Giuuunta! Motivating yourself when you're not in startup mode

Bootstrapping a business is like getting a plane to lift off the ground. But what do you do once the plane is in the air?

Dave Giunta and Justin Jackson recorded a recent phone call about maintaining motivation after the initial startup phase. How does founder energy shift once you've achieved your early goals? Dave prods Justin to find new sources of motivation – whether through mentoring junior team members, connecting with customers in fresh ways, or knowing when it's time to explore new horizons.

They also discuss why Dave left Home Chef (after 8 years) and what he's doing next.

Links:

• Follow Dave on Bluesky
• Connect with Dave on LinkedIn
• Follow Justin on Bluesky

Have feedback on this episode?

• 👉 ​Leave a voicemail here​
• 🦋 Reply on Bluesky

Timestamps:

• 00:00:17 - Giuuuuuunta
• 00:01:15 - Chatting in Guatemala: maintaining motivation, remote work, career transitions
• 00:02:12 - Motivation in early vs late stage startups
• 00:06:00 - Challenges with maintaining motivation once the business is established
• 00:15:35 - Working with different team member motivations
• 00:26:42 - Importance of understanding individual team members
• 00:29:20 - Remote work advantages and challenges
• 00:35:35 - Working with junior team members and mentorship
• 00:54:00 - Why Dave left Home Chef after 8+ years
• 00:57:00 - Discussion of career transitions and giving yourself space to explore
• 01:02:20 - Future plans and exploration after leaving long-term role

Thanks to our monthly supporters

• Pascal from sharpen.page
• Rewardful.com
• Greg Park
• Mitchell Davis from RecruitKit.com.au
• Marcel Fahle, wearebold.af
• Bill Condo (@mavrck)
• Ward from MemberSpace.com
• Evandro Sasse
• Austin Loveless
• Michael Sitver
• Colin Gray
• Dave Giunta

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Episode Transcript

Justin (00:12):
Hey, and welcome back to build your SaaS. This is the
behind the scenes story ofbuilding a web app in 2024. And
I'm Justin Jackson, and I've gota guest on the show today, Dave
Junta. As listeners will know,Dave has been a fixture on the

(00:32):
podcast for many years. His nameis presented in the
aforementioned dramatic fashionevery episode.
Dave was VP of engineering atHome Chef for over 8 years and
just recently left that positionand is currently exploring new
opportunities. And Dave and I,believe it or not, we recently

(00:55):
found ourselves in a bar inGuatemala. We had a great
conversation and then wepromised that we'd do a
follow-up call when we got backhome. And that follow-up call
just happened. And I said, Dave,why don't we record this and
maybe publish it?
So we decided to record it lastminute so you get to listen in.
In our call, we discussed thechallenge of maintaining

(01:17):
motivation once your businesshas made it. How remote work and
different working styles affectmotivation. The difference
between early stage motivationwhere every decision you make
feels consequential versus latestage motivation where you have
to actively seek out things thatenergize you. And this is all in

(01:38):
the context of starting abusiness, of course.
How working with junior devs canreignite motivation. The
importance of understandingindividual team members and what
motivates them. Why Dave decidedto leave Home Chef after so many
years and giving yourself spaceto explore and transition

(02:00):
between different phases of yourcareer. The whole thing was
great. And now I give you DaveGiunta.

Dave (02:07):
I was gonna ask if this goes back to, the conversation
we were having in Guatemalaabout, like, maybe I don't know.
Maybe maybe I'm misrememberingsome of that conversation. I was
remembering it being a littlebit about, like, motivation and
having a team and a and a bunchof people who are sort of, like,

(02:29):
at different levels ofmotivation. I think we were
mostly talking about, like, whatto build next. Right?
But I wonder if this isn't sortof, like, another symptom that
sort of, like, falls out ofthat. Like, the day to day has
become the day to day, and it'snot something that you're really
spending a lot of time thinkingabout and crafting as the you

(02:49):
know, as what you're doing.

Justin (02:51):
Yeah. I've been thinking I mean, I'm constantly thinking
about this because there aremoments once so once you've
built the thing building thething, getting the airplane into
the air is so much work and isusually preceded by multiple
crashes. So, you know, it's likeI've been trying to get an

(03:15):
airplane up in the air since Iwas 15 years old. And I've had
multiple airplanes. I've hadmultiple flights and a varying
success.
And then you get one up in theair that's really going. And I
think in the same way that Ihave to remind myself, like,

(03:36):
when I'm on an airplane and II'm by the window and I wanna,
like, I just wanna, like, be theguy that closes the window and
just, like, watches a movie.There's this other part of me
that's like, no. I need to openthe window and look outside
because this is a miracle thatI'm up here. This is incredible.
This is a perspective thatthroughout human history, only a

(03:59):
fraction of people have everseen, and it's unbelievable. And
you have to kinda put yourselfin that place of recognizing,
you know, that this is and kindof feeling emotions and maybe
so, yeah, I think once thebusiness was going, I found that

(04:21):
you don't have the same kind ofyou you almost have to force
yourself to or put yourself in aposition where you're, like,
enjoying it at that same levelof that highly activated level.
Does that make sense?

Dave (04:39):
I think so. You you mean in terms of because we were
talking about, sort of, like,motivation to record a podcast.

Justin (04:45):
Yeah.

Dave (04:45):
And that that motivation sort of came I my what I heard,
I think, was that thatmotivation came out naturally
because you in the moment, inthat in those in that time, for
1, I'm guessing that you andJohn were talking about talking
to each other a lot morefrequently Yeah. And a lot more
actively because it was just the2 of you at the time. And then
it was like, you had nothing butdecisions to make constantly

(05:08):
every day. And they were allabout these, like, super minute
things, and they were all aboutthings that you were, like,
really excited

Justin (05:15):
Yeah.

Dave (05:16):
Talk about and make a decision.

Justin (05:17):
And they felt consequential. It's like like
the pricing the the pricingstructure we have today, we came
up with it was it was birthed,you know, in those moments of
grinding up the hill. Like that,it was like we came up with
those kind of fundamental thosethose fundamental pillars when

(05:44):
during that time. And yeah. Sonow it I I I would say things
just really kinda slow down onceyou've built it and the plane's
in the air.
But sorry, you were goingsomewhere. I think I I think I
No.

Dave (05:58):
No. Well, I guess I'm wondering, did it feel
consequential in the moment for,like, that pricing decision?

Justin (06:03):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It felt super consequential. Like, the
difference between everythingfeels so consequential at the
beginning and and really isbecause everything from choosing
the market that we went into,like saying, yes, we're both
going to pursue podcasters andpursue this product category,

(06:28):
which is hosting. You know, thatwas incredibly consequential.
And then figuring out ourperspective on that, our point
of view, our differentiation,and then executing on it. It it

(06:48):
was it all feels incrediblyconsequential. And and a lot,
like, we haven't really touchedfor example, we wrote up
together a values document, butwe haven't really touched that
since then. We came up with youknow, we had this philosophy of,
you know, we why do we like thisparticular category? And we had

(07:10):
all these reasons because it'sslow media, because it's, open
protocols, because it feels likethe old web.
All of that stuff happened thenand and was very consequential.
And then you even get to thepoint that this idea of every
move we made, a move in a givenmonth could mean we went from a

(07:32):
100 customers to 200. So, like,that was a doubling. And then
the next month, we might go from200 to 500. And that kind of
growth and consequential growthwhere you really feel it,
whereas, you know, once you getinto 1,000,000 of dollars of

(07:52):
revenue, it's incredible for allof the reasons we dreamed it
would be incredible, but youdon't get the same kind of lift.
You know, it's not it's like thedecisions you're making month to
month. It's not like you know,our our dream initially was just
like, can we get to $10,000 amonth in recurring revenue?

