June 6, 2025 • 23 mins
Dwayne King is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rutabaga, a startup building a decision intelligence engine that turns fragmented, unstructured customer insights into actionable knowledge accessible across the organization.
Rutabaga’s mission is to help companies become genuinely customer-centric by eliminating the barriers between scattered data, institutional memory, and daily decision-making.
Key Takeaways
- From Data to Action: Rutabaga ingests qualitative, unstructured customer data (such as interviews, call transcripts, and research reports) and transforms it into structured, actionable insights directly within existing team workflows.
- Solving Institutional Amnesia: Dwayne observed that companies often repeat research and lose valuable insights due to organizational silos and staff turnover. Rutabaga acts as a persistent, searchable “brain” for institutional memory, so teams don’t lose history or context.
- AI-Powered Speed: Their ingest engine dramatically reduces “time-to-insight”-what previously took a week of manual analysis now takes about an hour, thanks to AI, graph databases for connection mapping, and integrations with tools like Jira and Figma.
- Embedded in Decision Workflows: The team learned it’s not enough to collect and centralize insights; actionable data must appear in the tools and moments where decisions are made, not just in a standalone repository.
- Continuous Customer Feedback: Rutabaga’s roadmap evolves with weekly user research and prototype testing to avoid building a product that only serves their own perspective. Customer feedback consistently shapes functionality and integrations.
- Iterative Product Philosophy: Product vision at Rutabaga evolves through ongoing customer discovery, not from a single “aha” moment-dispelling the myth that tech startups are born fully-formed from a founder’s head.
- Ultimate Goal: Build an intelligence engine that future-proofs institutional knowledge, enables faster iteration, and supports better business decisions at every level.
About Dwayne King ___
Dwayne King is the Founder and CEO of Rutabaga, an AI-native platform helping product teams make smarter, faster decisions by turning scattered customer insights into strategic clarity. With over 20 years of experience in product development, UX design, and human-centered innovation, Dwayne has led transformative work for Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups alike.
His career has centered on a single theme: helping organizations align around what truly matters to their customers. At Rutabaga, he's tackling one of the most persistent challenges in tech—fragmented decision-making—by building the connective tissue between insight and action. Dwayne is passionate about designing systems, teams, and experiences that don’t just ship faster, but ship smarter.
A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.
At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.
In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.
If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nathan C (00:00):
Hello and welcome to The Glow Up! I'm Nathan C and
today I'm talking with DwayneKing, CEO and Co-Founder of
Rutabaga.
Dwayne, it is so good to talkwith you today.
Thanks for joining me! Could youtell us a little bit about who
you are and what you do atRutabaga?
Dwayne (00:16):
Yeah, yeah.
We're a early stage startup.
We're a decision intelligenceengine.
So really what that means is wehelp companies gather all their
qualitative insights about thecustomers, bring'em into one
place, and make them actionableso they can use it to drive
decisions about the roadmaps,marketing campaigns.
Companies have talked for a longtime about being customer
centric, and we're really tryingto help companies do that by
(00:36):
taking what's unactionable dataright now, making it actionable
and putting it in the workstreams that they're using
already so that they havecustomer data at the ready.
Nathan C (00:45):
One of the things, that you just said that's like
one of my favorite topics is,how do you turn customer
insights into like, data andaction that everybody on the
team can use?
What's your approach and whatwas the problem you noticed and
set out to solve there?
Dwayne (01:04):
I think there's a couple of things to think about on
that.
Number one, you know, I observedin my past work so often that
the company would be doingsomething wrong.
You would find data that wouldsupport that.
Everybody would see the data andagree we're doing it wrong and
go back doing what they weredoing.
And so I started working on waysto, in an analog way, work with
(01:26):
the team to like start driving'em in the right direction.
That was one of the earlythoughts how can I digitize this
and do it at scale instead of mein an analog way?
And so there's a few things thatwe have there.
And one is putting somestructure to that, so instead of
it just being data, how do westart to take evidence, turn in
insights and insights intosomething that's actually
(01:46):
actionable?
What are we trying to accomplishas a company and what does the
company want and where's thatwin-win?
How do we get there?
Part of what we're gonna do withRutabaga is with all that data,
what are some opportunityspaces?
And then how can we use the datato simulate possibilities, to
weed out the bad ideas reallyquickly and figure out what
those good ideas are to go truthtest in the world.
(02:09):
Then you actually have, insteadof it just being data, you have
ideas that you can test and thenactively act on'em.
Nathan C (02:15):
As a marketer, there's really no shortage of data
inputs.
I'm getting comments on socialmedia or not getting comments on
social media.
I can look at my marketingdashboards.
