June 17, 2025 • 27 mins
In this discussion, Cristina Flaschen, CEO of Pandium, interviews Archna Carlstone, Head of Product at Carputty, about building, scaling, and evolving SaaS platforms, with a focus on Carputty’s journey from an internal finance tool to a white-labeled SaaS product for partners and customers.
Carputty’s Origin and Product Evolution
- Carputty was founded in October 2020, with Carlstone as an early team member, focusing on building both consumer-facing and internal tools.
- The company’s flagship product, the Carputty Flexline, offers a line of credit for car purchases, underwriting consumers rather than vehicles, flipping the traditional dealership financing model.
- Initially, the platform was built to serve Carputty’s own finance operations, but as the product matured, the team recognized broader industry pain points and began offering the platform as a white-labeled SaaS solution for other businesses.
Transition to SaaS and White-Labeling
- The decision to transition into SaaS was driven by market demand and the flexibility of being a startup, allowing Carputty to move quickly and adapt the platform for external partners.
- Early challenges included abstracting out company-specific features to make the platform scalable and universal, such as removing Carputty-specific labels and building a more modular, customizable system.
- The team implemented an abstraction layer for integrations (e.g., different banking providers) and a global design system to balance customization with maintainability for partners.
Product Team Structure and Development Approach
- Carputty’s product and engineering teams operate in lean, cross-functional pods focused on core areas: consumer applications, transactions (asset management), and data.
- This structure supports focus, knowledge sharing, and agility as the company grows and adapts to new partner needs.
Integrations and Partnerships
- Integrations are central to Carputty’s strategy, with an API abstraction layer enabling flexibility in vendor selection and servicing partners.
- Carputty partners with various organizations, including banks and companies like Turo, offering tailored solutions based on partner requirements rather than a one-size-fits-all package.
Core Values and Customer Focus
- Carputty’s core values include being data-driven, tenacious, thinking big, empowerment, and transparency, with transparency being especially central.
- The company emphasizes transparency in financing, aiming to disrupt the traditional, opaque dealership model and empower consumers with clear information about rates and valuations.
Advice for Product Managers
- Carlstone advises product managers transitioning internal tools to external products to continually question scalability and universality, recognize and address internal biases, and be willing to push back on internal requests that do not align with long-term vision.
- She emphasizes the importance of admitting mistakes, iterating on architecture, and balancing speed with building a sustainable, scalable product.
Closing Thoughts
- The discussion highlights the complexities of evolving a fintech product into a SaaS platform, the importance of abstraction and modularity, and the ongoing trade-offs between customization and product stability.
- Carputty’s journey offers valuable lessons for teams considering a similar transition, particularly around organizational structure, integration strategy, and maintaining core values throughout growth.
For more insights on tech partnerships, integrations, and APIs, listeners are encouraged to visit Pandium’s blog and resources.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Between Product and Partnerships, a
podcast focused on bringingtogether product, partnership
and engineering leaders todiscuss how to build, support
and scale SaaS ecosystems.
This podcast is presented byPandium, an integration platform
for building nativeintegrations.
SPEAKER_02 (00:19):
Hi, everyone.
My name is Christina Flashen,and I'm the CEO here at Pandium.
And thank you so much forlistening to our podcast,
Between Product andPartnerships.
If you're joining us for thefirst time, we talk about the
challenges and what it takes tobuild integrations,
partnerships, and SaaS platformsmore generally.
We talk to great leaders in thespace that are working on these
problems.
And today, we are so excited tohave Archana Carlstone, who is
(00:42):
the head of product at Carputty.
Archana, can you give us alittle bit of info about what
you do at Carputty and maybeyour journey to get there?
Yeah, thanks
SPEAKER_01 (00:50):
for having me.
So at Carparty, I am the head ofproduct.
So I manage our platform thatwe're building, both consumer
facing as well as internal toolsthat we're building to support
our consumers through theirjourney.
My journey has looked like I'vebeen part of Carparty since day
one.
So October of 2020 is when weofficially kicked things off.
(01:12):
So I've really seen everythinggrow from zero to where we are
today, which has been amazing.
I I've been in product for about10 years now, really focused on
the consumer side of things.
So consumer journey is veryimportant to me, making sure
we're low friction, especiallywhen it comes to financial
(01:33):
applications.
You want to make it as easy aspossible for folks so they're
not abandoning and they'refeeling comfortable and secure
with the information they'reproviding as well.
SPEAKER_02 (01:42):
Awesome.
Thank you for the background.
I know we talked earlier alittle bit about Carpuddy and
your journey, so I'd love tojust dive right in there.
Can you tell us, since you'vebeen there from the very
beginning, a little bit abouthow your product has
transitioned over the years?
I feel like you guys have alittle bit of a unique story
from what you first built andwho it was for to what you guys
(02:03):
are doing today.
SPEAKER_01 (02:03):
Yeah.
So I'll give a little bit of a30-second elevator pitch on what
Carputty does and then how we'veevolved.
So we started, our co-foundersstarted chatting in the summer
of 2020 and Patrick Bayless, whois our CEO, and then Josh Tatum,
who is our CPO, come from twosides of this coin that are
(02:24):
beneficial to us.
So Patrick comes from 30 plusyears of car dealership, owning
car dealerships, understandingthe ins and outs of what that
looks like, how financing workswithin there.
And then Joshua comes from abackground of fintech.
So he was at SoFi, a guaranteedrate.
So really marrying the two thereand understanding where pain
points are on both sides ofthings.
(02:46):
So we offer a differential loanproduct, which is where we
started was to give transparencyto customers through that
differential loan product.
So we call it our Car Putty FlexLine.
You can think of it almost likea line of credit or really a
parent note on what your buyingpower is.
And we underwrite that based onyou as a consumer and not the
(03:08):
vehicle.
So today's world, you go to adealership, you pick a car, and
then you figure out how to payfor that car.
We're flipping that around alittle bit where you know how
much you can afford.
You have this buying power inplace that we've decision based
off of traditional creditinformation, but as well as cash
flow underwriting.
and your ability and willingnessto repay.
(03:30):
And then you go out and find avehicle.
We're still doing loan to value.
So you're not spending$50,000 ona 2022 Prius, but you're able to
really have that knowledge andyour rate is set in stone.
So you know what your rate'sgoing to be.
You know what your monthlypayment's going to be.
And you can worry aboutnegotiating the rest of these
things.
So we've built the platform thatsupports all of that from end to
(03:55):
end on the consumer journey.
And so- Our focus in thebeginning was how do we get
folks in the door, process theapplication, allow them to
transact on their vehicles.
And that's now evolved into...
Us being able to white labelthis for other folks who are
interested who can't build allof this from scratch and
transitioning into this ideawhere I say Carpuddy is
(04:17):
customer.