(08:13):
Right? And and that like, oncehe hit it and it's like, oh my
god, we hit it. And and thenit's like, well, clearly, like,
if we can get to 20 k, thenwe're we're almost we're like at
this we would be at this pointwhere we could both quit our
jobs and, you know, at leasthave enough to live on, and that

(08:36):
felt super consequential.
But, yeah, once it's going,there's still exciting things,
but it's it's it's not the same.Like, every customer
conversation felt so important.And I think that's actually a
good example of how I've beenable to fire myself up at this

(08:59):
point is forcing myself to gohave a customer conversation.
Or, like, today, I I've been,bringing up this point to the
team that we're so lucky inpodcasting because our customers
often talk about why theystarted the podcast or why they
found Transistor on episodes.It's just, like, right there.

(09:22):
We just have to discover it likean anthropologist. And I I found
this episode. I just today, Ijust looked at who had started a
show today. And someone hadpublished an episode. And I
looked at it, and they weretalking about what motivated
them to start the podcast.
And I just get super I got superfired up. It was it was it just

(09:46):
felt like, oh, yeah. I rememberthis feeling. Or, you know,
Michael, who's on our, customersuccess team, has gotten really
excited about doing Zoom callswith new customers. And he's
here in Vernon, and so sometimeshe'll come into my office and
say, oh, I just had the mostamazing call, and he'll tell me
about it.
And that gives me energy aswell. But it's definitely

(10:10):
different in that it feels liketo get that energy now. I have
to kind of get into character. Ihave to, you know, do things to,
to make it to have it happen.Right?
It's not just naturally there.You don't have that natural kind

(10:30):
of builders energy and momentum.And I I don't think I wanna go
back to that builder's energy.Like, there's it's the you you
know, there were hard thingsabout it there's it's hard to
build things. You know, it'sit's nice to have built

(10:53):
something.
But it's definitely at thisstage, I think this has been
ever since we kind of reachedour big financial goals. There's
this this kind of constantexistential question of, like,
man, okay, so things are good.And how do we continue to
motivate ourselves? How do wecontinue to motivate our team?

(11:15):
And then and I think there'sother things too that make this
stage just more challenging inthat invariably as a company
grows, both in terms of revenueand headcount and just like
after you've been around for awhile, there's more and more

(11:37):
administrative burden.
Just naturally you accumulateadministrative stuff or the
administrative stuff catches upwith you and you have to deal
with it. And that part is notfun. Like, you can kind of play
fast and loose when you'rebuilding. It's like, hey, it's
just John and I. And it's like,health care?

(11:59):
Who cares? You know, sales tax,we haven't hit any of the
thresholds yet. Like, we'rethere. You get this there's this
magical time when you'rebuilding something where it's
just like it's simplicity. It'snot just an illusion.
It's simple for the time becausea lot of stuff just doesn't

(12:20):
apply yet or unless you're inGermany. But, you know, the the
over in Europe, they have a lotof business that they're very
serious about, you know, youknow, the right way to do
things. But in North America,we've all a startup has always
been like a little bit like,well, if we missed a government
form, we're making a $100 amonth. Like, what's the worst

(12:43):
that could happen? But once youget to a certain stage, there's
just more of that.

Dave (12:49):
So this is interesting. When I first started asking some
questions here, in my head, Iwas thinking about how
motivation is definitelydifferent, I think, when when
the business starts to get bigor when the business gets to
comfort a comfort level. Right?Is that you have to start
setting your sights on differentthings to be your motivation.

(13:10):
Some of those things might belike you you're motivated by
creating the system of yourcompany in a way that you just
did to your point.
You didn't have to think aboutit at all in the beginning.
Sometimes it might be amotivation about, you know, the
inherent risk that comes withmaking changes at a when a

(13:31):
company is this size. Because,you know, in the beginning
that's why I asked you if, like,making your, your pricing level
decisions, did they feelconsequential in the moment?
Because in my mind, I was like,and that you could you could
have chosen whatever you wanted.It doesn't like, it kinda
doesn't matter.
You're gonna, like, make adecision. You're gonna try it
out. If it doesn't work, wecould change it tomorrow. It's
not a big deal. You changingyour prices today

Justin (13:53):
Yes.

Dave (13:54):
Is I think it's actually true. Like, you probably could
make a change, but it feels somuch more consequential because
you have so many more customersand your business is so warm.

Justin (14:03):
That's so interesting. Yeah. Consequential can have two
dynamics. So looking back, ourpricing decision was
consequential in that No.

Dave (14:15):
You haven't changed it.

Justin (14:16):
It it it really set us up for where we are now. I
think, yes, I think now makingchanges feels so consequential.
Like, there's part of thismachine that none of us even
understand. And jiggling any ofit makes me nervous. Like, any

(14:37):
of it.
It's infrastructure changes makeme nervous. Any sort of changes
to the sign up flow make menervous. Any sort of changes to
onboarding, any sort of changesto pricing. And we've considered
a lot of them. You you know, atone point, it was like, maybe we

(14:57):
should try.
A lot of our competitors havesomething to the effect of, free
to sign up, no credit cardupfront, and you can publish
your first episode for free.It's like, oh, man. There's
something about that that youmight get way more inbound
because then people can try itout. And and I think,

(15:18):
ultimately, we decided thatwasn't a good decision because
we already have a sign up flowthat's really working well and,
like, again, don't jiggle it.And also just like I don't think
it would actually improve thenumbers that we care about,
which is new paying customersand retention and monthly

(15:41):
revenue.
But there was a big part of thatdecision where we're like, we
just don't want to change thisbecause that's a massive risk.
And you make that choice, it'slike that all of a sudden you
could be go from right now, wehave about a 75% conversion rate
from trial to paid over a 14 dayfree trial. You can already

(16:05):
imagine, like, if you made thatfree, if you added a freemium
plan, those people might notconvert for 3 months, 6 months,
2 years, whatever. And so it itcould really throw you off. So

Dave (16:19):
It would throw off your 75%. Your 75% is definitely
gonna go down because you'reputting so many more people into
the funnel, and you're andyou're making it at so much less
of a commitment. Yeah. Level.So, you know, you're gonna
you're gonna mess with thatnumber just by virtue of making
that change, and you should ifyou're gonna go through it, you
should prepare yourself for theemotional impact that comes from

(16:40):
seeing a number go from 75% to,like, 30 or something.
Right?

Justin (16:43):
Yeah.

Dave (16:45):
But you're also putting a lot more bets into a pipeline, a
a marketing pipeline. You'realso getting a lot more interest
that gives you as the person whoof the group who is who is
responsible or maybe, like,cares about customer outreach
Mhmm. A lot of opportunities,opportunities that you don't
necessarily get right now. Like,right now, you get the

(17:06):
opportunity to go talk to youwere just talking. Right?
Like, talking about some talkingto somebody who they just
published their first episode.Yeah. You're gonna get a
different type of customer, adifferent different type of
person who starts their freetrial and then never converts
for 3 months. And that'd be aninteresting person to go talk to
because instead of you gettinggetting motivation from them

(17:28):
having, you know, started it,you're gonna be the one who's
gonna be giving them themotivation to to make it happen.

Justin (17:33):
Interesting.