There might be a product teamand a research team that's also
reviewing and adding data to ourunderstanding about the
(02:36):
customer.
But this point that you broughtup of like, okay, so now what
can I do about it?
And Then I love this part evenfurther of like taking that one
step where it's like, not justwhat are the options, but like
these are the ones with a highlikelihood to work.
Or these are ones that are, youknow, hit an internal threshold
(02:57):
for like worth testing.
Amazing! I'm curious like whatgot you started as a founder
and, what was your origin storyof understanding this pain point
and deciding to turn it into acompany or a solution?
Dwayne (03:14):
I wish there was like that blinding insight, you know,
like that one moment of like,"Ohmy God, I need to do this!" But
it actually just kind of evolvedover time.
So originally I used to have aconsultancy, and we primarily
worked with enterprise, whichmeant getting into enterprise is
hard'cause you gotta go throughprocurement teams and
procurement teams hate smallconsultancies.
Like they want, to like put itall in one big consultant, you
(03:34):
know what I mean?
So you're just like, getting inis really hard.
And so once you have a new logo,it means like you'd get a whole
bunch of customers, as manycustomers you can under that one
logo.
And the number of times I wouldget a call,"Hey Dwayne, how much
budget should I set aside tolook into x?" And that my answer
would be, well, don't set asideany budget because I just did
this for your group over here.
(03:55):
Go call them and get that reportbecause it answers almost the
exact question you're asking.
And even if, even if it's notthe exact question, you're gonna
ask me better questions if youread that report first,'cause
it's gonna answer, it's gonnagive you more context so you're
asking better questions.
And it really started, and thathappened a lot.
And I started to realize thatwithin an enterprise, like
unless you do the research,commission the research, or know
(04:19):
the person that does theresearch, you have no idea that
it happens.
And like if they hadn't calledme, that would've been another
couple hundred thousand dollarsthey spent to redo the exact
same research.
That was kind of like theinitial seed of the idea of
like, can't we could consolidatethis in a way that people could
make this searchable?
But then it started growing moreof I started to see when I moved
after I left my consultancy andwent in-house, started to see
(04:42):
the lack of action, how hard itwas to move people even when
they could see the evidence thatthey were going on the wrong
path and that you had to paintthe path for them like that,
that was the problem, even whenthey could see the way to go, it
was that they couldn't see theway to go.
They, they saw they were on thewrong path, but they didn't know
the way to go and having to beable to paint out that path for
'em.
And so that was really kind ofthe pieces that started to come
together to help me understandthat Rutabaga needed to be a
(05:03):
thing.
Nathan C (05:03):
You said at the top you're like, man, it would be so
easy if there was like a single"aha!" moment where like the
solution was just clear.
But like, I would argue thatlike a major premise of The Glow
Up is to dispel that exact ideathat like a founder has an idea,
it's perfect out of the box,they go make the company slam
(05:26):
dunk, everybody gets an exit,right?
And like what you described isthis, sounds like kind of a data
driven, iterative approach tolike seeing a pain in the
market, understanding it fromnew perspectives, being able to
build that experience that youhave from your prior roles into
really coming up with animmaculate solution that
(05:48):
understands all these pieces.
Actually, I wanna go back tothis idea that you said, because
this is so huge, right?
That unless you're the persondoing the research who asked for
somebody to do the research orwere like somehow directly
invested in that researchhappening, you probably aren't
(06:13):
getting the most you could outof that institutional knowledge.
The first thing that I thoughtof, right?
Especially in startups,especially in enterprises that
want to do innovation, right?
An executive may be, you know,like average executive time in
an enterprise is somewherebetween like 18 months to like
(06:34):
three or five years.
It's really not that long andoften it is shorter than
innovative, like launching aproduct or, you know, building
from phase one to phase three.
And so the narrative and likethe basis for like, why is this
product doing what it is?
Where are we going?
What is the future?
(06:54):
And there's like usually one guyor gal, you know, they're a
producer, a project managerwho's like waving the flag
saying,"Hey, this was supposedto be a thing!" I just love this
idea that like, by collectingdata and insights by, learning
from it and sharing it widely,you can start to really maintain
(07:16):
the value of work that's alreadydone.
And ideally, right where youcame at the very top was how can
you learn and grow and iteratefaster?
Right?
And that to me is such gold whenyou think about product teams
who are facing the kinds ofchallenges they are today,
right?
Faster, faster, faster!
Dwayne (07:36):
To a T almost every one of them, I would say every one
of'em, but there's probably beenan exception, have made a
comment to the effect of,"We'rea relationship company and we're
too big to be a relationshipcompany." Meaning like all their
institutional knowledge isshared via relationship, meaning
you have to know somebody inorder to get like that.