Carpuddy, the finance company,is customer number one of
Carpuddy, the tech company.
SPEAKER_02 (04:22):
And how did you guys decide to
SPEAKER_01 (04:24):
do that?
SPEAKER_02 (04:24):
Like to take the thing that you had built and now
try to use that as a SaaSproduct?
SPEAKER_01 (04:30):
Yeah, I mean, I really think it's from just
conversations that we've hadover the last five years and
understanding where folks' painpoints are on a broader business
scale.
One of the things that we can dobeing a startup is we can move
very quickly.
We're very agile.
That allows us to build things alot quicker, test things a lot
quicker, where some bigger banksmight not have that opportunity,
(04:52):
but are still looking forsomething differential there in
the way that they'reunderwriting, processing, and
granting access to funds forvehicles or just any asset,
really.
I
SPEAKER_02 (05:01):
guess if you guys are competing against more or
less large banks, that's atotally different type of
product management.
But when in your journey did youguys decide to to sort of
transition into offering this asa SaaS product too.
I'm curious, like just how oldthe company was.
SPEAKER_01 (05:17):
Yeah.
So I would say that there wasalways a longer term vision from
Patrick and Joshua of where doesthis fit in largely?
right and how how does thisbenefit consumers not just car
putty consumers but any consumerfrom having this and so it's
always been in the back of ourmind and then we were able to
get that traction with car puttyas a finance company to see how
(05:40):
people are using the product andto see what the outcomes were
and then that traction gave usreally a launch launching point
to then say okay it's usableIt's making money, it's doing
things.
And so now we can package thatup and give it out to other
folks.
Got it.
SPEAKER_02 (05:59):
I guess like what were some of the, or were there
any points of friction when youguys were making that transition
from like selling or offeringlike a service directly to an
end user to offering a productthat would then offer that
service to the end user?
SPEAKER_01 (06:12):
I think when we were figuring out the process flows
in the beginning, there weremaybe some we'll call it bespoke
changes or things that we didthat we implemented within the
product or the platform in whichour operators are working in
that are specific to CarBuddy.
For instance, a specific vendoras simple as a label on a form
(06:33):
field, having a vendor's name init, whereas it should be more
global and universal and be ableto plug in any vendor within
there.
So those were a lot of the stepsthat we started to take early
on.
And as our product functionbegan to build more, iterate
more, that's something that'salways in the back of our mind
is, is this specific to CarPuddyor is this universal?
(06:55):
Is this something that we needto do to scale?
How scalable is it in thisversion?
And how can we abstract that outa little bit more.
SPEAKER_02 (07:02):
Yeah, I think that's definitely a challenge when
you're building like a platform,so to speak.
It's figuring out, especially Iwould imagine if you're your own
first user, right?
It's like, we had a really goodidea.
We like using it this way.
But how much of that, to yourpoint, is universal?
And how much of that do you wantto enforce and like make it
universal right like how muchconviction do you have about the
way that that product is builtso that you're like hey maybe
(07:24):
everyone isn't doing it this waytoday but like we think that
they should so we're gonna yeahyeah i wonder what you what you
described about like thelabeling of you know specific
fields and stuff like that islike obviously a sort of
cosmetic but actually reallyimportant when you're when
you're doing like a whitelabeled product changes is
something that can really likeerode trust with those users
(07:44):
like if you're saying it'ssomething that they can reuse as
their own they really want Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:11):
Yeah.
And that has been part of ourpivot too, is building an
abstraction layer.
So even if we look at differentvendors, right?
So if we have a B2B partnerthat, for instance, we use Plaid
as our open banking and theywant to use a different open
banking source or in a countrythat uses a different open
banking source, we've built anabstraction layer where we know
the data we're looking forwithin that for our
(08:33):
underwriting.
And it doesn't matter who theend source is, as long as we
know we can assign these datapoints to there.
So that's one way we did createsome boundaries right even UI
for instance so we implemented aglobal design system that had X
number of variables.
And those are the variables thatyou can change as a white-label
(08:55):
partner, unless you want to giveus more money, of course.
And then we can discuss.
But we try to stick to that,right?
And we're looking, as we iterateand build more, again, just
incorporating more of thoseglobal components that then can
be switched out.
And in the same with ourapplication flow, even, we built
that purposefully verycomponentized so we can pull out
(09:16):
screens, pull out form fields,add form fields, add screens
just so what our partners arelooking for or need or what
their specific consumers mightbe able to give us.
SPEAKER_02 (09:25):
Yeah, there's this interesting trade-off, right?
Especially when you're thinkingabout like front ends between
customization and stability isnot the right word, but if you
make everything 100% bespoke, itcan get quite brittle.
Like, you know, how much do youwant to offer while still being
able to maintain that it's aproduct and not like a headless
solution?
It's always like tough, right?
And depending on the type ofproduct that you guys have or
(09:47):
that we have or that anyone has,like people have more or less
stronger opinions about brandingand theming.
It's something that I'vedefinitely seen challenges with
over the years.
I've worked at a couple placesthat white label stuff and it's
always like, do we just open itup to do custom HTML and CSS and
you could do whatever you want,but then you might do whatever
you want for you from a productperspective.
(10:07):
It's like, how do you ensurethat that's always going to be
fine when you guys are buildingand releasing new stuff?
How do you guys structure yourproduct team?
Do you have separate teamsfor...
the different kind of like usertypes?
Or again, this is me beingcurious, like when you guys are
looking at different
SPEAKER_01 (10:23):
type of buyer.
We run very lean.
So right now, and we've pivoteda couple of times, just how
we've structured product andengineering.
Right now we're working in podsand one's kind of focused on the
front end of that consumer flow.
So our applications and what itmeans to have your flex line
originate that.
And then our transactions team,which is supporting the asset
(10:44):
piece of it.
So vehicles, valuing vehicles,building out that, So, and then
as well as a data team tosupport all of those data points
that flow through it all,whether it be internally, we
want to do things with that dataor from like a capital market
perspective, making sure they'regetting what they're needing
(11:04):
from a loan sale perspective.
We've split it that way for now.
As we grow, I think it's goingto shift or we're going to add
new pods to it.
Right now, again, we're runninglean, so these pods are covering
a lot.
But I think that the pod systemhas worked well for us because
there's still a lot of growth.
cross-collaboration within thoseand still a lot of knowledge
(11:27):
sharing, but allows for morefocus.
And so we can, the more we canfocus, the more stuff we can get
SPEAKER_02 (11:33):
out.
And yeah, again, that was justlike a selfish question for me.
I'm always curious.
And you know, I got to ask aboutmy favorite thing, integrations.