Dave (17:34):
It's a very different kind of place for you to be. But
might be very interesting thingfor you to learn, because, you
know, that mark that segment ofthe market exists Yeah. Of
people who wanna who think apodcast would be cool and but
but get as far as, oh, you wantme to put in a credit card? No.

(17:54):
I'm not gonna do that.
And and then back up.

Justin (17:57):
Yeah. I think in this particular case, though, this is
where my instincts or my gut waswas once I thought about it. And
once I talked about it with theteam, I think our instincts here
were actually correct in that,especially for creator

(18:20):
businesses. What you really wantis the most self motivated
customer. Like, you don't wannahave to motivate the customer.
And the credit card upfront ifwe weren't getting enough trials
every month, I think then itwould be like we gotta solve
that problem. But this was acase of, like but we don't have

(18:42):
that problem. We get we gethundreds of trials. And I think
my my instinct there in terms ofjust human behavior and human
psychology is the money, like,people paying upfront actually
is a motivating factor in untoitself. So it both attracts

(19:04):
people that are highlymotivated.
And once they're paying for it,it's more likely that they'll
continue with it. And we've seenthese in the numbers, like, if
you look at Spotify's freehosting, those shows have less
episodes per feed and kind offade out faster than an average
transistor customer.

Dave (19:25):
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't suggesting that, like,
there was a huge businessopportunity to be had by making
that change. I was mostly tryingto point out, like, a change
like that can have a meaningfulimpact on where you and the team
derive motivation to show up atwork every day. Even if because,
again, my suspicion is that youmaking that change while it

(19:48):
makes that number go from 75%conversion down to 30% in terms
of actual people coming throughthe funnel and completing the
thing. It's probably actuallynot that different.
Your money, your businessdoesn't actually necessarily
change all that much even thoughyour metrics change in a way
that feels bad. But you may havemade a decision that helps you
and the team get access to athing that gives you more

(20:09):
motivation, not less.

Justin (20:10):
Yeah. But this is this would actually be an interesting
thing to talk to you aboutbecause I think over the past
couple years, one thing I'verealized, I started doing more
one on one calls with people onthe team. And also just trying
to, you know, during teamretreats and other things,

(20:32):
understand people's personalmotivation. And it's a lot of
this initially came out of,Helen, who's our our kind of
lead customer success person.Her and I started doing 1 on 1
calls.
And then she gave me this greatdocument, which was how to best

(20:53):
work with me, basically. And itwas it was divided into
sections. One section was,here's what really fires me up.
Here's and the other sectionwas, you know, here's stuff I
can do that I'm good at, butit's kind of neutral. And then
at the bottom, here's stuff thatreally demotivates me.

(21:14):
And what I found fascinatingabout it is that I had been
giving her all this stuff in thedemotivating category. Because
for me, those things weremotivating. So I felt like I was
giving her the best jobs, youknow, like, these are the best
things. But in reality, she'slike, that stuff doesn't fire me

(21:36):
up at all. And the stuff thatshe actually loves is coming up
with procedures, process,research projects, things that
have a very, defined scope.
And, you know, I was sending herthings like, I want you to go
out and build relationships withall of the possible affiliates.

(21:58):
And she's just like, what isthat? You know? And but for me,
that's very motivating. Youknow?
I I love these kinda unboundedthings. And so I'm I'm wondering
if, like, is there even suchthing as team motivation? Or at
the end of the day, is it reallyall come down to individual

(22:21):
motivation? Like, what motivatesus individually? And it's kind
of like the owners job to justfigure out a direction for the
product and the company andeverything.
And then align that or matchthat up with the individual's

(22:44):
strengths, abilities, desires,motivations. What do you think?

Dave (22:51):
I mean, what you're describing is the job of a
manager. Yeah. It's like that isyour job is to as a manager is
to understand, your directreports, like strengths and
weaknesses and what they careabout, what they want. You
should have some goals for themtoo that maybe stretch them in
ways that they don't really seeas being valuable, but you can

(23:13):
sort of foresee that this is away that they will sort of grow.
Yeah.
I think it's natural for, like,business people to think about
all of those things in terms of,like, business goals and
objectives. When I when I whenyou think in those terms, it
feels very manipulative, I find.Mhmm. I find myself wanting to
think much more in terms of,like, the individual that I'm

(23:33):
managing. You know, a lot ofthat stuff is sussed out exactly
like you're doing.
You have regular one on oneswith people. Those one on ones
are you try and have them belike normal human conversations.
And during the course of thoseconversations, this kinds of
stuff kind of stuff comes out.As you start to do this more
often, you start to make mentalnotes for yourself of, oh,

(23:55):
here's some things that like,that thing that Helen put
together for you is awesome.I've only heard of that
happening, like, 2 or 3 times inmy entire career of someone who
came to somebody who was like,hey.
I did this thing, and here'swhat and and it's always great.
I always I love to see that. Ifind that I am not able to
really take that stuff intoaccount until I've internalized

(24:16):
it for them too. And, you know,sometimes even that that list is
it's, like, filtered throughtheir own sort of self bias.
Like, you know, it requires acertain amount of self,
awareness Yeah.
To, like, put that listtogether. And sometimes there's
some blind spots that cause somethings to be in different areas

(24:37):
of that list. Right? And, again,as a manager, I think that's
your job is to sort of start tosuss that stuff out and then to
put challenges in front ofpeople that, that help them get
to whatever the next thing is.And then, you know, as a side
effect, you end up getting thethings that the business needs
too.
Because, again, better highlymotivated people perform better

(25:01):
and do all of those all of thekinds of things that you're
looking for and that you needout of your business.

Justin (25:06):
I think having because I've hired now I've hired well,
we hired Helen in the UK. Johnis in Chicago. Then we hired
Jason, and Jason was in Ohio.Now he's kind of in Chicago
area. Then we hired Josh, who'sin Langley.
And then we hired Michael, who'shere in Vernon. And the the

(25:31):
interesting thing about havingMichael here is we initially
when we hired him, we'd said,okay. Well, he's interested in
engineering. Why don't we hirehim as a support engineer? He'll
his primary task will be, youknow, doing customer success.
But then maybe we can start togive him more web development

(25:52):
projects as a way of kind offilling out what he wants. And,
we started to do that, but werealized that the nature of
customer success at Transistoris that you're in live chat all
day, and so you're constantlyhaving your attention taken off.
And he really likes, heactually, like, legitimately

(26:17):
enjoys being in live chat allday. And he came up with this
other idea. So he just theadvantage of him being here in
Vernon is that he can knock onmy door in this office and come
in and say, hey.
I'm wondering if I could talk toyou about something. And then
say, you know, we've been tryingthis, but it's just so hard to

(26:41):
like, for me to focus on it. ButI've been getting on some of
these Zoom calls with customersthat I love that. Like, is that
something that you would like meto do more of maybe? And I was
like, hell yes.
Like, I that would beincredible. And, you know, it
led to conversations about jobsto be done theory and

(27:04):
recommending some books and eventalking about in terms of, you
know, he's just starting hiscareer in tech, but in a overall
arc of a tech career, the peoplethat learn these kind of
customer interview skills end upbeing great product managers and
all these other things. So itended up being this kind of

(27:25):
amazing conversation, and itcame up because he's here and he
was able to knock on my door andgo, hey. And, like, it it was
just like a a passing hallwayconversation. It is a little bit
harder to orchestrate those.
You have to be a lot moremindful about it when it's all
remote. I find, like, there'sjust some stuff in so many ways,

(27:50):
remote work is amazing. And inso many ways, it just sucks so
bad. And this is one of them.It's just like, ah, like because
even when I'm not feelingparticularly motivated or
proactive, when you're colocated, there's always the
reactive option, which issomebody knocks on your door and

(28:12):
you have to react to it.
But, yeah, I I think thatillustrates part of this idea of
of, you know, with a teamanyway, how you end up
discovering what fires people upand what motivates them. The
other tricky part with all ofthis is for both owners and

(28:36):
employees is that the trajectoryof your personal motivation and
desires has to somewhat alignwith the trajectory of the
company.

