January 29, 2024 • 23 mins
John Spencer-Taylor
John Spencer-Taylor, known as "Spence," is the co-founder and visionary force behind BrainGu. With his rich blend of technical prowess and business acumen, he's dedicated to creating solutions that address complex organizational challenges. As CEO, Spence's diverse technology background and innovative leadership drive BrainGu's commitment to delivering cutting-edge advancements, including Structsure ®, BrainGu’s flagship internal developer platform.
Spence's career journey began as a systems specialist in 2001, highlighting his early technical skills. Progressing into roles as an ethical hacker and security architect, he showed a keen aptitude for cybersecurity. His experience spans from managing security teams to providing strategic tech solutions. This rich history of diverse and challenging roles underpins his leadership at BrainGu, blending deep technical knowledge with strategic vision.
Beyond the office, he's a music enthusiast and hobbyist musician, often found at live concerts or belting out Queen's greatest hits at karaoke, all evidence to his dynamic personality and passion both inside and outside of BrainGu, exemplifying his unique approach to technology and leadership.
John Spencer-Taylor, known as "Spence," is the co-founder and visionary force behind BrainGu. With his rich blend of technical prowess and business acumen, he's dedicated to creating solutions that address complex organizational challenges. As CEO, Spence's diverse technology background and innovative leadership drive BrainGu's commitment to delivering cutting-edge advancements, including Structsure ®, BrainGu’s flagship internal developer platform.
Spence's career journey began as a systems specialist in 2001, highlighting his early technical skills. Progressing into roles as an ethical hacker and security architect, he showed a keen aptitude for cybersecurity. His experience spans from managing security teams to providing strategic tech solutions. This rich history of diverse and challenging roles underpins his leadership at BrainGu, blending deep technical knowledge with strategic vision.
Beyond the office, he's a music enthusiast and hobbyist musician, often found at live concerts or belting out Queen's greatest hits at karaoke, all evidence to his dynamic personality and passion both inside and outside of BrainGu, exemplifying his unique approach to technology and leadership.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
M and T Bank presents CEOs youshould know Power in Fight I Heeartadia.
Let's meet John Spencer Taylor, alsoknown as Spence. He is one of
the co founders and CEO for bringGoo, specializing in cutting edge devsek ops
platforms and mission critical applications, mainlyin and for the gov con space.
Before we talk more about Spencer's company, I first asked him to talk a
(00:23):
little bit about himself, where he'sfrom, and his origin story. I
grew up in the Midwest, inMichigan, a small town, did all
the fun things that the young boyin the cornfields can do, a lot
of bonfires, a lot of beingoutdoors, and then I chose a life
of computers and ended up locking myselfin my room with the computer with the
college for copsite at Grand Valley Stateand Grand Rapids. That pulled me into
(00:47):
the DC world, following a friendof mine who who graduated ahead of me.
All Right, we're going to talkabout that and everything that is brain
Goo. But I'm a sports guy. Our listeners know that. So there
was a time when you guys weredominating the landlandscape with the pistons and the
red wings. Some great championship yearsand then there was a long route.
But this year with sports the Wolverinesand then the Lions. Holy smokes,
(01:08):
if you're a sports fan in Michigan, look out, that's right. I
was. I was traveling through airportsa couple of weekends ago with the Michigan
game, and every airport I landedthrough there were just Michigan sweatshirts everywhere,
and I was like, Okay,we did it. Back on the map.
So tell me again, where'd yougo to college? Grand Valley State.
(01:29):
That's a great school, big footballschool. Yeah, it really is,
it really is. I want toask you about this because this is
the fascinating three thing for me inthis series about when somebody studies something,
they got an idea what they wantto do, And we talked to a
lot of entrepreneurs and future CEOs,and sometimes they know exactly what they want
to do and they execute and getit done, and then some do one
(01:49):
eighties. So it's always fascinating tous to find out what really turned you
on in college and what you thoughtyou wanted to do as opposed to what
you ended up doing. But tellus about that final year of college and
what you thought you were going tobe doing and what was kind of turning
you on At that point when Iwent into college, WiFi was a new
idea and being connected to the internettwenty four to seven, having a smartphone
(02:12):
in your pocket. That was allhappening while I was in school, and
it was an amazing transformation of justsociety and I'll see in the power of
technology. And I thought, Igot to go out to Silicon Valley.
I got to be a part ofthis. You know, I'm going to
go out to California. I'm goingto work in a big tech company,
you know, on Google or Facebook, Microsoft, somebody. And so that's
(02:32):
really what I thought my path wasgoing to be. And a buddy of
mine who graduated a year ahead ofme, he had gone he really wanted
to go to cybersecurity route and hehad moved to DC. He was working
for a government contractor and helping outthe federal government with cybersecurity issues. He
got promoted. He called me hesaid, you know, I got this
(02:53):
promotion. I was like, that'sgreat, man, you know wow.
And we were catching up. Hesaid, well, you know, they
got to fill the seat that Ihad just left. You know, it's
an entry level position, and doyou want to apply for it? And
I was thinking, well, I'dnever never even imagined myself in there.