So I know you mentioned, notStripe, but you'd mentioned some
payment providers, Plaid, sorry,banking providers.
I'm curious what other kinds ofintegrations you guys have
either done, what challenges, ormaybe I should say, what how
(11:54):
those integrations andpartnerships maybe have changed
as you guys have evolved to yourICPs and the product that you're
building and yeah, any words ofwisdom on the integration front.
That's what a lot of our folksare interested in here within
the audience.
SPEAKER_01 (12:08):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think we've, you know,on day one, we had to figure out
who we're going to use for what.
And so we, there's this, Iremember this huge spreadsheet
of just like the compare pricingwas obviously a big thing in
early days, but going back towhat I mentioned before with
that abstraction layer, that'sbeen really imperative because
(12:29):
it almost doesn't matter whatvendor we're using.
For instance, from a servicingperspective, if we have a
partner that they want toservice those loans, our
servicing layer just grabs theright pieces of information that
they need and can pass it off.
So we've kind of built an APIlayer that we're ingesting
ourselves, but also we can pushand pull through those APIs
(12:49):
where needed.
So that's been our approach tocreate a little bit more of that
universal aspect and be able toutilize any vendor that might be
needed or switch vendors if weneed to without disrupting what
we've built.
SPEAKER_02 (13:04):
Do you guys have like a partnership concept
within your organization?
Like do you guys partner with, Idon't know what would be
relevant again, like maybebanking partners or something
like that?
Or is the product more like astandalone because you guys do
all of that stuff?
SPEAKER_01 (13:16):
Yeah, it's a little of everything, right?
We've got banking partners.
We've got partnerships with Turois a big partner of ours so
offering flex lines to Turohosts who have more than one
vehicle can have one monthlypayment for these vehicles
totally ideal we're kind ofbecause again of the flexibility
and agility we can offerpartnerships of different levels
(13:39):
based on the needs and so Ithink that's where we really
excelled is that flexibility hasallowed us we're not honed in
yet of like this is what ourpackage looks like every time
there's just individual piecesof the package depending on the
partner and I think that'shelped us to get more
partnerships and kind of movethose along quicker because
(13:59):
we're not untangling everything.
It's not a one size fits all.
SPEAKER_02 (14:02):
Sounds like you have a complex landscape to navigate
as the person running theproduct org.
I'm sure you have your handsfull.
Changing directions a littlebit.
I'm curious from an organizationperspective at Car Putty, I know
that you guys have some reallystrong core values and I'm sure
those feed into every part ofthe org, how you guys think
about your customers and thenalso how you are building this
(14:24):
product.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about the values of the
business and how you see thosetranslate down into a product
management?
SPEAKER_01 (14:31):
Yeah.
So we have a handful of corevalues.
being data-driven, beingtenacious, thinking big,
empowerment, and transparency.
And all of those have twodefinitions, which is internally
how we approach that andexternally.
Transparency is our big onebecause that's a lot of the
reason the company was foundedis offering that transparency to
(14:54):
consumers about what their rateis.
And I think you're also seeing apivot on that just across the
landscape of automotive, right?
And there's maybe been somehistorical like black box in a
room somewhere.
And so more and more dealershipsand OEMs, they're bringing that
forward.
So transparency within that andbringing that has also then we
(15:17):
ask those questions when we'rebuilding something or making a
decision or even having apartner conversation if they
want to do something a specificway is, is this still giving
transparency to the consumer?
Are we still living that valueor are we turning away from our
value just to kind of getsomebody in the door.
So I think it's a question thatwe constantly ask ourselves.
(15:40):
And I think it's an importantone because just, again, from a
total landscape of automotiveand finance, I think that
because it's lacked it so muchand if we're living it, I think
it really just puts us that muchfurther ahead.
of what we're doing and how it'sdifferential.
SPEAKER_02 (15:57):
Yeah.
I'm wondering if you guys getpushback about that, maybe not
from internal folks.
And I'm sure consumers love it,but more generally out in the
larger market, I feel like thereis, especially around pricing
and financing, there's a littlebit of that nebulous nature.
I haven't bought a car in areally long time.
I live in New York.
I don't own a car, but I did buyone at one point at a
dealership.
(16:17):
And I remember when we weretalking about financing, there
didn't seem to be any rules.
It was like, well, now it's thisnumber.
And I'm like, well, I don't wantto pay that.
Now it's this number.
Well, what do you want to pay?
I'm like, how does that workthat I get to pick?
And it just seemed like, to yourpoint, we're running into a back
room and now we're coming outwith a completely different
number.
But it must have evolved likethat for a reason, right?
(16:38):
So I'm wondering if you guys, Idon't know, maybe pushback's not
the right word, but if you guysget feedback about kind of
disrupting that model.
SPEAKER_01 (16:44):
Yeah.
Early on we did, but I think oneof the benefits of the Flex
line, and if you think about itfrom a dealership perspective,
is that we create this customerstickiness because they have
this financing available.
They don't have to apply everytime.
It's really just about thetransaction and the vehicle
piece.
And so even from a dealershipperspective, their cost of
(17:05):
acquisition goes down becausethey're not having to figure out
financing for this person againand track them down.
You made it easy for them totransact on this vehicle.
And so now You know, nobody islike, oh, I love my Chase loan,
right?
But we want to say, I love myFlex Line because it makes it
easier to do the fun part ofbuying a car.
(17:27):
So we've really seen a lot ofpartnership with dealerships
rather than us being the enemyor them being the enemy.
It's really about what's bestfor the consumer.
And I think more and more we seethat across any industry is how
do we empower a consumer inwhat's best for them?
The other piece of our productthat we offer, It's called our
(17:48):
V3 valuation tool, which standsfor past, present, and future.
And so we take thousands of datapoints to create what a vehicle
valuation might look like.
And so on your dashboard, youcan always see what your loan
looks like versus the valuationof that vehicle.
Should I be selling it in thenext two months because it's
going to take a cliff?
It's not a linear thing.
(18:08):
There's peaks and valleys.
And so empowering our customersto know what those peaks and
valleys are Also, from adealership perspective, if you
know what those peaks andvalleys are, you're able to
target those folks moredistinctly and more deliberately
within that.
SPEAKER_02 (18:23):
I wonder, too, like if and maybe this has to do with
kind of generational shifts,like if there's a cohort of
folks, like especiallydealership folks, that getting
them to do something in a newway might help.
there might be a little bit ofresistance.
And I think about like legacysystems generally, right?
Like there's always, or notalways, but there can be some, a
(18:43):
transition period for folks tobe thinking about these things
in a different way.
But to your point, you know, Ithink these people want to get
these deals done.
And younger folks, even myself,I don't want to talk to people
if I don't have to.
I'd rather self-serve.
You're going to buy it online.
You want to do it.