Dave (28:47):
Trajectory in what way?

Justin (28:48):
In the way of, like, like, if it was my personal
dream, for example, to be theCEO of a 500 person company,
that is very unlikely to happenbased on Transistor's current

(29:09):
trajectory. Like so if if thatwas a legitimate desire I had or
I I've had friends who'verecently this has been a weird
year for bootstrapped selffunded companies because my
understanding is almost theentire founding team at Tuple,

(29:30):
maybe everybody, have steppedaway from the business, have
kind of retired. My friend PaulJarvis just announced that he's
retiring as founder of FathomAnalytics.

Dave (29:43):
What does retirement mean in this context?

Justin (29:45):
In this context, his partner is buying him out, and
he is no longer gonna be anactive partner in the business.
He might the company mightcontract him to do some design
work, but he is he's out.

Dave (29:59):
He's an exit of sorts, but but not like permanent
retirement or whatever.

Justin (30:03):
No. No. No. But retiring from the company. I think this
retire founders retiring fromthe companies they started is
the trend.
Matt Wensing at Summit also justannounced that he was retiring
from the company. In this case,I think, either selling the
company or shutting it down,and, he's taken on a different

(30:24):
role. So, my point with thatwas, I think in a lot of cases,
the founders were realizinglike, for Ben at Tupelo, one
thing he realized is that he heTupelo is a a product for remote
teams to do screen sharing, butBen really didn't enjoy remote

(30:46):
work. He wanted a co locatedteam. And so in his case, his
kinda aspirations and whatmotivated what he felt would
motivate him didn't align withthe trajectory of the company.
There was no way to make thathappen. And so the natural step

(31:08):
was for him to retire as CEO andand, still be an owner, but not
be active in the company.

Dave (31:14):
This isn't be, like, because the company is not doing
well or whatever

Justin (31:17):
either. Right?

Dave (31:18):
This is this is company is doing well. It's just there's a
divergence between orrealization maybe of this
distance between the motivationof the founder and the and the
trajectory of the company. Thattotally makes sense. Go but at
the top level Mhmm. At the lowerlevels of your organization, I
don't know that there's it'smuch more difficult for that

(31:39):
large of a gap to show up.
You're still gonna have them,but it I think it's not as
common for, like, you know, a asenior software engineer at a in
a company with whatever to belike, oh, you know, I would I I
should really be CEO. Whatthey're looking for is, like,
the next level up. You know whatI mean? Then,

Justin (31:59):
Yeah. The next level up or I mean, I've been on teams
where, you know, some of thefolks wanted to really wanted to
work in a certain tech stack.And it was like, well, that
that's not gonna match thetrajectory of the company. Like,
we're not we're not gonna changeour whole tech stack for that

(32:20):
desire. Or I mean, I've alsoworked for companies where I
really desired to have moreremote flexible work.
And the company is like, that'sjust doesn't fit with what we're
doing. So there is a trickytension here, I think, both on

(32:40):
the ownership level and on anindividual contributor's level
that in general, you the mostimportant desires in your life
need to be somewhat compatiblewith whatever this industry,
this product category, thisparticular company, this

(33:04):
particular product can provide.And then there's within that
there's the just the the forowners, I think that might be
generally true. And then there'sthis question of, like, okay,
within this these constraints,how can I be more motivated at

(33:25):
work? And then for employees,it's within these constraints,
how can I, you know, make surethat I'm noticing those kinds of
things?
Like, instead of forcing Michaelto continue to work on web
development projects, beinglike, oh, no. Like, this other
thing you are interested in istotally aligned with what we

(33:48):
care about. And a lot of peopledon't wanna get on Zoom calls
with customers. So if you havethat energy and you wanna do
that, god bless you. Like,please do that.
I you can do that, you know,forever if you'd like.

Dave (34:03):
I was reflecting on, like, at at Home Chef or, like, at a
company that is that is a littlelarger than where you're at.

Justin (34:09):
Yeah. How big was Home Chef?

Dave (34:10):
The Home Chef engineering team when I left was 45, almost
50.

Justin (34:17):
Okay.

Dave (34:17):
And the tech team as a whole was almost a 100.

Justin (34:21):
Wow.

Dave (34:22):
My team was half of the half of the tech team. Wow. And
then, like, in terms of, like,relative to the rest of the
company, I think our corporateteam was somewhere around 500.
And then our plant team, like,the people who are, like, in the
plants packing boxes and stuffwere, I think that was somewhere
in the neighborhood of 3,000 ishpeople. And some number of those

(34:44):
people were, what do you callit, part time or temporary or
seasonal.
Like, they're you know, it thatthat number sort of, like,
fluctuates a bunch. Bunch. But,like, just to situate you

Justin (34:53):
Big company.

Dave (34:54):
Yeah. We still felt like a small company, though, because,
again, compared to thecompetitors that we had.
HelloFresh, their tech team wasover a 1000 people. So, you
know, some order 2 orders ofmagnitude larger or an order of
magnitude larger than ours. Andthey're they were interested in
growing.

(35:15):
So we still felt scrappy andsmall by comparison. So it's
it's an interesting everything Ithink is a little bit about
perspective. But what I wasgetting to is, like, when you're
a team of that size, you startto run into, I think, more of
the circumstances like you'reworking in a giant code base,

(35:36):
and that code base can't youcan't to your point, you can
you're not gonna go we're notgonna rewrite it in some other
framework or something likethat. It's gonna say what it is.
You either like it or you don't.
You have to find ways of showingpeople that there are ways to be
motivated even about the jobthat they're doing today.

Justin (35:51):
Mhmm.

Dave (35:52):
And I found when I was talking to engineers of all
levels, oftentimes, what I wouldtell them is, yeah,
occasionally, we're gonna do abig project, and you're gonna
get an opportunity to sort oflead that project, and that's
gonna be great. We only get afew of those a year. We don't
get we don't get, like, one ofthem so that everybody can lead

(36:13):
a project. Mhmm. So in the inbetween times, when you're not
leading a project, you get anopportunity to do something
that, yeah, maybe you've done ita 100 times before, but much
like, like martial arts orsomething like that where you,
like, practice the same thingover and over and over again and
every single time you try and doit as an opportunity to perfect

(36:34):
that one little thing, or toremind yourself of the
fundamentals of the thing thatyou're doing.
Mhmm. Or to take somebody elsewho's who's more junior than you
and bring them along. Show themhow to do a thing that they're
like, for them, that is, like,brand new to them and they're
super excited. You can draft offof that motivation.

Justin (36:52):
Yeah.

Dave (36:53):
It's you know, there's all these, like, little tricks to
try and make the mundanity ofthe everyday work a day job that
you just kinda have to dobecause it's the stuff that
keeps the business moving.