I never thought about d C,I never thought about government contracting. I
(03:15):
knew I wanted to do something incybersecurity, and I said, yeah,
I mean, why not. Let'slet's see what happens. And I flew
out to d C, talked tothe team, saw what they were doing,
got a sense of the place,and I said, you know what
I'm going to I'm going to takea I'm going to take a shot on
this. And it was you know, like, hey, what's the worst
(03:37):
that can happen? You know,you can spend a year see how it
is, and then maybe you stillgo to California, you know. And
then I lived in DC for tenyears, and fifteen years later, I'm
still working on, you know,cybersecurity for the government. You know,
Spenzer, it's a great story andthere's a common thread that I know is
not going to surprise you when itcomes to our leaders out there, and
it's taking risks. You have todo it if you really want to be
(03:59):
the best. It's the best,whether it's start your own company or do
something special you have to take risks. And I tell my daughter who's a
senior in college at Elon right now, that beside networking, a little timing,
your gifts, luck, you know, you just have to take a
chance out there if you really wantto be the best the best. So
I'm glad you talked about that,because that really is what it's all about
when we talk to people like youin the series. All Right, I
(04:21):
know there are four total co founderswhen it comes to brain Goo, which
we're here to talk about, andbefore we get to the mission statement and
then all the great things that youdo there, we'll get into the weeds.
It's about some of the cool thingsthat you're coming up with and what
you're looking to the future with becauseI know technology is moving very quickly,
especially when it comes to software.But in this series, we like to
(04:43):
kind of get into the brains,as it were, about the brain Goo
guys and gals and everybody there thatworks at the company, about the idea
and that epiphany about coming up witha company. So you know, you
want to start something, you gota great idea behind that, You need
money, any need timing and alittle luck and all those other things that
we talked about when you're taking chancesout there. But for the co founders,
(05:05):
including yourself, you must have sawa hole in the industrory that wasn't
being filled correctly that you and yourgang could do. Can you tell us
about that idea about starting the companyin the origin? Absolutely, you know,
and myself and the founders, youknow, we were doing offensive cybersecurity,
we were doing defensive cybersecurity. Wewere seeing just all the ways in
(05:28):
which you could tear holes in software, and we were realizing it's just too
hard to do it right, andthere's got to be a better way,
and there's got to be some toolingor capability that we could put together that
we wish we had, you know, that would let software developers make the
(05:49):
you know, make the the rightthing, the easy thing. And so
we got together and uh, youknow, just agreed, let's give it
a shot. It's what you saidabout taking risks, You've got to open
yourself to the opportunity. We said, this thing, this is needed,
this has got to happen. Andwe spent a good number of years where
(06:15):
we would pitch this to folks andthey'd say, why would I automate cybersecurity.
You know, how do I knowit's secure if there's not a human
doing it? But over the curveof time, the cybersecurity threats just kept
increasing. It the order of magnitudekept going up, and people got to
a point where they just had tothrow their hands up and recognize, we'll
never train enough cybersecurity professionals, We'llnever hire enough people in the right markets
(06:39):
at the right price point. We'lljust never catch up. There's more bad
guys doing bad stuff than good guysdoing good stuff, and we've got to
use technology to help us along.And that's really where this DevSecOps ecosystem started,
and that's really the wave we've beenwriting is people realizing that. So
what year did the company start?Twenty twelve? All right, so you've
(07:01):
had a good decade and technology hasmoved a ton. And speaking of cybersecurity,
which we'll get into not only internationally, but now we find out domestically,
it's also a big deal that Iknow, you know you're a part
of, and we're going to talkabout that. But I did want to
ask you the first thing overall,for our listeners and myself, what is
the mission statement when it comes tobring Goo change the box. You hear
(07:23):
a lot of people say think outsidethe box. The reality is when you
do that, you're making everybody startover at zero. We've got a lot
of things that are working in theworld, especially in you know, in
the highly irregulated industries that we support, finance, healthcare, government. They
don't want a new team to comein and say, hey, you know,
(07:43):
we're going to throw all that stuffthat you've been working on for years
out. What we want to dois take it, find the small tweaks
that we can make for huge impacts, and give it back to them in
a way that it's better than whenwe found it. So that's that's changed
the box to us. One ofthe fun and curious questions when I get
an opportunity in this series to askwhen I recognize a company name that kind
of catches my fans and say,that's pretty cool, and I wonder what
(08:07):
the origin is of that name.So listen, bring Goo is a really
cool name. It's easy to say, it's fun. How did you come
up with the name? What's theorigin on that? You know, we
we sat around and thought about it. You know, we could have been
XYZ Technology Core or you know somethingsomething solutions, and we just really wanted
to stand out and we wanted tobring this sense of that West Coast tech
(08:31):
company flavor to the East Coast industriesthat are highly regulated, maybe a little
more conservative in their way. Sowe're going to change the box a little
by like opening the door to alittle bit of fun and maybe loosen the
tie. And we thought, whatis it that we're really going to be
selling. It's like if you tookthe great mind power of some really awesome
(08:52):
technologists and you squeezed it, whatwould you get and you know, squeeze
that like a sponge and you getbrain goo. I love that you know
that you tell that story just hadme thinking that you really and your team
of co founders really well thought thatout and took the time to explain to
not only your clients but yourselves aboutexactly who we want to be, the
(09:16):
culture, and what we want todo. I'm glad you shared that because
I think that's really cool, becauseyou're right, there's an x y Z
out there that does what you do, but that you put an extra flare
to it, I think says somethingabout you and your co founders. Yeah,
we definitely have a flavor to usand for some that's going to put
them off and make them feel maybenot as comfortable. And that's a little
(09:39):
bit about changing the boxes. It'swe need to get a little out of
the norm, but not so farthat you you know, feel like you're
without a floor. I think that'swell said Spence. All right, let's
do this. There's going to bea lot of our listeners that are enjoying
this interview so far that are goingto be introduced to bring you for the
first ever time. And if wewere to take it thirty thousand foot view
(10:01):
and a look, and you wereto tell that new listener or that new
client, what we do, whatdo you do? We put together a
suite of tools for developers in highlyregulated industry. If you think about Microsoft
Office is a suite of tools foroffice productivity for your business worker. You
think about the Adobe Creative Suite isa suite of tools for designers and creatives.