I mean, really.
(19:04):
I want to buy everything online.
I don't want to ever speak to ahuman ever again, other than
you, of course.
But you know what I mean.
It's an interesting time wherethe consumer landscape is both
people of a generation,potentially, that don't want to
talk to humans, and also stillhugely Yeah.
Yeah.
(19:41):
Because mortgages are alsoanother, obviously another-
SPEAKER_01 (19:43):
Yeah, I was in mortgages previously.
Were you?
The complexity there.
And I think too, I was surprisedby, obviously we've done a lot
of customer research,understanding, and in the online
piece, especially again, October2020, COVID coming ahead of
that, right?
I think it was pivotal for us.
But our demographic currentlytends to lean a little bit more
(20:06):
into the 40s and 50s.
which I think was a littlesurprising, right?
Because you think of it as likea younger generational thing to
be online, to want to do thesethings online.
But the ease piece of it, Ithink is really key.
And again, focusing on that funpart of what vehicle do I want
to get?
You know, what am I looking todo in that way?
So I think there's certainly abalance there because for me, at
(20:29):
least, I still want to see thecar I want to buy.
Maybe I don't want to talk tosomebody there, but I don't want
to touch it, feel it.
drive it maybe a little bit.
Um, and so I think there's,there's a marrying of the two.
SPEAKER_02 (20:40):
Yeah.
I mean, I, I agree.
Same thing with like a house.
Like, I don't think that I woulddo like a virtual house.
Well, maybe, but I mean in NewYork, like I live in New York
city and there are definitelypeople that do virtual like
apartment tours and put downdeposits, not to buy usually to
rent, but I'm like, even that tome feels weird, but I don't
know.
I think COVID obviouslyexpedited that stuff too,
because you couldn't necessarilygo to a dealership.
(21:01):
You couldn't go look atsomething in person.
It's just such an interestingtransition over not that long of
a period of time, right?
I agree.
Yeah.
Like when I was back in my day,when I got my first bank
account, I had paper checks.
Like we didn't have onlinebanking.
I remember when like I was ableto check my balance online for
the first time and being like,oh my God.
And that was not that long ago.
(21:21):
I'm not that old.
So thinking about different waysto do some of these milestone
like things, like you guys aredescribing, like buying a car is
a big deal.
It's a big investment.
And being able to make thatstuff faster, more efficient is
really exciting.
And to your point, I don't thinkI would have thought that the
40s, 40 and 50 year old kind ofdemo was the ones that would
have been adopting this quickly.
Maybe they buy more cars.
(21:42):
I don't know.
You guys probably, you guys
SPEAKER_01 (21:43):
probably
SPEAKER_02 (21:44):
know.
SPEAKER_01 (21:45):
From going back to like carpet is a finance
company, we entered into theprime and super prime market
just because the risk, right?
And like us being that firstcustomer.
So that's maybe why it leanstowards that way.
But I really think that evenacross the board, as we open
that up based on partnerships,the adoption process.
I think is very strong.
(22:05):
And we see a lot of positiveintent.
We see a lot of high intent.
Even from an application funnelperspective, our drop-offs are
not terrible.
It surprised me, especiallycoming from mortgage.
Yeah, because I feel likeeveryone's got lots of- There's
just a really high intent, whichI think goes to show that the
(22:26):
product and the loan product isappealing to folks in what
they're getting.
I
SPEAKER_02 (22:31):
imagine in mortgages, it's like it drops
off really fast because peoplewant to get pre-approved.
And like then, yeah, to yourpoint, you get to like the hard
inquiry and it's like, nope, I'mgoing to bail on this.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, I think we're coming up ontime, but I did want to ask one
more question for our listeners.
I'm curious if you have anyadvice for product managers that
are going to be, or the org istoying with doing what you guys
(22:53):
did, which is taking a productthat's like nominally an
internal tool and then showingit to the outside world.
Like what, maybe if you guys hadany kind of points of friction
or if there was anything thatyou learned, I'm sure folks here
would love to hear.
SPEAKER_01 (23:07):
Yeah.
I mean, I really think that justapproaching it with those
questions always in mind.
Everything that you're buildingis, is this scalable?
And is this, can we make thisuniversal?
And being able to answer thosequestions and understand if you
have bias.
So I think like you have toaddress your own bias, right?
And I think if you're using thetool, there is a little bit of
(23:28):
bias there in terms of how youwant to build it or what you
want it to look like.
But really taking that step backto really ask those questions
every single time you'rebuilding something or putting
something together of, Is thisgoing to fit into the long term?
Which we're looking for thingsthat go into our vision, right?
As product folks, we're tryingto build out into the future.
But I think if you'reintentional about asking
(23:51):
yourself that, you mightsurprise yourself with actually
the answer is no.
And going back to then thoseinternal customers to say, I
think that's the is how you pushback on those internal customers
that we're not going to do itexactly this way, but we're
going to do it this way becausethis is what it can do for us in
the future or for futurepartners.
(24:11):
And everyone's really acceptingof that and understands it.
SPEAKER_02 (24:14):
Yeah, I bet that...
I bet that is some likeinteresting conversations when
you're, you know, with you as aperson who works at Carpetti
maybe or used to be able to say,hey, we actually need this XYZ
thing to like make this work.
And now, you know, you're comingup and being like, actually, can
we talk about what exactlyyou're trying to do?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the point oftaking a step back and looking
(24:35):
at your own bias and trying toput, at least for myself, put
the emotion aside of the productthat you've built and try to
look at it in an objective wayto be like, okay, is this
actually the best way that wecould have done this or the best
way to do it?
Or is it just the way that Ithink is coolest or is the
easiest or something like that?
Building scalable stuff isreally challenging, especially
(24:56):
for multiple different users.
It's like this constant battlebetween fast and and
bulletproof, right?
And I think at a startup, younever hit both or very rarely do
you hit both, but there's alwaystrade-offs, right?
Like, are you going to take alittle bit longer?
Do you need to get it up thedoor immediately?
Like, where does this thing goin the future?
It sounds like you've had someexperience with that.
SPEAKER_01 (25:17):
Yeah.
And I think too, right, is we'rereally good at A, admitting we
were wrong, saying we went downthis path, we were building it
this way, probably wasn't best.
So how do we pivot?
What changes do we make?
And also really from anengineering perspective, looking
at things on a regular basis, onan architectural basis, did we
(25:39):
do this the right way?
And how would we do it if westarted over again?
We're having a little bit ofthose conversations of if it was
day one again, what would wehave done differently?
And incorporating bits andpieces, we can't shut down and
do it all over, right?
But I think if we incorporatebits and pieces of that, we
lessen that tech debt a littlebit.
