebody made my road. You know, 50 years ago, that guy's dead now, but I'm living with his decisions, which is like a, just like a weird thought to me.

So anyway, yes. History of all kinds. I'm just like a huge nerd about, so

anyway, alright, well you were awesome man. This was great. Let's stay friends. Okay. I promise that's gonna be the case. Let's do that. And, if you wanna find more about you or Codingscape, how do they do that?

[00:23:20] Jimmy: Yeah. check out, just codingscape.com. we have all our vows and you can check me out on LinkedIn or Twitter. Jimmy Jacobson, which is a fact that blows my kids' minds that I have my Instagram and Twitter handle. 

[00:23:34] Jay: handle. 

[00:23:35] Jimmy: yeah.

[00:23:35] Jay: you're an og. You got in when the getting was good? I think so. All

right, man. Well, you're awesome, Jimmy. It was great talking to you. let's stay in touch and wish you the best of luck. Happy holidays, brother. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, man. See. 

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