(10:26):
What brings you is putting together isthat same idea for the developer world,
and you know, we want tocreate an opportunity for them to build
amazing software that's that's highly highly secure, be able to go fast and build
a lot of quality into it.So that's behind everything that we do.
Before we talk about who you workwith, not with specificity because we know
(10:48):
you're in the super secret business.Well, when it comes to your footprint,
I imagine with having offices around thecountry like you do. You're in
San Antonio, but I know youtalked about being in DC for many years,
in fact a decade. So withall that and said, what is
the current footprint of the company.Yeah, so we have another Virginia office
there in the DC metro and Tysons. We're in Raleigh, North Carolina.
(11:11):
We're in Grand Rapids, Michigan.That's where most of our founders live.
We're in two spots in Texas andSan Antonio, and also in Austin,
sort of mixing like the military citywith a great up and coming tech hub
in Austin. Then we are openingthis year in San Diego, California,
so getting that West coast and SanDiego is a great both military and tech
(11:35):
city, so it sure has andlucky people to live in San Diego by
the way, it's a gorgeous city. But where you're at San Diego,
San Antonio with a river walk andanybody that knows that area of Texas.
It is beautiful there as well.All right, I know that domestically you're
working with clients right now, andI imagine, and I don't want to
(12:00):
assume, but as you tackle domesticallywith the gov con space, and there's
so much to work with there,tell us a little bit about that,
you don't have to mention clients specificallyabout what you're doing. And then is
there also plan to go international someday? Yes to all of that. Yet
you know, here in the now, what we're doing is largely supporting defense
(12:20):
and intelligence customers. You know,there's a real need to go fast and
build great software in that in thatcustomer space, and paired with the need
to go fast is the need tostay secure, and so our tooling has
really, uh, you know,met those customers where they where their need
is. You know, we alsowork with the finance sector and the healthcare
(12:45):
sector. Both of those are highlyregulated, They've got a lot of policy
needs that you know, they're goingto keep their developers a generation or two
behind the latest Silicon Valley technology,and we want to bridge that gap and
bring them up to the latest,greatest and make it so that they don't
have a second class development experience withthe tools that they have to work with.
(13:09):
With regards to international, twenty twentyfour for me is the year Google's
global. You know, a lotof these finance and healthcare, they're multinational.
You know, on the government side, we have allies, We have
friends that need the same things thatwe that you know, America needs,
(13:30):
and we want to get out thereand help, you know, across the
pond and beyond. So we'll beat Qubcon twenty twenty four EU in Paris
in April. So Spence, Idon't want to assume that there is another
company out there that does exactly whatyou and your team do, but I
imagine it is a competitive space.With all that said, how do you
(13:52):
differentiate yourself from all the competition outthere? It is tough and there are
a lot of great companies in thisspace and serving the mission need. Where
we really think we're different is thatwe've taken a product focus. What we
want to be is a tool inyour toolbox, and you know, let
all of those great companies that havethat you know, consulting arm take and
(14:16):
take the relationship and build the softwarefor their customers and so that we really
are in a cooperative rather than competitiveposture. Right now, the companies that
are maybe most competitive on that productangle our international firms, and so our
differentiation there is that we're US basedand that's really impactful to our US based
(14:41):
customers like the Federal You know,with you, your co founders and your
staff, you're in a pretty precariousspot because you talked about going to school
and technology changing forever when it cameto the smartphone, and now we're at
a time in AI and this isa discussion for down the road for you
and I where we could talk forhours about it and AI good are bad,
and where it's going to go.But I imagine it's already a part
(15:03):
of the company in your industry,and it's some of the clients when it
comes to cybersecurity, has their eyeon. They're worried about, but they
also want to be helped, andI imagine it's moving very quickly. I'm
a layman Spence, so I'm justcurious for myself and our listeners where AI
will come into play now and inthe next five to ten years, because
(15:24):
I know, while it's hard tolook into the future because things are moving
so quickly out there. How isit going to affect your company, your
team, your clients, in theindustry overall. That's a wonderful question.
I'm glad you asked it because wecould totally talk for hours about this.