(07:56):
And really, at our core whatwe're doing is building a brain
for the company, you know, thatit never forgets, like it always
has a knowledge.
Like you mentioned that rotationof people, like we're building
that memory that can alwaysremember it never forgets
anything.
Nathan C (08:11):
It could be like making better targeted marketing
campaigns.
It could be describing and likefinding product features to go
learn from it.
It could be, you know, long-termroadmap and how you activate,
keep it relevant, sort it.
When you're thinking about yourown business and your roadmap,
how are you measuring theimpacts of this work?
(08:34):
How are you measuring the impactwhen you have such a large
vision and can touch so manyparts of a business?
Dwayne (08:41):
Yeah.
I can tell you we've jokednumerous times about the irony
of having to build Rutabagawithout having Rutabaga.
Like this would be so mucheasier to do if we had the tool.
I think, one of our firstmeasures that we're really
interested in istime-to-insight.
Because the first tool we'rebuilding is the ingest engine.
Just because in thinking aboutthe sequencing, like we've gotta
(09:02):
get the data in order to be ableto do anything with the data.
So we're like, okay, well thefirst thing we gotta build is
that ingest engine and be ableto help companies take raw data
and get insights with it.
And so that's our first measure,is can we speed the time to
insights?
And so, you know, we've takenwhat would take a person about a
week and now it can take aboutan hour of analysis time.
(09:24):
It's working! Much faster and itworks well.
There's other tools that can dosomething similar, but we feel
like we're definitely best inclass at it.
Nathan C (09:32):
How are you using like AI or other backend processes to
help that ingestion and summaryand inclusion of new data
sources?
How are you giving people awhole week back?
Dwayne (09:44):
Yeah, the first thing that we've focused on is teams
that have an insights team oroutbound PMs or market
researchers.
People whose job is to go outand talk to customers or
potential customers and reallyunderstand what their latent or
unspoken needs are.
They're recording those.
So coming back, ingesting thoserecordings and making sense of
those, finding the insightsinside of those.
(10:06):
That's our first step.
Next step is loading thoseinside of a graph database and
understanding the relationshipand time sequences of those so
that we can start to hook up toother data sources like you had
mentioned, social media, CRM,support systems.
And we can start to traversethat graph and figure out where
data fits inside that.
So then we can start to be acentralized repository for all
your customer data and start allyour unstructured customer data
(10:28):
and put some structure to it.
Nathan C (10:29):
Amazing! Thank you! I'm glad we got to the, using
the graph databases to reallystructure a whole ecosystem of
data, thank you for calling thatout.
You're working in a juicyproblem space where you want
your own tool to help build it.
One of the challenges thatapproach to building a product
kind of presents is youyourselves are experts in the
(10:53):
kind of tool that you want.
How do you make sure then that,your sort of customer desires of
your own tool are in line withand matching your customer's
desires?
How do you make sure that, thatlike inherent understanding of
the problem that you have staysconnected to what the market and
(11:14):
to what customers are lookingfor?
Dwayne (11:16):
Yeah.
We do a lot of research, sobefore we did any pencil to
paper, we did probably 30interviews with folks.
Because that was one of thethings, I saw the problem, I
understood the problem, but Iwanted to make sure I wasn't
building a tool that had anaudience of one you know, like
perfect tool for me, no oneelse! And really understood
(11:38):
like, made sure it had broadapplicability.
But now at this point this is abig part of my job.
This week alone, I think I had15 interviews where early on
they were generative, like whereit was, just talking to me about
your work and what's missing inyour work and how you wanna
work.
And now it's very much moreconcept testing where we're, you
know, putting the tool in frontof people and talk to'em about
(12:00):
how they would use it andgetting feedback and ideas for
what's missing and where wecould go with it.
Do the typical design thinkingthing of like,"What world would
you want?" Down to like, reallylow fidelity prototypes, this is
what we've got and like reallygetting ideas and iterations on
it.
But yeah, I'm talking to peopleevery week about what we're
building, where we want to go,and getting feedback and
thoughts and ideas.
(12:21):
Like dozens a week.
Nathan C (12:22):
It is what I would expect.
It's the behavior I would expectfrom an insights tool, but I I'm
glad to hear it.
And I love the way that you, youframed it out.
I'm curious, have you hadmoments where what you're
hearing from your customers andall of those interviews and
tests, where that's impactedyour understanding of the
(12:42):
product, the space, or even yourroadmap?
Dwayne (12:46):
Yeah weekly, I would say.
I don't think we've ever, youknow, pivoted, it's never been
like, oh, we were building this,when we're building something
else.