We're being moreforward-thinking and we're
(26:02):
giving ourselves that spaceversus, hey, everything is a
total hot mess and now we can'tonboard new customers because
it's like this.
Like, we don't want to get tothat point.
SPEAKER_02 (26:11):
Yeah, I mean, that's like the constant trade-off of
like an early PM at a company,right?
Is like trying to make sure thatyou don't get to that point, but
also dealing with like thecompeting priorities.
And I'm sure for you, doing itagain with like multiple
different products, right?
Like it's the same product, buta lot of different users and use
cases.
So like I would call it all thatkind of different products,
right?
For sure.
I know so little about yourspace.
(26:32):
Same with like mortgages.
I bet there's so much nuancethat I could learn.
I'm totally going to, I'm goingto go troll y'all say I'm not,
buying a car, but I will gospend a little more time on it
with you in mind.
And for our audience, thank youso much for joining us.
This has been such a great chat.
Thank you for spending some timewith us.
And if you're interested in moreinformation about product,
partnerships, integrations, allthe things, you can check out
(26:54):
pandium.com, have a look at ourblog and listen to some of our
other episodes.
Thanks again for spending alittle bit of time with us here.
And I look forward to seeing youout there.
Thank you, Christina.
Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00 (27:08):
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed our content,subscribe to our channel and
give us a thumbs up.
For more content on techpartnerships, integrations, and
APIs, check out our articles,eBooks, and other resources in
the description or visitPandium's website.
Welcome to Between Product and Partnerships, a
podcast focused on bringingtogether product, partnership
and engineering leaders todiscuss how to build, support
and scale SaaS ecosystems.
This podcast is presented byPandium, an integration platform
for building nativeintegrations.
SPEAKER_02 (00:19):
Hi, everyone.
My name is Christina Flashen,and I'm the CEO here at Pandium.
And thank you so much forlistening to our podcast,
Between Product andPartnerships.
If you're joining us for thefirst time, we talk about the
challenges and what it takes tobuild integrations,
partnerships, and SaaS platformsmore generally.
We talk to great leaders in thespace that are working on these
problems.
And today, we are so excited tohave Archana Carlstone, who is
(00:42):
the head of product at Carputty.
Archana, can you give us alittle bit of info about what
you do at Carputty and maybeyour journey to get there?
Yeah, thanks
SPEAKER_01 (00:50):
for having me.
So at Carparty, I am the head ofproduct.
So I manage our platform thatwe're building, both consumer
facing as well as internal toolsthat we're building to support
our consumers through theirjourney.
My journey has looked like I'vebeen part of Carparty since day
one.
So October of 2020 is when weofficially kicked things off.
(01:12):
So I've really seen everythinggrow from zero to where we are
today, which has been amazing.
I I've been in product for about10 years now, really focused on
the consumer side of things.
So consumer journey is veryimportant to me, making sure
we're low friction, especiallywhen it comes to financial
(01:33):
applications.
You want to make it as easy aspossible for folks so they're
not abandoning and they'refeeling comfortable and secure
with the information they'reproviding as well.
SPEAKER_02 (01:42):
Awesome.
Thank you for the background.
I know we talked earlier alittle bit about Carpuddy and
your journey, so I'd love tojust dive right in there.
Can you tell us, since you'vebeen there from the very
beginning, a little bit abouthow your product has
transitioned over the years?
I feel like you guys have alittle bit of a unique story
from what you first built andwho it was for to what you guys
(02:03):
are doing today.
SPEAKER_01 (02:03):
Yeah.
So I'll give a little bit of a30-second elevator pitch on what
Carputty does and then how we'veevolved.
So we started, our co-foundersstarted chatting in the summer
of 2020 and Patrick Bayless, whois our CEO, and then Josh Tatum,
who is our CPO, come from twosides of this coin that are
(02:24):
beneficial to us.
So Patrick comes from 30 plusyears of car dealership, owning
car dealerships, understandingthe ins and outs of what that
looks like, how financing workswithin there.
And then Joshua comes from abackground of fintech.
So he was at SoFi, a guaranteedrate.
So really marrying the two thereand understanding where pain
points are on both sides ofthings.
(02:46):
So we offer a differential loanproduct, which is where we
started was to give transparencyto customers through that
differential loan product.
So we call it our Car Putty FlexLine.
You can think of it almost likea line of credit or really a
parent note on what your buyingpower is.
And we underwrite that based onyou as a consumer and not the
(03:08):
vehicle.
So today's world, you go to adealership, you pick a car, and
then you figure out how to payfor that car.
We're flipping that around alittle bit where you know how
much you can afford.
You have this buying power inplace that we've decision based
off of traditional creditinformation, but as well as cash
flow underwriting.
and your ability and willingnessto repay.
(03:30):
And then you go out and find avehicle.
We're still doing loan to value.
So you're not spending$50,000 ona 2022 Prius, but you're able to
really have that knowledge andyour rate is set in stone.
So you know what your rate'sgoing to be.
You know what your monthlypayment's going to be.
And you can worry aboutnegotiating the rest of these
things.
So we've built the platform thatsupports all of that from end to
(03:55):
end on the consumer journey.
And so- Our focus in thebeginning was how do we get
folks in the door, process theapplication, allow them to
transact on their vehicles.
And that's now evolved into...
Us being able to white labelthis for other folks who are
interested who can't build allof this from scratch and
transitioning into this ideawhere I say Carpuddy is
(04:17):
customer.
Carpuddy, the finance company,is customer number one of
Carpuddy, the tech company.
SPEAKER_02 (04:22):
And how did you guys decide to
SPEAKER_01 (04:24):
do that?
SPEAKER_02 (04:24):
Like to take the thing that you had built and now
try to use that as a SaaSproduct?
SPEAKER_01 (04:30):
Yeah, I mean, I really think it's from just
conversations that we've hadover the last five years and
understanding where folks' painpoints are on a broader business
scale.
One of the things that we can dobeing a startup is we can move
very quickly.
We're very agile.
That allows us to build things alot quicker, test things a lot
quicker, where some bigger banksmight not have that opportunity,
(04:52):
but are still looking forsomething differential there in
the way that they'reunderwriting, processing, and
granting access to funds forvehicles or just any asset,
really.
I
SPEAKER_02 (05:01):
guess if you guys are competing against more or
less large banks, that's atotally different type of
product management.
But when in your journey did youguys decide to to sort of
transition into offering this asa SaaS product too.
I'm curious, like just how oldthe company was.
SPEAKER_01 (05:17):
Yeah.
So I would say that there wasalways a longer term vision from
Patrick and Joshua of where doesthis fit in largely?
right and how how does thisbenefit consumers not just car
putty consumers but any consumerfrom having this and so it's
always been in the back of ourmind and then we were able to
get that traction with car puttyas a finance company to see how
(05:40):
people are using the product andto see what the outcomes were
and then that traction gave usreally a launch launching point
to then say okay it's usableIt's making money, it's doing
things.