Sure good. Where it's impacting ustoday is, you know, it's nascent
(15:45):
technology, but it's moving really fast. People are you know, just screaming
into place to adopt it. Withmost of the major offerings out there,
you've got to kind of give upyour data to a third party, and
for most of our high regulated customers, that's just not an option. And
so where we have to fit intothat when we build developer tools is that
(16:07):
we're thinking about how do I encapsulateand take the best of this technology,
but created in a way that it'sgoing to be private and containerized such that
it can go to an individual customer, stay within their network, and so
that they have control over all theirdata. Where does it go in the
future. I mean I'm pontificating here, but I think for us we think
(16:30):
about how we build tools for developers. I think AI is going to change
what we define as a developer.I think the average individual is going to
be able to talk to a conversationalAI and say, hey, I really
want these quarterly reports to generate themselvesevery you know, thirty days at the
end of the quarter and shoot anemail out to everybody on this list,
(16:53):
and you won't need necessarily to havea program or write those reports for you
or build those things, because theyis going to drive that for you.
Now we can then have that,you know, go through our tooling to
get the security baked in, andyou know, more and more getting away
from needing to have a really highlytrained developer to deploy secure software. So
(17:18):
I think this is going to opena lot of opportunity for a lot of
people. So, Spence, you'vebeen in this industry for needy for a
very long time, and do youtalk to a lot of myriad of clients
about issues that they have and what'scoming in the future. As you look
at your industry overall, what's thecurrent challenge that you and your clients are
talking about regularly. I think theone that comes up the most often right
(17:41):
now for us is build versus byThis is a new space. Devtec ops
is still quite emergent, and mostorganizations feel that they have to build something
that's so customed to them that youknow, it really takes a lot of
time, it takes a lot ofexpertise, and you know, where we're
(18:02):
obviously sitting is that we would likefor people to buy. That's a challenge
for us is that you know,we've built something that is on the shelf
we'd like for people to take atleast as the foundation of their platform.
That conversation about who needs what andwhen and how can it be delivered is
really baking out, and I thinktwenty twenty four is the year where we'll
(18:23):
get to the answer on that.But just like any technology, you know,
the buy decision is going to startto be better as this gets commoditized.
The buy decision is going to bebetter for the majority of organizations,
and those who have the really complicatedneeds are still going to build. But
(18:45):
you know, I'm personally hoping thatthis is the year where more will choose
by than build, so that youknow, we can really help them get
ahead start. So I want toput a pin and work for a second,
even though it might be correlated.We always like to ask our leaders
and are on entrepreneurs and CEOs aboutfilanthropic and charity work. When you have
time, because we know how busyyou are. But when you have to
(19:07):
do some charitable work or donate,what does a company you'd like to be
a part of. Myself and myco founders were all kind of aligned on
this giving back to the next generation, really focused on stem education, things
like the first robotics program is reallypopular with us girls who code other things
(19:30):
in that vein. You know,we really want to be open to creating
opportunities for mentorship, opportunities for youknow, getting sort of steeped in the
technology at an early age so theycan see, even if they don't choose
a career in engineering specifically, thatthis is something that they can do,
(19:51):
and that this technology touches everybody,everybody's lives in every field and for them
to feel comfortable. I like that, you know, all charity is good
man, that you're paying it forwardto the future. I love that you're
doing that, and that was wellthought out obviously by you and your co
founders, So I'm glad you sharedthat. Thank you for that. I
did want to wrap up with somefinal thoughts from you, Spence, and
(20:11):
maybe just a few takeaways about thecompany. Then we've only hit the just
a little bit about all the amazingthings that you do in the guv con
space when it comes to cybersecurity andsoftware and such. But if you were
to give and leave a couple oftakeaways for our listeners when it came to
bring Google, what would they be. We would love to have every developer
in the highly regulated space come andtry our tools, get that extra cybersecurity
(20:36):
baked in, and really build afuture where software everywhere is more secure.
And we'd love to see that andbe a part of that as a tool
in the toolkit for the people outthere who are working on really hard,
really important technologies, for the missionsin the government space, you know,
taking care of people in our hospitals, in the healthcare system, and for
(20:59):
our banking system, which underpins somuch of what's important to keeping America America.
You know, we want that tobe secure and not have to worry
about things like Grandma's bank account gettinggot what's the website address that somebody wants
to find out more about? Bringothat is bring you dot com, b
r AI, NGU dot com outstanding. One last thing before I let you
(21:22):
go, if you could indulge mefor a little bit, because you do
work in a super secret business,and I mentioned that a couple of times,
and you talked about national security inthe United States. And one of
the things that falls upon me whenI do interviews with people like you and
your founder, Spence, is thatI can sleep well to night because you're
doing some amazing things behind the scenes. Listen, you're a smart guy,
(21:45):
and I know things are moving quicklyout there. Do you enjoy what you
do? Does all the pressure fallon you the amazing things that you and
your team do about trying to keepcompanies and our country safe. And I
know this is another two hour discussionthat you and I could chat about,
but I was curious of somebody whodoes what you do and falls upon you
on the pressures and all the amazingthings that you can maybe sometimes you can
(22:06):
do, but you try and comeof the new idea of some of the
amazing things that keep our country andyour clients safe. The reason why I
ask is that I'm in awe ofit. I'm always feel very special to
talk to people like you about it, but also that we really don't realize
what's going on behind the curtain ofdesign with people like you, and when
you work with your clients and thesetype of things. Yeah, I mean
we have to take it seriously,right, Like our name is fun and
(22:30):
we are fun, but there's veryreal important thing taking place that we're honored
to be a part of. I'llbe honest. It does. It keeps
us up at night sometimes and sometimesthat's just worrying and sometimes that's getting a
chance to do something about it.But what moves us forward is that ability
(22:51):
to take our mantra there, changethe box. If we feel like we
left the world better off, thenyou know when we woke up this morning,
done what we meant to do,and you just kind of have to
take it day by day and sometimesbetter as an inch and sometimes better is
a mile. But as long asyou're going in the direction, you can
really feel good about it. Yeah, it's well said, and I appreciate
(23:11):
that you're doing things at a veryhigh level and making a difference, as
you mentioned, and I just thinkthat's really cool. So I want to
make sure that I said that andhear what you thought about it. Listen,
thanks for your valuable time. Iknow that you your team and everybody
at BRING who's very busy, butthank you so much. Keep up the
great work and continue success. Andthank you so much Spence for joining us
on CEOs you should know, Thankyou so much. Our community partner,
(23:33):
M and T Bank supports CEOs youshould know. Is part of their ongoing
commitment to building strong communities and thatstarts by backing that businesses within them.