But the, sophistication andnuance of what we're building
keeps evolving and changing.
Like I would tell you, it waseven maybe a month or two ago
where we had the revelation thatto build a repository and expect
(13:12):
an organization to come to youis a losing proposition.
We need to be in the workflowswhere decisions are being made.
We need to start buildingrelationships with the tools
where decisions are being madeso that, so that we're not
expecting like that an engineeris making a decision about how
they're gonna build somethingthat they have a requirement
about and are gonna come to usto make that decision that we
(13:32):
need to be in Jira where they'rereading the requirement and
making the decisions and thedesigner, we need to be in
Figma.
It seems obvious now that weknow it, but that's from these
discussions we started thinkingabout where, when, and how
decisions are being made andlike, oh, we need, we need to be
there.
I mean, we still wanna try todrive traffic back because
there's a lot you get from whatwe're building, but also being
(13:55):
in the workflows where and whenthe decisions are being made.
That'd be a big an example.
But then there's like smallerthings of, you know, we talk
about, I forget what, one of myco-founders, talks about version
I think 35 or something.
Like whenever we talk about afeature, she's like,"Yep,
that'll be in version 35!"
Nathan C (14:11):
Oh my gosh! Shorthand for like"Good idea, but not now
friends." But yeah.
Someday.
someday Is so important, right?
Like, I absolutely love it! As amarketer, we talk a lot in like,
show up in your customer'schannel of choice, right?
And often what people thinkabout is like be on the social
media platform that yourcustomer is in.
(14:32):
But what you brought up, I thinkis even more precise and
salient, right?
Which is this idea that, ifyou're working with busy
professionals at an enterprisewhere new tools are real hard to
implement, adoption is real hardto, you know, get.
Getting people to care aboutsomething enough to like engage
(14:55):
with a new technology is veryhard! What are ways that you can
reduce that barrier?
Where am I using artificialintelligence?
AI that was in the tools thatI'm already using, right?
So like I use Descript to editmy podcast and there's an AI
that pulls out all the ahs andums from what I do.
I didn't want to take my videofiles and put it through CapCut
(15:17):
or some other video editing justso that I could like have a
clean transcript.
That sort of integration oflike, bring the value to me! I
signed up for Canva because it'sAI background removal, right?
Something that, like when Istarted in marketing, somebody
had a job to like cut out, youknow, people from photographs.
(15:39):
Canva is a one click and I'mdone! And like that utility is
so fast, it's so immediate.
It's in the workflow that I'mtrying to do.
I love that tool and I pay morefor it because it has what I
need.
And also when you think aboutthis fragmented ecosystem,
right?
If you need everybody to come toyour platform to get value
(16:00):
you're asking people to spreadtheir attention.
And if you can show up with thatinsight, you know, like the idea
of, could you have insightsattached to a Jira ticket?
Oh my goodness! You know, asmart front-end developer wants
to know why they're doingsomething.
A marketer wants to know whatare the motivations for the
(16:21):
person they're talking to, andif you can start to highlight
that in place?! I'm gonna finishthe commercial that I apparently
decided to do for Rutabaga!
Dwayne (16:31):
No, no! You could, you can promote us all you want!
Nathan C (16:34):
You can tell as a marketer who cares about data,
this is a tool that I'm into!So, you talked about how you got
here, some of the pains that yousaw and the growth that you're
using to iteratively build thisidea.
I love this idea of Version 35.
Let's think about that future alittle bit.
The name of the show is The GlowUp, and that's a notable
(16:56):
transformation.
So as you have this stepwiseapproach, what's the big goal in
the next six months?
What are you hoping to just slamdunk?
Dwayne (17:05):
Yeah.
Well we're you know, we're earlystage, right now we're in like a
call it an invite- only meaning,we're not generally available.
You can't go to the site andlike sign up.
It's selective in that like we,we have this like certain group
that we want, but we wanna makesure it's people that understand
the stage we're in and are in itto be like a design partner, not
just use the tool and and notgive us feedback.
(17:26):
So in the next six months,really getting to be GA and
start to scale the business isour big goal.
Instead of some of thatimmediate tangibility of like
really getting into market andstarting to scale the business,
I guess is kind of the thing.
Nathan C (17:39):
You know, Dwayne you said something that I wanna push
back just a tiny bit on, right?
Like you were kind ofapologizing for being in this
closed alpha, right?
And I honestly think, one of thepieces of advice that you get as
a founder so often, right, is ifyour audience is everyone, your
audience is no one.
(18:00):
And I think it's incrediblysmart to make sure you're
connecting with folks who canuse the tool.