And so now we can package thatup and give it out to other
folks.
Got it.
SPEAKER_02 (05:59):
I guess like what were some of the, or were there
any points of friction when youguys were making that transition
from like selling or offeringlike a service directly to an
end user to offering a productthat would then offer that
service to the end user?
SPEAKER_01 (06:12):
I think when we were figuring out the process flows
in the beginning, there weremaybe some we'll call it bespoke
changes or things that we didthat we implemented within the
product or the platform in whichour operators are working in
that are specific to CarBuddy.
For instance, a specific vendoras simple as a label on a form
(06:33):
field, having a vendor's name init, whereas it should be more
global and universal and be ableto plug in any vendor within
there.
So those were a lot of the stepsthat we started to take early
on.
And as our product functionbegan to build more, iterate
more, that's something that'salways in the back of our mind
is, is this specific to CarPuddyor is this universal?
(06:55):
Is this something that we needto do to scale?
How scalable is it in thisversion?
And how can we abstract that outa little bit more.
SPEAKER_02 (07:02):
Yeah, I think that's definitely a challenge when
you're building like a platform,so to speak.
It's figuring out, especially Iwould imagine if you're your own
first user, right?
It's like, we had a really goodidea.
We like using it this way.
But how much of that, to yourpoint, is universal?
And how much of that do you wantto enforce and like make it
universal right like how muchconviction do you have about the
way that that product is builtso that you're like hey maybe
(07:24):
everyone isn't doing it this waytoday but like we think that
they should so we're gonna yeahyeah i wonder what you what you
described about like thelabeling of you know specific
fields and stuff like that islike obviously a sort of
cosmetic but actually reallyimportant when you're when
you're doing like a whitelabeled product changes is
something that can really likeerode trust with those users
(07:44):
like if you're saying it'ssomething that they can reuse as
their own they really want Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:11):
Yeah.
And that has been part of ourpivot too, is building an
abstraction layer.
So even if we look at differentvendors, right?
So if we have a B2B partnerthat, for instance, we use Plaid
as our open banking and theywant to use a different open
banking source or in a countrythat uses a different open
banking source, we've built anabstraction layer where we know
the data we're looking forwithin that for our
(08:33):
underwriting.
And it doesn't matter who theend source is, as long as we
know we can assign these datapoints to there.
So that's one way we did createsome boundaries right even UI
for instance so we implemented aglobal design system that had X
number of variables.
And those are the variables thatyou can change as a white-label
(08:55):
partner, unless you want to giveus more money, of course.
And then we can discuss.
But we try to stick to that,right?
And we're looking, as we iterateand build more, again, just
incorporating more of thoseglobal components that then can
be switched out.
And in the same with ourapplication flow, even, we built
that purposefully verycomponentized so we can pull out
(09:16):
screens, pull out form fields,add form fields, add screens
just so what our partners arelooking for or need or what
their specific consumers mightbe able to give us.
SPEAKER_02 (09:25):
Yeah, there's this interesting trade-off, right?
Especially when you're thinkingabout like front ends between
customization and stability isnot the right word, but if you
make everything 100% bespoke, itcan get quite brittle.
Like, you know, how much do youwant to offer while still being
able to maintain that it's aproduct and not like a headless
solution?
It's always like tough, right?
And depending on the type ofproduct that you guys have or
(09:47):
that we have or that anyone has,like people have more or less
stronger opinions about brandingand theming.
It's something that I'vedefinitely seen challenges with
over the years.
I've worked at a couple placesthat white label stuff and it's
always like, do we just open itup to do custom HTML and CSS and
you could do whatever you want,but then you might do whatever
you want for you from a productperspective.
(10:07):
It's like, how do you ensurethat that's always going to be
fine when you guys are buildingand releasing new stuff?
How do you guys structure yourproduct team?
Do you have separate teamsfor...
the different kind of like usertypes?
Or again, this is me beingcurious, like when you guys are
looking at different
SPEAKER_01 (10:23):
type of buyer.
We run very lean.
So right now, and we've pivoteda couple of times, just how
we've structured product andengineering.
Right now we're working in podsand one's kind of focused on the
front end of that consumer flow.
So our applications and what itmeans to have your flex line
originate that.
And then our transactions team,which is supporting the asset
(10:44):
piece of it.
So vehicles, valuing vehicles,building out that, So, and then
as well as a data team tosupport all of those data points
that flow through it all,whether it be internally, we
want to do things with that dataor from like a capital market
perspective, making sure they'regetting what they're needing
(11:04):
from a loan sale perspective.
We've split it that way for now.
As we grow, I think it's goingto shift or we're going to add
new pods to it.
Right now, again, we're runninglean, so these pods are covering
a lot.
But I think that the pod systemhas worked well for us because
there's still a lot of growth.
cross-collaboration within thoseand still a lot of knowledge
(11:27):
sharing, but allows for morefocus.
And so we can, the more we canfocus, the more stuff we can get
SPEAKER_02 (11:33):
out.
And yeah, again, that was justlike a selfish question for me.
I'm always curious.
And you know, I got to ask aboutmy favorite thing, integrations.
So I know you mentioned, notStripe, but you'd mentioned some
payment providers, Plaid, sorry,banking providers.
I'm curious what other kinds ofintegrations you guys have
either done, what challenges, ormaybe I should say, what how
(11:54):
those integrations andpartnerships maybe have changed
as you guys have evolved to yourICPs and the product that you're
building and yeah, any words ofwisdom on the integration front.
That's what a lot of our folksare interested in here within
the audience.
SPEAKER_01 (12:08):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think we've, you know,on day one, we had to figure out
who we're going to use for what.
And so we, there's this, Iremember this huge spreadsheet
of just like the compare pricingwas obviously a big thing in
early days, but going back towhat I mentioned before with
that abstraction layer, that'sbeen really imperative because
(12:29):
it almost doesn't matter whatvendor we're using.
For instance, from a servicingperspective, if we have a
partner that they want toservice those loans, our
servicing layer just grabs theright pieces of information that
they need and can pass it off.
So we've kind of built an APIlayer that we're ingesting
ourselves, but also we can pushand pull through those APIs
(12:49):
where needed.
So that's been our approach tocreate a little bit more of that
universal aspect and be able toutilize any vendor that might be
needed or switch vendors if weneed to without disrupting what
we've built.
SPEAKER_02 (13:04):
Do you guys have like a partnership concept
within your organization?
Like do you guys partner with, Idon't know what would be
relevant again, like maybebanking partners or something
like that?