As a Bank for Communities, Mand T believes in dedicating time, talent
and resources to help local businesses thrivebecause when businesses succeed, our community succeed.
M and T Bank presents CEOs youshould know Power in Fight I Heeartadia.
Let's meet John Spencer Taylor, alsoknown as Spence. He is one of
the co founders and CEO for bringGoo, specializing in cutting edge devsek ops
platforms and mission critical applications, mainlyin and for the gov con space.
Before we talk more about Spencer's company, I first asked him to talk a
(00:23):
little bit about himself, where he'sfrom, and his origin story. I
grew up in the Midwest, inMichigan, a small town, did all
the fun things that the young boyin the cornfields can do, a lot
of bonfires, a lot of beingoutdoors, and then I chose a life
of computers and ended up locking myselfin my room with the computer with the
college for copsite at Grand Valley Stateand Grand Rapids. That pulled me into
(00:47):
the DC world, following a friendof mine who who graduated ahead of me.
All Right, we're going to talkabout that and everything that is brain
Goo. But I'm a sports guy. Our listeners know that. So there
was a time when you guys weredominating the landlandscape with the pistons and the
red wings. Some great championship yearsand then there was a long route.
But this year with sports the Wolverinesand then the Lions. Holy smokes,
(01:08):
if you're a sports fan in Michigan, look out, that's right. I
was. I was traveling through airportsa couple of weekends ago with the Michigan
game, and every airport I landedthrough there were just Michigan sweatshirts everywhere,
and I was like, Okay,we did it. Back on the map.
So tell me again, where'd yougo to college? Grand Valley State.
(01:29):
That's a great school, big footballschool. Yeah, it really is,
it really is. I want toask you about this because this is
the fascinating three thing for me inthis series about when somebody studies something,
they got an idea what they wantto do, And we talked to a
lot of entrepreneurs and future CEOs,and sometimes they know exactly what they want
to do and they execute and getit done, and then some do one
(01:49):
eighties. So it's always fascinating tous to find out what really turned you
on in college and what you thoughtyou wanted to do as opposed to what
you ended up doing. But tellus about that final year of college and
what you thought you were going tobe doing and what was kind of turning
you on At that point when Iwent into college, WiFi was a new
idea and being connected to the internettwenty four to seven, having a smartphone
(02:12):
in your pocket. That was allhappening while I was in school, and
it was an amazing transformation of justsociety and I'll see in the power of
technology. And I thought, Igot to go out to Silicon Valley.
I got to be a part ofthis. You know, I'm going to
go out to California. I'm goingto work in a big tech company,
you know, on Google or Facebook, Microsoft, somebody. And so that's
(02:32):
really what I thought my path wasgoing to be. And a buddy of
mine who graduated a year ahead ofme, he had gone he really wanted
to go to cybersecurity route and hehad moved to DC. He was working
for a government contractor and helping outthe federal government with cybersecurity issues. He
got promoted. He called me hesaid, you know, I got this
(02:53):
promotion. I was like, that'sgreat, man, you know wow.
And we were catching up. Hesaid, well, you know, they
got to fill the seat that Ihad just left. You know, it's
an entry level position, and doyou want to apply for it? And
I was thinking, well, I'dnever never even imagined myself in there.
I never thought about d C,I never thought about government contracting. I
(03:15):
knew I wanted to do something incybersecurity, and I said, yeah,
I mean, why not. Let'slet's see what happens. And I flew
out to d C, talked tothe team, saw what they were doing,
got a sense of the place,and I said, you know what
I'm going to I'm going to takea I'm going to take a shot on
this. And it was you know, like, hey, what's the worst
(03:37):
that can happen? You know,you can spend a year see how it
is, and then maybe you stillgo to California, you know. And
then I lived in DC for tenyears, and fifteen years later, I'm
still working on, you know,cybersecurity for the government. You know,
Spenzer, it's a great story andthere's a common thread that I know is
not going to surprise you when itcomes to our leaders out there, and
it's taking risks. You have todo it if you really want to be
(03:59):
the best. It's the best,whether it's start your own company or do
something special you have to take risks. And I tell my daughter who's a
senior in college at Elon right now, that beside networking, a little timing,
your gifts, luck, you know, you just have to take a
chance out there if you really wantto be the best the best. So
I'm glad you talked about that,because that really is what it's all about
when we talk to people like youin the series. All Right, I
(04:21):
know there are four total co founderswhen it comes to brain Goo, which
we're here to talk about, andbefore we get to the mission statement and
then all the great things that youdo there, we'll get into the weeds.