There is nothing moredisappointing, as somebody who's
working in business trying toget something done, sees a
software that seems like it'sgonna solve all their problems,
and then it's not ready forwhere they are.
(18:21):
So, while it is painful andwhile so much of the momentum in
a startup conversation is abouthow do we grow, how do we get to
customers?
I honestly think it's worth someapplause that you're focused on
actually knowing and connectingwith folks who can get value
today.
Right?
Because if they get value,they're gonna tell their
friends, right?
(18:42):
These are tight knitcommunities.
Dwayne (18:43):
Yeah.
I think it,"invite-only" justsounds kind of snooty and it's
not meant to be snooty.
It's more of just like, I wannamake sure that you understand
what you're getting into andwe're a good fit for each other.
We're early stage so it's notgonna be as slick and polished
as some other software.
We have that expectation oflike, you know, we're looking
for feedback.
We want somebody that's gonnalike be on our design advisory
board and, help us grow and bebetter and you know, so yeah.
Nathan C (19:06):
Those are the kind of partnerships that can be really
cool, right?
Like when you have thatopportunity to really impact and
get something that, helps youmove the needle.
Fantastic six month goals! Getto GA.
So, to those goals and the restof the work that you're doing at
Rutabaga, is there anything thatyou're looking for, whether it's
partnerships, testers, research,or more?
Dwayne (19:31):
Yeah, I'd say a couple of things.
One, if somebody wants to be onthe invite only, like if you
think, you have a need to,ingest research and be able to
make sense of it quickly and arewilling to provide feedback and
stuff, gimme a call.
Love to talk with you and see ifthere's a good fit there.
Also, if, you just wanna take alook at what we're doing and
provide feedback, like I said, Italk to dozens of people a week
(19:53):
and, I'm always looking forpeople tell me what they hate
about it, what they love aboutit, ideas they have about how it
could be better.
You know, just, I'm looking forreally candid feedback all the
time.
Like I sincerely, right now ourquote unquote sales is all
pretty much inbound, where we'reputting out thought leadership
and when someone follows us onLinkedIn, I write them a note
(20:14):
and say,"Hey, thanks forfollowing.
Really appreciate it." Oh yeah,that's probably how we got
connected! And say,"If you'dlike to take a look behind the
scenes, I'd love to show you."One of three things happens, and
they're all good.
The worst thing that can happenis I get feedback and you know,
as a early stage founder, that'salways good.
What usually ends up happeningis I also get an advocate out of
it.
They're like, oh, I'd love tohelp.
I got people I can introduce youto, or whatever.
(20:34):
And then sometimes they'reactually a decision maker that's
needs, needs us.
It's like,"Oh, well how do I getsigned up with Rutabaga?" And
so, any of those three things,it's a win! I'd love to just
talk to people'cause you knowyou might end up loving what we
have, even if you can't use itand end up being an advocate.
Nathan C (20:49):
This is really fantastic advice that any
founder can use, right?
Be enthusiastic, connect withpeople who show interest and
when you have a simple,relatable offer, for the right
folks, you can learn so muchfrom how people engage.
One of the things that I love tomake time for on The Glow Up is
a community spotlight or shoutout, to groups doing good work.
(21:14):
Maybe they're an impact org,nonprofit or other.
Is there somebody that you'dlike to give a, or some group
that you'd like to give a shoutout to?
Dwayne (21:22):
Yeah.
So our logo and mascot is arhinoceros and I have a fondness
for rhinos.
The Rhino Recovery Fund, I'llthrow out a note for them'cause
they're an endangered speciesand they need help.
So I'll throw out a shout outfor the Rhino Recovery Fund
'cause I think they're doinggood work.
Nathan C (21:37):
This is the first shout out to one of the largest
animals on the planet.
And I love the connection tosustainability and advocacy
groups.
Thank you! If people wanna learnmore, if they wanna engage with
you as an early tester orprovide some feedback if they
think they're an insights drivenprofessional, who could use a
(22:01):
tool like this, how can peoplelearn more?
How can they connect with you?
Dwayne (22:04):
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, super easy.
You know, thelinkedin.com/in/dwayne, and then
my email is justDwayne@rutabaga.app, so get me
there as well.
Nathan C (22:16):
Amazing! Well Dwayne, those who know me on The Glow Up
know that consumer insights, aniterative process, bringing the
customer and research toeveryone on the team and
building a product that's bothaligned with its customers as
well as where technology andtrends are taking us are just my
(22:39):
favorite topics to talk about.
I'll probably have to follow upwith you to learn more about
getting my hands into someinsights tools like this,
because I'm just so inspired tosee what could I learn from my
research and consumer data asI'm growing and iterating on
what Awesome Future does.