Or is the product more like astandalone because you guys do
all of that stuff?
SPEAKER_01 (13:16):
Yeah, it's a little of everything, right?
We've got banking partners.
We've got partnerships with Turois a big partner of ours so
offering flex lines to Turohosts who have more than one
vehicle can have one monthlypayment for these vehicles
totally ideal we're kind ofbecause again of the flexibility
and agility we can offerpartnerships of different levels
(13:39):
based on the needs and so Ithink that's where we really
excelled is that flexibility hasallowed us we're not honed in
yet of like this is what ourpackage looks like every time
there's just individual piecesof the package depending on the
partner and I think that'shelped us to get more
partnerships and kind of movethose along quicker because
(13:59):
we're not untangling everything.
It's not a one size fits all.
SPEAKER_02 (14:02):
Sounds like you have a complex landscape to navigate
as the person running theproduct org.
I'm sure you have your handsfull.
Changing directions a littlebit.
I'm curious from an organizationperspective at Car Putty, I know
that you guys have some reallystrong core values and I'm sure
those feed into every part ofthe org, how you guys think
about your customers and thenalso how you are building this
(14:24):
product.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about the values of the
business and how you see thosetranslate down into a product
management?
SPEAKER_01 (14:31):
Yeah.
So we have a handful of corevalues.
being data-driven, beingtenacious, thinking big,
empowerment, and transparency.
And all of those have twodefinitions, which is internally
how we approach that andexternally.
Transparency is our big onebecause that's a lot of the
reason the company was foundedis offering that transparency to
(14:54):
consumers about what their rateis.
And I think you're also seeing apivot on that just across the
landscape of automotive, right?
And there's maybe been somehistorical like black box in a
room somewhere.
And so more and more dealershipsand OEMs, they're bringing that
forward.
So transparency within that andbringing that has also then we
(15:17):
ask those questions when we'rebuilding something or making a
decision or even having apartner conversation if they
want to do something a specificway is, is this still giving
transparency to the consumer?
Are we still living that valueor are we turning away from our
value just to kind of getsomebody in the door.
So I think it's a question thatwe constantly ask ourselves.
(15:40):
And I think it's an importantone because just, again, from a
total landscape of automotiveand finance, I think that
because it's lacked it so muchand if we're living it, I think
it really just puts us that muchfurther ahead.
of what we're doing and how it'sdifferential.
SPEAKER_02 (15:57):
Yeah.
I'm wondering if you guys getpushback about that, maybe not
from internal folks.
And I'm sure consumers love it,but more generally out in the
larger market, I feel like thereis, especially around pricing
and financing, there's a littlebit of that nebulous nature.
I haven't bought a car in areally long time.
I live in New York.
I don't own a car, but I did buyone at one point at a
dealership.
(16:17):
And I remember when we weretalking about financing, there
didn't seem to be any rules.
It was like, well, now it's thisnumber.
And I'm like, well, I don't wantto pay that.
Now it's this number.
Well, what do you want to pay?
I'm like, how does that workthat I get to pick?
And it just seemed like, to yourpoint, we're running into a back
room and now we're coming outwith a completely different
number.
But it must have evolved likethat for a reason, right?
(16:38):
So I'm wondering if you guys, Idon't know, maybe pushback's not
the right word, but if you guysget feedback about kind of
disrupting that model.
SPEAKER_01 (16:44):
Yeah.
Early on we did, but I think oneof the benefits of the Flex
line, and if you think about itfrom a dealership perspective,
is that we create this customerstickiness because they have
this financing available.
They don't have to apply everytime.
It's really just about thetransaction and the vehicle
piece.
And so even from a dealershipperspective, their cost of
(17:05):
acquisition goes down becausethey're not having to figure out
financing for this person againand track them down.
You made it easy for them totransact on this vehicle.
And so now You know, nobody islike, oh, I love my Chase loan,
right?
But we want to say, I love myFlex Line because it makes it
easier to do the fun part ofbuying a car.
(17:27):
So we've really seen a lot ofpartnership with dealerships
rather than us being the enemyor them being the enemy.
It's really about what's bestfor the consumer.
And I think more and more we seethat across any industry is how
do we empower a consumer inwhat's best for them?
The other piece of our productthat we offer, It's called our
(17:48):
V3 valuation tool, which standsfor past, present, and future.
And so we take thousands of datapoints to create what a vehicle
valuation might look like.
And so on your dashboard, youcan always see what your loan
looks like versus the valuationof that vehicle.
Should I be selling it in thenext two months because it's
going to take a cliff?
It's not a linear thing.
(18:08):
There's peaks and valleys.
And so empowering our customersto know what those peaks and
valleys are Also, from adealership perspective, if you
know what those peaks andvalleys are, you're able to
target those folks moredistinctly and more deliberately
within that.
SPEAKER_02 (18:23):
I wonder, too, like if and maybe this has to do with
kind of generational shifts,like if there's a cohort of
folks, like especiallydealership folks, that getting
them to do something in a newway might help.
there might be a little bit ofresistance.
And I think about like legacysystems generally, right?
Like there's always, or notalways, but there can be some, a
(18:43):
transition period for folks tobe thinking about these things
in a different way.
But to your point, you know, Ithink these people want to get
these deals done.
And younger folks, even myself,I don't want to talk to people
if I don't have to.
I'd rather self-serve.
You're going to buy it online.
You want to do it.
I mean, really.
(19:04):
I want to buy everything online.
I don't want to ever speak to ahuman ever again, other than
you, of course.
But you know what I mean.
It's an interesting time wherethe consumer landscape is both
people of a generation,potentially, that don't want to
talk to humans, and also stillhugely Yeah.
Yeah.
(19:41):
Because mortgages are alsoanother, obviously another-
SPEAKER_01 (19:43):
Yeah, I was in mortgages previously.
Were you?
The complexity there.
And I think too, I was surprisedby, obviously we've done a lot
of customer research,understanding, and in the online
piece, especially again, October2020, COVID coming ahead of
that, right?
I think it was pivotal for us.
But our demographic currentlytends to lean a little bit more
(20:06):
into the 40s and 50s.
which I think was a littlesurprising, right?
Because you think of it as likea younger generational thing to
be online, to want to do thesethings online.
But the ease piece of it, Ithink is really key.
And again, focusing on that funpart of what vehicle do I want
to get?
You know, what am I looking todo in that way?
So I think there's certainly abalance there because for me, at
(20:29):
least, I still want to see thecar I want to buy.
Maybe I don't want to talk tosomebody there, but I don't want
to touch it, feel it.
drive it maybe a little bit.
Um, and so I think there's,there's a marrying of the two.
SPEAKER_02 (20:40):
Yeah.
I mean, I, I agree.
Same thing with like a house.