It's about some of the cool thingsthat you're coming up with and what
you're looking to the future with becauseI know technology is moving very quickly,
especially when it comes to software.But in this series, we like to
(04:43):
kind of get into the brains,as it were, about the brain Goo
guys and gals and everybody there thatworks at the company, about the idea
and that epiphany about coming up witha company. So you know, you
want to start something, you gota great idea behind that, You need
money, any need timing and alittle luck and all those other things that
we talked about when you're taking chancesout there. But for the co founders,
(05:05):
including yourself, you must have sawa hole in the industrory that wasn't
being filled correctly that you and yourgang could do. Can you tell us
about that idea about starting the companyin the origin? Absolutely, you know,
and myself and the founders, youknow, we were doing offensive cybersecurity,
we were doing defensive cybersecurity. Wewere seeing just all the ways in
(05:28):
which you could tear holes in software, and we were realizing it's just too
hard to do it right, andthere's got to be a better way,
and there's got to be some toolingor capability that we could put together that
we wish we had, you know, that would let software developers make the
(05:49):
you know, make the the rightthing, the easy thing. And so
we got together and uh, youknow, just agreed, let's give it
a shot. It's what you saidabout taking risks, You've got to open
yourself to the opportunity. We said, this thing, this is needed,
this has got to happen. Andwe spent a good number of years where
(06:15):
we would pitch this to folks andthey'd say, why would I automate cybersecurity.
You know, how do I knowit's secure if there's not a human
doing it? But over the curveof time, the cybersecurity threats just kept
increasing. It the order of magnitudekept going up, and people got to
a point where they just had tothrow their hands up and recognize, we'll
never train enough cybersecurity professionals, We'llnever hire enough people in the right markets
(06:39):
at the right price point. We'lljust never catch up. There's more bad
guys doing bad stuff than good guysdoing good stuff, and we've got to
use technology to help us along.And that's really where this DevSecOps ecosystem started,
and that's really the wave we've beenwriting is people realizing that. So
what year did the company start?Twenty twelve? All right, so you've
(07:01):
had a good decade and technology hasmoved a ton. And speaking of cybersecurity,
which we'll get into not only internationally, but now we find out domestically,
it's also a big deal that Iknow, you know you're a part
of, and we're going to talkabout that. But I did want to
ask you the first thing overall,for our listeners and myself, what is
the mission statement when it comes tobring Goo change the box. You hear
(07:23):
a lot of people say think outsidethe box. The reality is when you
do that, you're making everybody startover at zero. We've got a lot
of things that are working in theworld, especially in you know, in
the highly irregulated industries that we support, finance, healthcare, government. They
don't want a new team to comein and say, hey, you know,
(07:43):
we're going to throw all that stuffthat you've been working on for years
out. What we want to dois take it, find the small tweaks
that we can make for huge impacts, and give it back to them in
a way that it's better than whenwe found it. So that's that's changed
the box to us. One ofthe fun and curious questions when I get
an opportunity in this series to askwhen I recognize a company name that kind
of catches my fans and say,that's pretty cool, and I wonder what
(08:07):
the origin is of that name.So listen, bring Goo is a really
cool name. It's easy to say, it's fun. How did you come
up with the name? What's theorigin on that? You know, we
we sat around and thought about it. You know, we could have been
XYZ Technology Core or you know somethingsomething solutions, and we just really wanted
to stand out and we wanted tobring this sense of that West Coast tech
(08:31):
company flavor to the East Coast industriesthat are highly regulated, maybe a little
more conservative in their way. Sowe're going to change the box a little
by like opening the door to alittle bit of fun and maybe loosen the
tie. And we thought, whatis it that we're really going to be
selling. It's like if you tookthe great mind power of some really awesome
(08:52):
technologists and you squeezed it, whatwould you get and you know, squeeze
that like a sponge and you getbrain goo. I love that you know
that you tell that story just hadme thinking that you really and your team
of co founders really well thought thatout and took the time to explain to
not only your clients but yourselves aboutexactly who we want to be, the
(09:16):
culture, and what we want todo. I'm glad you shared that because
I think that's really cool, becauseyou're right, there's an x y Z
out there that does what you do, but that you put an extra flare
to it, I think says somethingabout you and your co founders. Yeah,
we definitely have a flavor to usand for some that's going to put
them off and make them feel maybenot as comfortable. And that's a little
(09:39):
bit about changing the boxes. It'swe need to get a little out of
the norm, but not so farthat you you know, feel like you're
without a floor. I think that'swell said Spence. All right, let's
do this. There's going to bea lot of our listeners that are enjoying
this interview so far that are goingto be introduced to bring you for the
first ever time. And if wewere to take it thirty thousand foot view
(10:01):
and a look, and you wereto tell that new listener or that new
client, what we do, whatdo you do? We put together a
suite of tools for developers in highlyregulated industry. If you think about Microsoft
Office is a suite of tools foroffice productivity for your business worker. You
think about the Adobe Creative Suite isa suite of tools for designers and creatives.
(10:26):
What brings you is putting together isthat same idea for the developer world,
and you know, we want tocreate an opportunity for them to build
amazing software that's that's highly highly secure, be able to go fast and build
a lot of quality into it.So that's behind everything that we do.