(22:59):
I could see it being bothsomething I used to build my
company as well as support thecustomers that I work with.
It's a bit of a passion episodefor me today, but I am so
thrilled to have you.
Thank you so much for joining uson The Glow Up!
Dwayne (23:12):
Thanks! This was fun.
I appreciate you having me andputting in a good word for
Rutabaga! Really appreciate it!
Nathan C (23:17):
Heck yeah! I learned about Rutabaga because I was at
a networking event here inPortland and somebody said,"You
do consumer insights?! I know atool that you should probably
know about!" So that leadershipseems to be working.
Dwayne (23:31):
Good to hear!
Nathan C (23:32):
It's great to talk with you, Dwayne! Thanks again
for joining us on the call.
Hello and welcome to The Glow Up! I'm Nathan C and
today I'm talking with DwayneKing, CEO and Co-Founder of
Rutabaga.
Dwayne, it is so good to talkwith you today.
Thanks for joining me! Could youtell us a little bit about who
you are and what you do atRutabaga?
Dwayne (00:16):
Yeah, yeah.
We're a early stage startup.
We're a decision intelligenceengine.
So really what that means is wehelp companies gather all their
qualitative insights about thecustomers, bring'em into one
place, and make them actionableso they can use it to drive
decisions about the roadmaps,marketing campaigns.
Companies have talked for a longtime about being customer
centric, and we're really tryingto help companies do that by
(00:36):
taking what's unactionable dataright now, making it actionable
and putting it in the workstreams that they're using
already so that they havecustomer data at the ready.
Nathan C (00:45):
One of the things, that you just said that's like
one of my favorite topics is,how do you turn customer
insights into like, data andaction that everybody on the
team can use?
What's your approach and whatwas the problem you noticed and
set out to solve there?
Dwayne (01:04):
I think there's a couple of things to think about on
that.
Number one, you know, I observedin my past work so often that
the company would be doingsomething wrong.
You would find data that wouldsupport that.
Everybody would see the data andagree we're doing it wrong and
go back doing what they weredoing.
And so I started working on waysto, in an analog way, work with
(01:26):
the team to like start driving'em in the right direction.
That was one of the earlythoughts how can I digitize this
and do it at scale instead of mein an analog way?
And so there's a few things thatwe have there.
And one is putting somestructure to that, so instead of
it just being data, how do westart to take evidence, turn in
insights and insights intosomething that's actually
(01:46):
actionable?
What are we trying to accomplishas a company and what does the
company want and where's thatwin-win?
How do we get there?
Part of what we're gonna do withRutabaga is with all that data,
what are some opportunityspaces?
And then how can we use the datato simulate possibilities, to
weed out the bad ideas reallyquickly and figure out what
those good ideas are to go truthtest in the world.
(02:09):
Then you actually have, insteadof it just being data, you have
ideas that you can test and thenactively act on'em.
Nathan C (02:15):
As a marketer, there's really no shortage of data
inputs.
I'm getting comments on socialmedia or not getting comments on
social media.
I can look at my marketingdashboards.
There might be a product teamand a research team that's also
reviewing and adding data to ourunderstanding about the
(02:36):
customer.
But this point that you broughtup of like, okay, so now what
can I do about it?
And Then I love this part evenfurther of like taking that one
step where it's like, not justwhat are the options, but like
these are the ones with a highlikelihood to work.
Or these are ones that are, youknow, hit an internal threshold
(02:57):
for like worth testing.
Amazing! I'm curious like whatgot you started as a founder
and, what was your origin storyof understanding this pain point
and deciding to turn it into acompany or a solution?
Dwayne (03:14):
I wish there was like that blinding insight, you know,
like that one moment of like,"Ohmy God, I need to do this!" But
it actually just kind of evolvedover time.
So originally I used to have aconsultancy, and we primarily
worked with enterprise, whichmeant getting into enterprise is
hard'cause you gotta go throughprocurement teams and
procurement teams hate smallconsultancies.
Like they want, to like put itall in one big consultant, you
(03:34):
know what I mean?
So you're just like, getting inis really hard.
And so once you have a new logo,it means like you'd get a whole
bunch of customers, as manycustomers you can under that one
logo.
And the number of times I wouldget a call,"Hey Dwayne, how much
budget should I set aside tolook into x?" And that my answer
would be, well, don't set asideany budget because I just did
this for your group over here.
(03:55):
Go call them and get that reportbecause it answers almost the
exact question you're asking.
And even if, even if it's notthe exact question, you're gonna
ask me better questions if youread that report first,'cause
it's gonna answer, it's gonnagive you more context so you're
asking better questions.