Justin (37:05):
I think that point about There's it does seem like there
are some features that reallyhelp with ongoing motivation.
And one thing I've beenreflecting on is over the
summer, I hired this recentuniversity grad simply because
he needed a job. He he had no hehe just graduated. It's hard out

(37:31):
there for juniors. And I said,well, I've got an idea for a
project.
I'll pay you out of my own moneyto build it, and, then you'll
have something to put on yourresume and have something to put
in your portfolio. And so we didthis project together. And the

(37:51):
the, which we launched, it'scalled swagfan.com. And what I
found was he's 20 he was 27, sonot a young kid, but I just
couldn't believe how much energyhe had compared to somebody
who's in their forties. It justreminded me of that kind of,

(38:15):
like, lightning bolt energy.
And just to feel like as anolder, wiser person, I could
just direct this energy ever soslightly. And the things he
didn't know were fascinating tome, you know, just like the he
had a he was a fairly competentweb developer, but there's just

(38:37):
all of these things he had neverexperienced or never touched or
and, you know, his his instinctsare still quite, you know
they're not quite there. They'redeveloping. And so it was very
fun to have somebody who youcould say you could meet with
them and and because of timerestraints, like, constraints,

(38:58):
we would meet maybe once a week.Okay.
Let's show them what you'vedone. Oh, that's interesting.
Oh, it's interesting that youdid it that way. Well, here's
some other thoughts about that,but let's just keep it this way
just to see what happens. Andand then we and then I'd say,
well, here's a bunch of thingshere.
Let's here's some things you canwork on. And he would go away
and come back, and he just hadto solve so many problems on his

(39:21):
own. And it was it was just sointeresting to me. And then I
contrasted that with what's theaverage of 4427? Average of
4427.
35.5. Okay. So our average agewas 35.5. And then I reflected

(39:43):
on the average age of anemployee at Transistor, which is
in the forties. I think ouryoungest person is in their late
thirties.
And so one thing that I havebeen thinking about, I've talked
about with John is, like, maybewe do need to just get some
junior interns or some summerschool summer students or

(40:04):
something in here because it'sthat feature alone could be
motivating. Like, the swag fanas a a project or a product was
was interesting, but it's likenot the it it's not like I was
like, oh, this product's gonnachange the world. It was just
like something I wanted formyself and but what was
motivating and energizing wasworking with Ferdinand, this

(40:29):
this graduate who is just like,you know, just having that
energy was so exciting. And so,yeah, I have I've been thinking
about what are some of thoseelements we can bring in. It's
also interesting talking toother people at other companies
and going, you know, like, whatmakes you wanna stay there?
What motivates you to staythere? And some of it is just

(40:52):
very intangible. Like, you know,I love that we do a team retreat
every year, or I just love thatthe rest of my team is wakes up
8 hours after me, and I get to,like, have these long
interrupted periods of work.Like, everyone has those things,
you know.

Dave (41:10):
So I am a huge proponent of having junior members of your
team. People people earlier intheir career. What Mhmm. I know
a lot more about that in theengineering world

Justin (41:20):
Yeah.

Dave (41:21):
Than I do about, like, other disciplines. My suspicion
is that this works is, like,regardless of discipline. But I
know for sure it works reallywell in the engineering world.
Yeah. I am self taught as anengineer.

Justin (41:33):
Okay.

Dave (41:34):
And so that predisposed me to being very willing and
excited about the developer bootcamps that came up 10, 15 years
ago. Yeah. So I got I gotinvolved in those very early as,
like, a mentor and, like,helping and, like, this idea of,
like, anybody can sort of teachthemselves how to do something
with, like, a little bit ofmentorship and, like, with the

(41:56):
right amount of curiosity andtenacity and then the right
attitude. Like, those kinds ofthings all are what propel
somebody through those, like,super early stages of growth.
Mhmm.
And that I also was watchingcompanies be very, you know,
everyone was looking for theninja rock star, you know,
senior engineer. The the oneengineer is gonna 10 x the

(42:17):
whatever.

Justin (42:18):
Yeah. So I

Dave (42:19):
was always predisposed to being sort of, like, very much
against that. When I had anopportunity to build a team at
Home Chef, we built it I mean,Home Chef as a company started
from one of those boot campgrads who, like, went and built
the the beginnings of ithimself.

Justin (42:33):
That was the founder.

Dave (42:34):
That was the founder, which I, he was a he was
assigned to me. I was his mentorin boot camp. So I got to watch
him go from like, do all of thisin the very beginning. The very
interesting thing like, if youtalk to talk to tech founders
early start up people, like, andthey and they're and they're
like, who let me go hire myfirst engineer. Mhmm.
None of them would tell you,hire a boot camp grad as your

(42:56):
first engineer. Home Chefdidn't. We started with, the
very first full time engineerwas another guy that I mentored
and referred to to the founder,who was only a couple years out
from boot camp Yeah. And had hada couple of experiences, but,
like, not a ton. But, you know,even before that, that guy was,

(43:18):
like, hiring his friends, hiringother people who who do you know
that has any of these skillswhatsoever?
You know the guy who's goingthrough the boot camp with you
and, like, you'd fight throughit together. The beginning of
Home Chef started with morejunior engineers than, you know,
any other startup that I hadbeen a part of. Right?

Justin (43:37):
Yeah.

Dave (43:38):
And there's something to that. Like, it being in the
culture of the company, thisidea of anybody, we're gonna
care about the add the attitudeand the motivation and the, what
do you call it, the curiosityand tenacity to look outside of
the boundaries of these skillsthat you have. And in service
of, like, just doing more, doingbetter, following your curiosity

(44:01):
and help and having that bedirected about making this
business go to whatever the nextlevel is. And so when I had an
opportunity to build that teamwith the CTO who's also very
much on board with this, I thinkit was our 4th engineer that we
hired, was an apprentice. Like,another person, like, right out
of boot camp, they were theirwhere their very first job.

(44:24):
Even there was a front end guythat we'd hired, before that who
had no back end experiencewhatsoever. And from within,
like, 2 weeks of the dudestarting, I was like, let's you
know, he starts asking questionslike, how does this controller
work in Rails? I'm like, let metell you about model view
control. Whatever. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, I feel I feellike I got an opportunity to to,

(44:46):
like, teach somebody Rails fromthe very beginning. The thing
about that for me is thatexactly all the things we've
been talking about, you get todraft off of that energy and
that excitement. Like, theexcitement that comes from
someone going from from nothingto hello world when when that is
when they've never been able todo it before Mhmm.

(45:07):
Is they're so excited in a waythat a senior engineer who've
done that who's done that 75,000times can't possibly be excited
about that, but put them thatperson next to a new person
who's just learning that. Andlike that the glow that comes
off of that is infectious.

Justin (45:23):
Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, I'm experiencing this with with,
again, with Michael doing thesecustomer interviews is, like,
you know, it it reignited myexcitement and passion about
doing this kind of customerresearch and to get to teach him

(45:44):
all of these things that I'vethought a lot about and I've
written a lot about, but haven'treally I'm, like, dusting off
all this these old things. Andit's it's reignited, some
excitement for me in, like, oh,let's look at this transcript.

(46:05):
And look at the emotionaltriggers or the emotional nudges
that move people along to thepoint where at some point way
down that trail, they're takingout their credit card on the
transistor website.
Like, that's so fascinating tome. And so yeah, I felt this

(46:30):
this energy. And, yeah, it'd beinteresting to try to, like,
operationalize this by saying,you know, okay, every summer,
we're gonna hire 1 or 2 people,or 1 or 2, you know, interns or
summer students or somethinglike that. And getting some of

(46:51):
that that energy and and bringdown the average age of, you
know, the the the we're a veryold team. Like, for a tech team,
we're we're, you know, this is,like, nobody is in their
twenties.

Dave (47:09):
Mhmm. You keep saying age, and I I know exactly what you're
talking about. I for myself, Iwould shift that to longevity in
a career. Like, only because thegoal should be that everybody
finds their way to beginner'smind.