Before we talk about who you workwith, not with specificity because we know
(10:48):
you're in the super secret business.Well, when it comes to your footprint,
I imagine with having offices around thecountry like you do. You're in
San Antonio, but I know youtalked about being in DC for many years,
in fact a decade. So withall that and said, what is
the current footprint of the company.Yeah, so we have another Virginia office
there in the DC metro and Tysons. We're in Raleigh, North Carolina.
(11:11):
We're in Grand Rapids, Michigan.That's where most of our founders live.
We're in two spots in Texas andSan Antonio, and also in Austin,
sort of mixing like the military citywith a great up and coming tech hub
in Austin. Then we are openingthis year in San Diego, California,
so getting that West coast and SanDiego is a great both military and tech
(11:35):
city, so it sure has andlucky people to live in San Diego by
the way, it's a gorgeous city. But where you're at San Diego,
San Antonio with a river walk andanybody that knows that area of Texas.
It is beautiful there as well.All right, I know that domestically you're
working with clients right now, andI imagine, and I don't want to
(12:00):
assume, but as you tackle domesticallywith the gov con space, and there's
so much to work with there,tell us a little bit about that,
you don't have to mention clients specificallyabout what you're doing. And then is
there also plan to go international someday? Yes to all of that. Yet
you know, here in the now, what we're doing is largely supporting defense
(12:20):
and intelligence customers. You know,there's a real need to go fast and
build great software in that in thatcustomer space, and paired with the need
to go fast is the need tostay secure, and so our tooling has
really, uh, you know,met those customers where they where their need
is. You know, we alsowork with the finance sector and the healthcare
(12:45):
sector. Both of those are highlyregulated, They've got a lot of policy
needs that you know, they're goingto keep their developers a generation or two
behind the latest Silicon Valley technology,and we want to bridge that gap and
bring them up to the latest,greatest and make it so that they don't
have a second class development experience withthe tools that they have to work with.
(13:09):
With regards to international, twenty twentyfour for me is the year Google's
global. You know, a lotof these finance and healthcare, they're multinational.
You know, on the government side, we have allies, We have
friends that need the same things thatwe that you know, America needs,
(13:30):
and we want to get out thereand help, you know, across the
pond and beyond. So we'll beat Qubcon twenty twenty four EU in Paris
in April. So Spence, Idon't want to assume that there is another
company out there that does exactly whatyou and your team do, but I
imagine it is a competitive space.With all that said, how do you
(13:52):
differentiate yourself from all the competition outthere? It is tough and there are
a lot of great companies in thisspace and serving the mission need. Where
we really think we're different is thatwe've taken a product focus. What we
want to be is a tool inyour toolbox, and you know, let
all of those great companies that havethat you know, consulting arm take and
(14:16):
take the relationship and build the softwarefor their customers and so that we really
are in a cooperative rather than competitiveposture. Right now, the companies that
are maybe most competitive on that productangle our international firms, and so our
differentiation there is that we're US basedand that's really impactful to our US based
(14:41):
customers like the Federal You know,with you, your co founders and your
staff, you're in a pretty precariousspot because you talked about going to school
and technology changing forever when it cameto the smartphone, and now we're at
a time in AI and this isa discussion for down the road for you
and I where we could talk forhours about it and AI good are bad,
and where it's going to go.But I imagine it's already a part
(15:03):
of the company in your industry,and it's some of the clients when it
comes to cybersecurity, has their eyeon. They're worried about, but they
also want to be helped, andI imagine it's moving very quickly. I'm
a layman Spence, so I'm justcurious for myself and our listeners where AI
will come into play now and inthe next five to ten years, because
(15:24):
I know, while it's hard tolook into the future because things are moving
so quickly out there. How isit going to affect your company, your
team, your clients, in theindustry overall. That's a wonderful question.
I'm glad you asked it because wecould totally talk for hours about this.
Sure good. Where it's impacting ustoday is, you know, it's nascent
(15:45):
technology, but it's moving really fast. People are you know, just screaming
into place to adopt it. Withmost of the major offerings out there,
you've got to kind of give upyour data to a third party, and
for most of our high regulated customers, that's just not an option. And
so where we have to fit intothat when we build developer tools is that
(16:07):
we're thinking about how do I encapsulateand take the best of this technology,
but created in a way that it'sgoing to be private and containerized such that
it can go to an individual customer, stay within their network, and so
that they have control over all theirdata. Where does it go in the
future. I mean I'm pontificating here, but I think for us we think
(16:30):
about how we build tools for developers. I think AI is going to change
what we define as a developer.I think the average individual is going to
be able to talk to a conversationalAI and say, hey, I really
want these quarterly reports to generate themselvesevery you know, thirty days at the
end of the quarter and shoot anemail out to everybody on this list,
(16:53):
and you won't need necessarily to havea program or write those reports for you
or build those things, because theyis going to drive that for you.
Now we can then have that,you know, go through our tooling to
get the security baked in, andyou know, more and more getting away
from needing to have a really highlytrained developer to deploy secure software. So
(17:18):
I think this is going to opena lot of opportunity for a lot of
people. So, Spence, you'vebeen in this industry for needy for a
very long time, and do youtalk to a lot of myriad of clients
about issues that they have and what'scoming in the future. As you look
at your industry overall, what's thecurrent challenge that you and your clients are
talking about regularly. I think theone that comes up the most often right
(17:41):
now for us is build versus byThis is a new space. Devtec ops
is still quite emergent, and mostorganizations feel that they have to build something
that's so customed to them that youknow, it really takes a lot of
time, it takes a lot ofexpertise, and you know, where we're
(18:02):
obviously sitting is that we would likefor people to buy. That's a challenge
for us is that you know,we've built something that is on the shelf
we'd like for people to take atleast as the foundation of their platform.