And it really started, and thathappened a lot.
And I started to realize thatwithin an enterprise, like
unless you do the research,commission the research, or know
(04:19):
the person that does theresearch, you have no idea that
it happens.
And like if they hadn't calledme, that would've been another
couple hundred thousand dollarsthey spent to redo the exact
same research.
That was kind of like theinitial seed of the idea of
like, can't we could consolidatethis in a way that people could
make this searchable?
But then it started growing moreof I started to see when I moved
after I left my consultancy andwent in-house, started to see
(04:42):
the lack of action, how hard itwas to move people even when
they could see the evidence thatthey were going on the wrong
path and that you had to paintthe path for them like that,
that was the problem, even whenthey could see the way to go, it
was that they couldn't see theway to go.
They, they saw they were on thewrong path, but they didn't know
the way to go and having to beable to paint out that path for
'em.
And so that was really kind ofthe pieces that started to come
together to help me understandthat Rutabaga needed to be a
(05:03):
thing.
Nathan C (05:03):
You said at the top you're like, man, it would be so
easy if there was like a single"aha!" moment where like the
solution was just clear.
But like, I would argue thatlike a major premise of The Glow
Up is to dispel that exact ideathat like a founder has an idea,
it's perfect out of the box,they go make the company slam
(05:26):
dunk, everybody gets an exit,right?
And like what you described isthis, sounds like kind of a data
driven, iterative approach tolike seeing a pain in the
market, understanding it fromnew perspectives, being able to
build that experience that youhave from your prior roles into
really coming up with animmaculate solution that
(05:48):
understands all these pieces.
Actually, I wanna go back tothis idea that you said, because
this is so huge, right?
That unless you're the persondoing the research who asked for
somebody to do the research orwere like somehow directly
invested in that researchhappening, you probably aren't
(06:13):
getting the most you could outof that institutional knowledge.
The first thing that I thoughtof, right?
Especially in startups,especially in enterprises that
want to do innovation, right?
An executive may be, you know,like average executive time in
an enterprise is somewherebetween like 18 months to like
(06:34):
three or five years.
It's really not that long andoften it is shorter than
innovative, like launching aproduct or, you know, building
from phase one to phase three.
And so the narrative and likethe basis for like, why is this
product doing what it is?
Where are we going?
What is the future?
(06:54):
And there's like usually one guyor gal, you know, they're a
producer, a project managerwho's like waving the flag
saying,"Hey, this was supposedto be a thing!" I just love this
idea that like, by collectingdata and insights by, learning
from it and sharing it widely,you can start to really maintain
(07:16):
the value of work that's alreadydone.
And ideally, right where youcame at the very top was how can
you learn and grow and iteratefaster?
Right?
And that to me is such gold whenyou think about product teams
who are facing the kinds ofchallenges they are today,
right?
Faster, faster, faster!
Dwayne (07:36):
To a T almost every one of them, I would say every one
of'em, but there's probably beenan exception, have made a
comment to the effect of,"We'rea relationship company and we're
too big to be a relationshipcompany." Meaning like all their
institutional knowledge isshared via relationship, meaning
you have to know somebody inorder to get like that.
(07:56):
And really, at our core whatwe're doing is building a brain
for the company, you know, thatit never forgets, like it always
has a knowledge.
Like you mentioned that rotationof people, like we're building
that memory that can alwaysremember it never forgets
anything.
Nathan C (08:11):
It could be like making better targeted marketing
campaigns.
It could be describing and likefinding product features to go
learn from it.
It could be, you know, long-termroadmap and how you activate,
keep it relevant, sort it.
When you're thinking about yourown business and your roadmap,
how are you measuring theimpacts of this work?
(08:34):
How are you measuring the impactwhen you have such a large
vision and can touch so manyparts of a business?
Dwayne (08:41):
Yeah.
I can tell you we've jokednumerous times about the irony
of having to build Rutabagawithout having Rutabaga.
Like this would be so mucheasier to do if we had the tool.
I think, one of our firstmeasures that we're really
interested in istime-to-insight.
Because the first tool we'rebuilding is the ingest engine.
Just because in thinking aboutthe sequencing, like we've gotta
(09:02):
get the data in order to be ableto do anything with the data.
So we're like, okay, well thefirst thing we gotta build is
that ingest engine and be ableto help companies take raw data
and get insights with it.
And so that's our first measure,is can we speed the time to
insights?
And so, you know, we've takenwhat would take a person about a
week and now it can take aboutan hour of analysis time.
(09:24):
It's working! Much faster and itworks well.