Justin (47:26):
Yeah.

Dave (47:27):
Right? Like, I don't care what age you are. I hope that I
never retire this part of mybrain that is excited and
curious and interested in, like,learning new things. Yeah. I
might practice that in differentways as I get older and older.
But I wanna that's to me, that'slike the the goal in life is to,
like, constantly find a way toengage your curiosity. Yeah. To

(47:49):
me, the benefit of doing thisthing that you're talking about
is that it it reminds everybodyin the company about that it's
okay to be that beginner personagain. Mhmm. That's just so
valuable.
I have I have one more story ifyou're willing to

Justin (48:04):
share. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave (48:05):
And that is well, 2. The first is one of the like, I keep
coming back to this experiencewhen I was a mentor at one of
the boot camps. I would spendall day I was working at Groupon
at the time in their giantmonolith application that was,
you know, all kinds of fun towork in, but well above me in
terms of, skill set. Yeah. So,like, I I would be there and

(48:29):
spend all day beating my head upagainst some problem that, I
just couldn't find a way tosolve for any number of reasons.
And it was so frustrating. Iwould leave the office feeling
so dejected about I mean, like,all the imposter syndrome stuff.
Right? Like, how could I

Justin (48:46):
Mhmm. I thought

Dave (48:46):
I was a senior engineer. There's how can I possibly not
know how to get through blahblah blah whatever? And then I
would, like, walk across the thecity and go meet with my
student, and, you know, he wouldI would encounter him
experiencing the exact sameproblem, except it was I don't
know the difference betweeninstance variables and class
words.

Justin (49:04):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave (49:04):
And I'm like, dude, I gotcha. Yeah. And And I would
leave that experience goinglike, oh, I am still good at
what I do. I there there isstill this depth of knowledge
that's underneath there, that isso valuable. We forget

Justin (49:17):
that That's such a good point.

Dave (49:18):
The teaching part is the is the way we get to, like, in
in a little bit, like, rehashingthe the beginner stuff is the
the way that you remind yourselfof just how much you have
learned and grown, whatever.It's a it's a thing that I try
and, emphasize with we had anapprenticeship program at Home

(49:39):
Chef. Over the course of the,like, 9 years or whatever that I
was there, we, had, I think,upwards of 15, apprentices come
through. And every single one ofthem ended up becoming a
software engineer 1 on oursorry. All but, 1.
And that was not because theywere unworthy. It was because we

(50:00):
didn't have a position I couldput them into. All of them
becomes became software engineerones. Most of them have stayed
at the company for a significantportion of time. I mean, you
know, 5, 6, 7 years.
It's great. One of the thingsthat I would tell those
apprentices almost as soon asthey would, like, get into that

(50:22):
software engineer 1 and we hadanother apprentice coming up
behind them was your job is tobe that person's buddy. Your job
is to help that person throughall the things that you just
learned. And and it's funny. Youwould see this, like, step level
jump in confidence, inmotivation, in all of these
things.

(50:42):
It's like when you're in it, youforget to notice just how far
you've come. I kinda wonder ifthe same is true, actually, of,
like, business owners andfounders like like you where
every day is like a little bitof a not a slog, but it's like
it's incremental. And, you know,it's hard to take stock of Oh,

Justin (51:02):
it totally feels that.

Dave (51:02):
Like just how far you've come unless you're having
conversations with people whoare at a different level or an
earlier point in that and youget an opportunity to retrain.

Justin (51:10):
I think you're right.

Dave (51:11):
One of the things that I learned at Home Chef in the last
gosh. It was in, like, 2023sometime. Like, kind of, like,
right around fall, like, Octoberish. So we're, like, just before
Thanksgiving, you know, breakkind of thing. I had
misconfigured our email, and sowe had this [e-mail]

(51:33):
email address that was, like,open to the world.
Like, anybody could email it.

Justin (51:37):
Okay.

Dave (51:38):
And I think when I set it up, I was, like, assuming that
what they what this would bewould be some sort of, like,
customer support sort of catchall that was tech focused. I had
just had it forward to ourgeneral, like, tech team email
that would, like, go to thewhole tech team. And,
occasionally, we would, like,receive this, like, really weird
spammy kinda emails, and I go inand block them. And I I just I

(51:59):
forgot that I had, like, set upthis weird rule and, like, how
it would get through. Yeah.
One day, we get this email, andit's from somebody who says, I'm
a student. I'm working on aproject, and I would love to be
I wanna I wanna, like, screenscrape your content. I wanna
know if that's okay. And I waslike first off, I thought, like,

(52:22):
cynical me. I read this email,and I was like, this is spam.
Like, this is this is garbage.Yeah. But a funny thing happened
is because I went to the wholetech team in Slack, some of the
people on my team started, like,like, commenting about it. Yeah.
The person's name was Lila.
And so they were, like, somebodysends some swag, some Home Chef
swag to Lila, whatever. Right?So I was like, alright. The team

(52:46):
is talking to this person. I,you know, I can't let I can't
engage my own cynical brainabout how this is, Like, I just
had to assume this is like somebot something, whatever.
Right?

Justin (52:55):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave (52:56):
Yeah. Back, and I said, of course, it's a public website.
You have you have access toscreen scrape and do whatever
you wanna do. I just you know,we ask that you don't sell any
of the content or, you know,whatever. And I said, listen.
If you're young and you'reinterested, you know, and you
want some help on something, letme know. I'm happy to answer
your questions. Yeah. Thisstarted off a saga of, like,

(53:18):
weeks of me conversing with thishigh school student. Yeah.
Who is using chat gpt to, like,write their responses back to me
to try to be I don't know.Hilarious. But it's so great.
And, you know, because the teamwas so excited about it, I felt
compelled to, like, justbasically copy and paste all of

(53:39):
my back and forth with thisperson

Justin (53:42):
Yeah.

Dave (53:42):
Into the Slack channel so that they could sort of, like,
read it, follow along. It washuge. The motivation left on the
team of just being able to sortof, like, be part of that
experience. Like, we ended upsending her, like, a bunch of
swag and stuff, and I like, herher teacher contacted me. I
talked to her mom.
Like, it was like a whole thing.So great. Yeah. You can't

(54:06):
manufacture those kinds ofexperiences. Like, the closest
you can come is you can try andcreate a culture that that
values those kinds of things.

Justin (54:14):
That's right. Yeah. You know

Dave (54:16):
what I mean? But it's so valuable. Like I said, like, you
know, in that lull betweenThanksgiving and Christmas Mhmm.
You know, things kind of felloff, you know, after that. But,
like, you could just see thisperson is like she's doing a
bunch of stuff in Python.
I don't know Python. So I wasresponding to her going like,
hey. If there's some you know,if you need Python help, I got a

(54:37):
data team. I can, like, youknow, send send your way. And
they were super excited, like,hey, we should tell her to try
this.
This is exact she's doingexactly what we do, and I would
tell her, hey, you're doingexactly what our data team does
all the time. Nice work.

Justin (54:51):
It's interesting. It just went through the whole
organization in a way.

Dave (54:54):
So that channel I I created was, like, I forget what
I named the channel. It was,like, Lila saga or something
like that. Yeah. We got way morepeople than just the tech team
into that channel. Yeah.
To the point that, like,somebody on our supply chain
team got a similar sort of emailfrom somebody and asked me,
like, what what did you like, Ithink they were nervous about,

(55:16):
like, what were you worriedabout proprietary stuff? And I
was like, no. Not at all. And,like, what is it good? Should we
do this?
And I was like, yes. You shouldabsolutely do that.