Like, I don't think that I woulddo like a virtual house.
Well, maybe, but I mean in NewYork, like I live in New York
city and there are definitelypeople that do virtual like
apartment tours and put downdeposits, not to buy usually to
rent, but I'm like, even that tome feels weird, but I don't
know.
I think COVID obviouslyexpedited that stuff too,
because you couldn't necessarilygo to a dealership.
(21:01):
You couldn't go look atsomething in person.
It's just such an interestingtransition over not that long of
a period of time, right?
I agree.
Yeah.
Like when I was back in my day,when I got my first bank
account, I had paper checks.
Like we didn't have onlinebanking.
I remember when like I was ableto check my balance online for
the first time and being like,oh my God.
And that was not that long ago.
(21:21):
I'm not that old.
So thinking about different waysto do some of these milestone
like things, like you guys aredescribing, like buying a car is
a big deal.
It's a big investment.
And being able to make thatstuff faster, more efficient is
really exciting.
And to your point, I don't thinkI would have thought that the
40s, 40 and 50 year old kind ofdemo was the ones that would
have been adopting this quickly.
Maybe they buy more cars.
(21:42):
I don't know.
You guys probably, you guys
SPEAKER_01 (21:43):
probably
SPEAKER_02 (21:44):
know.
SPEAKER_01 (21:45):
From going back to like carpet is a finance
company, we entered into theprime and super prime market
just because the risk, right?
And like us being that firstcustomer.
So that's maybe why it leanstowards that way.
But I really think that evenacross the board, as we open
that up based on partnerships,the adoption process.
I think is very strong.
(22:05):
And we see a lot of positiveintent.
We see a lot of high intent.
Even from an application funnelperspective, our drop-offs are
not terrible.
It surprised me, especiallycoming from mortgage.
Yeah, because I feel likeeveryone's got lots of- There's
just a really high intent, whichI think goes to show that the
(22:26):
product and the loan product isappealing to folks in what
they're getting.
I
SPEAKER_02 (22:31):
imagine in mortgages, it's like it drops
off really fast because peoplewant to get pre-approved.
And like then, yeah, to yourpoint, you get to like the hard
inquiry and it's like, nope, I'mgoing to bail on this.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, I think we're coming up ontime, but I did want to ask one
more question for our listeners.
I'm curious if you have anyadvice for product managers that
are going to be, or the org istoying with doing what you guys
(22:53):
did, which is taking a productthat's like nominally an
internal tool and then showingit to the outside world.
Like what, maybe if you guys hadany kind of points of friction
or if there was anything thatyou learned, I'm sure folks here
would love to hear.
SPEAKER_01 (23:07):
Yeah.
I mean, I really think that justapproaching it with those
questions always in mind.
Everything that you're buildingis, is this scalable?
And is this, can we make thisuniversal?
And being able to answer thosequestions and understand if you
have bias.
So I think like you have toaddress your own bias, right?
And I think if you're using thetool, there is a little bit of
(23:28):
bias there in terms of how youwant to build it or what you
want it to look like.
But really taking that step backto really ask those questions
every single time you'rebuilding something or putting
something together of, Is thisgoing to fit into the long term?
Which we're looking for thingsthat go into our vision, right?
As product folks, we're tryingto build out into the future.
But I think if you'reintentional about asking
(23:51):
yourself that, you mightsurprise yourself with actually
the answer is no.
And going back to then thoseinternal customers to say, I
think that's the is how you pushback on those internal customers
that we're not going to do itexactly this way, but we're
going to do it this way becausethis is what it can do for us in
the future or for futurepartners.
(24:11):
And everyone's really acceptingof that and understands it.
SPEAKER_02 (24:14):
Yeah, I bet that...
I bet that is some likeinteresting conversations when
you're, you know, with you as aperson who works at Carpetti
maybe or used to be able to say,hey, we actually need this XYZ
thing to like make this work.
And now, you know, you're comingup and being like, actually, can
we talk about what exactlyyou're trying to do?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the point oftaking a step back and looking
(24:35):
at your own bias and trying toput, at least for myself, put
the emotion aside of the productthat you've built and try to
look at it in an objective wayto be like, okay, is this
actually the best way that wecould have done this or the best
way to do it?
Or is it just the way that Ithink is coolest or is the
easiest or something like that?
Building scalable stuff isreally challenging, especially
(24:56):
for multiple different users.
It's like this constant battlebetween fast and and
bulletproof, right?
And I think at a startup, younever hit both or very rarely do
you hit both, but there's alwaystrade-offs, right?
Like, are you going to take alittle bit longer?
Do you need to get it up thedoor immediately?
Like, where does this thing goin the future?
It sounds like you've had someexperience with that.
SPEAKER_01 (25:17):
Yeah.
And I think too, right, is we'rereally good at A, admitting we
were wrong, saying we went downthis path, we were building it
this way, probably wasn't best.
So how do we pivot?
What changes do we make?
And also really from anengineering perspective, looking
at things on a regular basis, onan architectural basis, did we
(25:39):
do this the right way?
And how would we do it if westarted over again?
We're having a little bit ofthose conversations of if it was
day one again, what would wehave done differently?
And incorporating bits andpieces, we can't shut down and
do it all over, right?
But I think if we incorporatebits and pieces of that, we
lessen that tech debt a littlebit.
We're being moreforward-thinking and we're
(26:02):
giving ourselves that spaceversus, hey, everything is a
total hot mess and now we can'tonboard new customers because
it's like this.
Like, we don't want to get tothat point.
SPEAKER_02 (26:11):
Yeah, I mean, that's like the constant trade-off of
like an early PM at a company,right?
Is like trying to make sure thatyou don't get to that point, but
also dealing with like thecompeting priorities.
And I'm sure for you, doing itagain with like multiple
different products, right?
Like it's the same product, buta lot of different users and use
cases.
So like I would call it all thatkind of different products,
right?
For sure.
I know so little about yourspace.
(26:32):
Same with like mortgages.
I bet there's so much nuancethat I could learn.
I'm totally going to, I'm goingto go troll y'all say I'm not,
buying a car, but I will gospend a little more time on it
with you in mind.
And for our audience, thank youso much for joining us.
This has been such a great chat.
Thank you for spending some timewith us.
And if you're interested in moreinformation about product,
partnerships, integrations, allthe things, you can check out
(26:54):
pandium.com, have a look at ourblog and listen to some of our
other episodes.
Thanks again for spending alittle bit of time with us here.
And I look forward to seeing youout there.
Thank you, Christina.
Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00 (27:08):
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed our content,subscribe to our channel and
give us a thumbs up.
For more content on techpartnerships, integrations, and
APIs, check out our articles,eBooks, and other resources in
the description or visitPandium's website.
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