That conversation about who needs what andwhen and how can it be delivered is
really baking out, and I thinktwenty twenty four is the year where we'll
(18:23):
get to the answer on that.But just like any technology, you know,
the buy decision is going to startto be better as this gets commoditized.
The buy decision is going to bebetter for the majority of organizations,
and those who have the really complicatedneeds are still going to build. But
(18:45):
you know, I'm personally hoping thatthis is the year where more will choose
by than build, so that youknow, we can really help them get
ahead start. So I want toput a pin and work for a second,
even though it might be correlated.We always like to ask our leaders
and are on entrepreneurs and CEOs aboutfilanthropic and charity work. When you have
time, because we know how busyyou are. But when you have to
(19:07):
do some charitable work or donate,what does a company you'd like to be
a part of. Myself and myco founders were all kind of aligned on
this giving back to the next generation, really focused on stem education, things
like the first robotics program is reallypopular with us girls who code other things
(19:30):
in that vein. You know,we really want to be open to creating
opportunities for mentorship, opportunities for youknow, getting sort of steeped in the
technology at an early age so theycan see, even if they don't choose
a career in engineering specifically, thatthis is something that they can do,
(19:51):
and that this technology touches everybody,everybody's lives in every field and for them
to feel comfortable. I like that, you know, all charity is good
man, that you're paying it forwardto the future. I love that you're
doing that, and that was wellthought out obviously by you and your co
founders, So I'm glad you sharedthat. Thank you for that. I
did want to wrap up with somefinal thoughts from you, Spence, and
(20:11):
maybe just a few takeaways about thecompany. Then we've only hit the just
a little bit about all the amazingthings that you do in the guv con
space when it comes to cybersecurity andsoftware and such. But if you were
to give and leave a couple oftakeaways for our listeners when it came to
bring Google, what would they be. We would love to have every developer
in the highly regulated space come andtry our tools, get that extra cybersecurity
(20:36):
baked in, and really build afuture where software everywhere is more secure.
And we'd love to see that andbe a part of that as a tool
in the toolkit for the people outthere who are working on really hard,
really important technologies, for the missionsin the government space, you know,
taking care of people in our hospitals, in the healthcare system, and for
(20:59):
our banking system, which underpins somuch of what's important to keeping America America.
You know, we want that tobe secure and not have to worry
about things like Grandma's bank account gettinggot what's the website address that somebody wants
to find out more about? Bringothat is bring you dot com, b
r AI, NGU dot com outstanding. One last thing before I let you
(21:22):
go, if you could indulge mefor a little bit, because you do
work in a super secret business,and I mentioned that a couple of times,
and you talked about national security inthe United States. And one of
the things that falls upon me whenI do interviews with people like you and
your founder, Spence, is thatI can sleep well to night because you're
doing some amazing things behind the scenes. Listen, you're a smart guy,
(21:45):
and I know things are moving quicklyout there. Do you enjoy what you
do? Does all the pressure fallon you the amazing things that you and
your team do about trying to keepcompanies and our country safe. And I
know this is another two hour discussionthat you and I could chat about,
but I was curious of somebody whodoes what you do and falls upon you
on the pressures and all the amazingthings that you can maybe sometimes you can
(22:06):
do, but you try and comeof the new idea of some of the
amazing things that keep our country andyour clients safe. The reason why I
ask is that I'm in awe ofit. I'm always feel very special to
talk to people like you about it, but also that we really don't realize
what's going on behind the curtain ofdesign with people like you, and when
you work with your clients and thesetype of things. Yeah, I mean
we have to take it seriously,right, Like our name is fun and
(22:30):
we are fun, but there's veryreal important thing taking place that we're honored
to be a part of. I'llbe honest. It does. It keeps
us up at night sometimes and sometimesthat's just worrying and sometimes that's getting a
chance to do something about it.But what moves us forward is that ability
(22:51):
to take our mantra there, changethe box. If we feel like we
left the world better off, thenyou know when we woke up this morning,
done what we meant to do,and you just kind of have to
take it day by day and sometimesbetter as an inch and sometimes better is
a mile. But as long asyou're going in the direction, you can
really feel good about it. Yeah, it's well said, and I appreciate
(23:11):
that you're doing things at a veryhigh level and making a difference, as
you mentioned, and I just thinkthat's really cool. So I want to
make sure that I said that andhear what you thought about it. Listen,
thanks for your valuable time. Iknow that you your team and everybody
at BRING who's very busy, butthank you so much. Keep up the
great work and continue success. Andthank you so much Spence for joining us
on CEOs you should know, Thankyou so much. Our community partner,
(23:33):
M and T Bank supports CEOs youshould know. Is part of their ongoing
commitment to building strong communities and thatstarts by backing that businesses within them.
As a Bank for Communities, Mand T believes in dedicating time, talent
and resources to help local businesses thrivebecause when businesses succeed, our community succeed.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.