Justin (55:26):
Yeah. Just for the motivational reasons.

Dave (55:28):
Exactly. It's huge.

Justin (55:30):
We've just been talking about motivation and aligning
motivation within theconstraints of an organization.
You just left Home Chef. Why?Knowing what you know about, you
know, keeping team membersmotivated within the constraints

(55:51):
of the organization, what whatcaused you to to wanna leave?
What was what could whatcouldn't you do inside of Home
Chef that you're looking to donow?

Dave (56:02):
That's an interesting way to phrase it. I don't I didn't
think of it in those terms.

Justin (56:06):
Okay.

Dave (56:07):
I don't I have been sort of, like, working my way out of
Home Chef for years now. And itjust would be like, oh, now is
not really a good time to do it.Or, like, oh, we just lost a
bunch of members of our team,and I got you know, I'm not
gonna leave the team in a lurchis kinda like how I would always

(56:27):
feel. One of the reasons why ithappened this year and in the
way that it did is because I'dfinally gotten the team to a
point where it was pretty selfsustainable. Yeah.
And there comes a time whenthere's just there's only so
much not doing anything that Ican feel comfortable with. Yeah.

(56:49):
You know, I was my job becamelike, I'm gonna be around and
available to the people on theteam, but, you know, they're
pretty self sufficient. Theydon't really need me. And and,
you know, I had several levelsof managers and tech leads and,
you know, several sub teams.
And, again, you're managing 50people. Mhmm. You know, I wasn't

(57:11):
managing all those peopledirectly. I kind of systematized
myself out of a job is a littlebit how it felt. And, again, it
comes back to motivation in thesense that, like, there's a
version how to put it?
There's a version of of, youknow, like, the person who who
took my position. This was thisrepresented a a pretty large

(57:32):
jump in size of team for thatperson in terms of, like, what
they were managing, a muchdifferent relationship for that
person between, you know, himand the team and him and the
rest of the company. Itrepresented something that was,
like, big and important and thething that he was super excited
and motivated about. Right? Thisrepresented a challenge to him.

(57:53):
This was no longer a challengefor me.

Justin (57:54):
Yeah. But, you know, it's not

Dave (57:56):
that I was unhappy. I stayed at the company for, like
I said, years in

Justin (58:01):
Yeah.

Dave (58:01):
Some version of the state. In fact, I would say, like, the
last year of my time there wasmostly transitioning out of my
role and transitioning helpingthe new person transition into
their role, helping all thepeople on the team, like, like,
deal with the fact that we arechanging this, you know,
changing leaders and all thisstuff. All of that was huge,

(58:25):
hugely valuable for me and veryrewarding to get to talk to
people and, you know, in a weirdway. Like, most people when they
leave a job, they put them input in their 2 weeks or if
they're really generous, theygive a month and then they and
then they they're out. Theydon't often get a chance to,
like, know who's taking over forthem.
They often don't know thatthey're, like whether or not

(58:47):
they left the team in a goodspot. I know all of that stuff
with certainty Mhmm. Which isjust a very different and very
satisfying way to, like, leave acompany that I really care about
a lot. And to know that I'veleft it in good hands and in
hands that are, like, motivatedto help, you know, to take it to
whatever the next level is. Ithink that's where where I was

(59:08):
what I was trying to figure outhow to say is.
I think everybody has a certainamount of motivation to do, you
know, a a business from one stepto the next. Mhmm. Not everyone
has this has enough motivationto go from that step to
whatever's after that. You know?Like, these growing, like,
orders of magnitude take acertain level of energy and a
little bit of dumb idealism.

(59:28):
You know what I mean? To, likeor optimism or whatever to just
be like, oh, and then we'regonna go to the next.

Justin (59:33):
Mhmm.

Dave (59:35):
I learned this, like, in a very early time in my career. I
was a graphic designer, and Iwas working next to this this
other graphic designer who was avery senior designer. And we
were working at this this, like,very early dotcom company from,
like, way back in, like, theearly like, the late nineties,

(59:55):
early 2000. That company, like,went through in the span of,
like, a year, they went through3 rebrands. And this designer
had to, like, rebrand thecompany every time.
And then, like, when it came tothe third one, they came to her
like, alright. It's time to goagain. And she was like, I'm
out, man. Like, I did it 2times. I I can't come up with
another whole, like, brandidentity for a company that's

(01:00:18):
doing basically the same thing.
Like, I'm out. I don't have theenergy to do it. And that's a
little bit how I feel. It'slike, all this is great, and the
company is doing well. They'regonna they're gonna do great.
The guy who's taking over for meis gonna do great, in a way
that, like, I just you know,I've I've done I've done this a

(01:00:38):
bunch now, and I'm ready to goback to something a little bit
smaller, a little bit I wannareclaim some of that early stage
Home Chef feeling that I got tohave, that I didn't I don't I
didn't have anymore.

Justin (01:00:52):
Do you feel like you have you because you're
exploring now. What are you kindof exploring? Like, what are you
looking to do, do you think?

Dave (01:00:59):
Well, let's be clear. For the last couple of 2 months, my
last day was, like, middle ofOctober.

Justin (01:01:04):
Yeah. It's

Dave (01:01:04):
not been, like, a long time. And so most of what I've
been exploring is, like, houseprojects that have been on a
list and haven't been I mean, ifthat's if you it's funny. Like,
if anybody from Home Chef seesthis video, they will laugh
because this background ofhaving guitar going well just
didn't it was a blank wallbehind me constantly. So, like,
rearranging my office was, like,a thing.

Justin (01:01:26):
Yeah.

Dave (01:01:26):
I'm sort of riding out the rest of the year, at the moment.
I wanna get back to somementorship. I don't know if that
necessarily needs to be, like,crazy technical. I need to brush
up on my own technical skills tobe quite frankly with Frank,
which I'm actually very excitedto do. Mhmm.
I kind of I feel like I have alot of experience growing teams
from in this one specificcircumstance and, seeing that

(01:01:51):
grow from from nothing to whatwe grow to. So I have a feeling
I hope that that experience isvaluable to other people. And I
would love to give, you know,advising, you know, people or
companies or whatever anopportunity or a shot at that.
Mhmm. I don't know what thatlooks like as a job.
Mhmm. I feel like I could dothat for a little while. And
then all of a sudden, all of myexperience is gonna be too far

(01:02:12):
away from reality or whatever tobe, like, to be warranted or
something or valuable. But Ithink there's an opportunity. 6
months, maybe a year of, doingthat.
And, again, my hope is that justmeeting people and talking to
them and and that one of thosepeople is gonna be the next
founder that is looking for acofounder or looking for

(01:02:33):
somebody Yeah. That I am in aperfect position to sort of,
like, help or join or or do.

Justin (01:02:38):
So you're you're really giving yourself exploration
sabbatical?

Dave (01:02:42):
Pretty much.

Justin (01:02:43):
That's I I actually really like that idea of Derek
Sivers has this great post on,change careers like Tarzan And
and the the metaphor is if ifyou wanna change careers, don't
let go of the old vine untilyou've got a hold of the new
vine, which is good advice. ButI think the challenge of that is

(01:03:10):
there's also just a different ifyou can. This idea of just
giving yourself space forsabbaticals is something that
John and I have been talkingabout as well, like giving
ourselves 3 months or 6 monthsor whatever to just take time
away and explore. Because I Ithink there's something about

(01:03:33):
that that is and so for you togive yourself some time to
explore and just, you can dosomething like, you know,
without constraints of having togo to a job every day that I I
think is harder to do whenyou're still in you know, you're

(01:03:53):
still going to work every day orwhatever.

Dave (01:03:55):
So I've had a version of this not nearly as long as I
have runway for right now, butat several points in my career.
Mhmm. Sometimes they werechosen, like, I'm gonna take 3
months off because I'mcontracting and nobody needs me
right now. So I'm gonna go takethe next 3 months. I saved up
some money and then back at it.
And I knew I with some certaintythat I could come back after a

(01:04:19):
couple months and anothercontracting gig would be
available to me.

Justin (01:04:22):
Yeah. Sometimes they were

Dave (01:04:23):
not so chosen. Like, I got laid off from a job and, you
know, honestly, like, John and Iboth got laid off from the same
place and at at roughly the sametime. And so, that was a a
really formative honestly, like,the beginning, if you if you
will, in a certain way of, like,looking at it of how I ended up

(01:04:45):
where I'm at right now was thatmoment getting, laid off and and
realizing that I can make somedrastic changes in my financial
world. Mhmm. I sold my car, andI paid off a bunch of debt and,
like, was like, how can I leancan I be?

Justin (01:05:02):
Mhmm.

Dave (01:05:02):
And was able to ride that out for a couple of months until
I started contracting. And thenthat again, like, that that
whole thing. And I needed thattime. I mean, that was the other
thing too is I I don't know thelike, leaving Home Chef is not,
like, leaving a horriblesituation, like John and I were
leaving way back then. But, youknow, I needed that time to,

(01:05:22):
like, let go of the baggage ofthat experience and not bring
that baggage into the nextthing, which is the thing that I
find the most.
Like, when you're hiring people,you're not just hiring them for
their skill set. You're alsohiring them, and they're gonna
bring the like, all of the goodand bad baggage that comes from
their previous job into your dayto day until they've fully

(01:05:43):
acclimated to your to what itmeans to work at Transistor. You
know what I mean? Yeah. That'swhy I like hiring people is such
a hard hard thing is, like andwhy it changes the company in a
weird way.
Every single person you add tothe team is gonna change the
team. And, you know, you get toblunt that a little bit as the
team gets larger and larger.But, you know, those are the

(01:06:03):
things to be watching out for.Those are the things that I care
about when I'm interviewingsomebody. I'm not interviewing
them about their skills.
I'm interviewing them about,like, okay. What things are you
gonna hold on to so tightly thatare so at odds with the things
that we care about?

Justin (01:06:16):
Yeah.

Dave (01:06:16):
And then I know I'm gonna have to fight with you over and
over and over again till you caneither assimilate or you've
shifted my my point of view alittle bit your way.

Justin (01:06:24):
Yeah. Is is is part of your purpose right now to get
rid of some of that baggage oris bag is that just you're gonna
have that no matter what?

Dave (01:06:34):
I think everyone has it no matter what. I also don't think
it's necessarily bad. Like, Ithink, you know, baggage gets a
bad rap. It would be natural forme to come into like, if I took
another job, like, right nowtoday, another VP of engineering
job of some place that wasrelatively small, my instinct
would be, how can I do exactlywhat I did at Home Chef over
again? And to not just to not torealize or to not realize that

(01:07:00):
the thing that made Home Chef gothe way that it did is that I
was in the moment responding tothe things that I was seeing and
making a judgment call based onreality.
And, sure, like, your yourhistory and experience and all
that stuff comes to play. But ifyou try and replicate those
decisions exactly, you're, like,ignoring the reality in front of
you. And so I think for me, it'sjust about putting all of this

(01:07:23):
experience into some context.Yeah. And and distance so that
it's not my knee jerk.
I'm gonna go do thisimmediately. Or, like, this is
my my quick answer foreverything. In some ways, I
think that's the reason why Iwanna advise people going
through this as I get anopportunity to make suggestions,
but not be the guy who'sactually doing it. Mhmm. I get
to watch people, like, take orleave those suggestions and see

(01:07:45):
how they turn out.
I get to challenge a bunch ofthe things that, I think of as
big successes or maybe bigfailures in in the course of my
career at Home Chef through thecourse through the course of
advising other people and, youknow, and seeing how that goes.

Justin (01:08:00):
Yeah. I mean, you said that one of the things you like
doing is being on Zoom calls allday.

Dave (01:08:05):
I do.

Justin (01:08:06):
That's that's that's that is such a that is such a a
a peculiar skill set. Like,people that like that, I think
it's you gotta lean into that ifthat's one of your strengths.

Dave (01:08:20):
Well, I you mean, I don't know if it's a strength. I think
it's something that I hearpeople talk about Zoom fatigue.

Justin (01:08:26):
Mhmm.

Dave (01:08:27):
And I understand that it's a thing. I I certainly don't
wanna put that experience downin any way, but I just don't
even I can't relate to thatexperience whatsoever. To me, I
I feel like I have just as richor, experience talking with
people, over over screens

Justin (01:08:47):
Mhmm. As I do

Dave (01:08:48):
when I'm sitting in person with them. I don't know if
that's, like, just somethingabout my personality that makes
that possible, or I don't knowwhat it is. But I find that to
have been I find when we movedto COVID and everybody was
remote, I was like, look at howI'm not late to every meeting,
because I don't have to go and,like, race across the office to
go find whatever other nextmeeting room. And and it's just

(01:09:11):
all these things that, like,this, like, low level anxiety
that just went away for me. Youlike that?
I know I can flip I can be I canbe downstairs in my kitchen
making coffee and upstairs in myoffice in 2 minutes and make it
to my meeting and be and and therichness of that conversation is
not lost.

Justin (01:09:32):
If anyone out there is, like, interested in talking to
you about your next thing oradvising or anything like that,
what do you want them to get ahold of you? Is there a way they
can get a

Dave (01:09:42):
hold of you? Sure. You can email me,
[e-mail], which wecan put that in the show notes
or whatever. I'll put

Justin (01:09:49):
it in the show notes. Yeah. I think this whole thing
is fascinating. Just like youquitting this job that you've
been at a long time and thenexploring, the space, you know,
and trying to figure out whatyou wanna do next. And and,
basically, it sounds like you'rejust you're looking to put
yourself in the path of somecollisions that might lead to

(01:10:13):
something else.
Right? Like, that's the wholepurpose. Yeah.

Dave (01:10:17):
That's exactly right. In some ways, it's not that
dissimilar from the thing thatyou were talking about with
founders and startups in thepast year of, like, retiring. I
don't I can't speak to whatthey're gonna go do next or what
they're interested in, but I Ifeel fairly similar in and it's
a very similar kind ofexperience just that it not at
the founder level. You know?

Justin (01:10:36):
Yeah. Well, this has been great, man. I I gotta run
for a dentist appointment, butlet's do it again soon, man.

Dave (01:10:42):
Anytime. Anytime. I have time as you know. So I'm around.
But listen, if I don't talk toyou before, the holidays, have a
great holiday.

Justin (01:10:52):
Yeah. You too.

Dave (01:10:53):
I hope you

Justin (01:10:53):
enjoyed that conversation. Now it's time for
me to thank our supporters onPatreon. Pascal from
Sharpen.page, rewardful.com,Greg Park, Mitchell Davis from
recruitkit.com.au, MarshallFolly from wearebold.af, Bill

(01:11:14):
Kondo, who is atmavrck on allthe socials, Ward from
memberspace.com, Evandro Sassy,Austin Loveless, Michael Sitver,
Dan Buddha, Colin Gray, and DaveJunta. See everybody. Thanks for

(01:11:35):
listening.