There's other tools that can dosomething similar, but we feel
like we're definitely best inclass at it.
Nathan C (09:32):
How are you using like AI or other backend processes to
help that ingestion and summaryand inclusion of new data
sources?
How are you giving people awhole week back?
Dwayne (09:44):
Yeah, the first thing that we've focused on is teams
that have an insights team oroutbound PMs or market
researchers.
People whose job is to go outand talk to customers or
potential customers and reallyunderstand what their latent or
unspoken needs are.
They're recording those.
So coming back, ingesting thoserecordings and making sense of
those, finding the insightsinside of those.
(10:06):
That's our first step.
Next step is loading thoseinside of a graph database and
understanding the relationshipand time sequences of those so
that we can start to hook up toother data sources like you had
mentioned, social media, CRM,support systems.
And we can start to traversethat graph and figure out where
data fits inside that.
So then we can start to be acentralized repository for all
your customer data and start allyour unstructured customer data
(10:28):
and put some structure to it.
Nathan C (10:29):
Amazing! Thank you! I'm glad we got to the, using
the graph databases to reallystructure a whole ecosystem of
data, thank you for calling thatout.
You're working in a juicyproblem space where you want
your own tool to help build it.
One of the challenges thatapproach to building a product
kind of presents is youyourselves are experts in the
(10:53):
kind of tool that you want.
How do you make sure then that,your sort of customer desires of
your own tool are in line withand matching your customer's
desires?
How do you make sure that, thatlike inherent understanding of
the problem that you have staysconnected to what the market and
(11:14):
to what customers are lookingfor?
Dwayne (11:16):
Yeah.
We do a lot of research, sobefore we did any pencil to
paper, we did probably 30interviews with folks.
Because that was one of thethings, I saw the problem, I
understood the problem, but Iwanted to make sure I wasn't
building a tool that had anaudience of one you know, like
perfect tool for me, no oneelse! And really understood
(11:38):
like, made sure it had broadapplicability.
But now at this point this is abig part of my job.
This week alone, I think I had15 interviews where early on
they were generative, like whereit was, just talking to me about
your work and what's missing inyour work and how you wanna
work.
And now it's very much moreconcept testing where we're, you
know, putting the tool in frontof people and talk to'em about
(12:00):
how they would use it andgetting feedback and ideas for
what's missing and where wecould go with it.
Do the typical design thinkingthing of like,"What world would
you want?" Down to like, reallylow fidelity prototypes, this is
what we've got and like reallygetting ideas and iterations on
it.
But yeah, I'm talking to peopleevery week about what we're
building, where we want to go,and getting feedback and
thoughts and ideas.
(12:21):
Like dozens a week.
Nathan C (12:22):
It is what I would expect.
It's the behavior I would expectfrom an insights tool, but I I'm
glad to hear it.
And I love the way that you, youframed it out.
I'm curious, have you hadmoments where what you're
hearing from your customers andall of those interviews and
tests, where that's impactedyour understanding of the
(12:42):
product, the space, or even yourroadmap?
Dwayne (12:46):
Yeah weekly, I would say.
I don't think we've ever, youknow, pivoted, it's never been
like, oh, we were building this,when we're building something
else.
But the, sophistication andnuance of what we're building
keeps evolving and changing.
Like I would tell you, it waseven maybe a month or two ago
where we had the revelation thatto build a repository and expect
(13:12):
an organization to come to youis a losing proposition.
We need to be in the workflowswhere decisions are being made.
We need to start buildingrelationships with the tools
where decisions are being madeso that, so that we're not
expecting like that an engineeris making a decision about how
they're gonna build somethingthat they have a requirement
about and are gonna come to usto make that decision that we
(13:32):
need to be in Jira where they'rereading the requirement and
making the decisions and thedesigner, we need to be in
Figma.
It seems obvious now that weknow it, but that's from these
discussions we started thinkingabout where, when, and how
decisions are being made andlike, oh, we need, we need to be
there.
I mean, we still wanna try todrive traffic back because
there's a lot you get from whatwe're building, but also being
(13:55):
in the workflows where and whenthe decisions are being made.
That'd be a big an example.
But then there's like smallerthings of, you know, we talk
about, I forget what, one of myco-founders, talks about version
I think 35 or something.
Like whenever we talk about afeature, she's like,"Yep,
that'll be in version 35!"
Nathan C (14:11):
Oh my gosh! Shorthand for like"Good idea, but not now
friends." But yeah.
Someday.
someday Is so important, right?
Like, I absolutely love it! As amarketer, we talk a lot in like,
show up in your customer'schannel of choice, right?
And often what people thinkabout is like be on the social
media platform that yourcustomer is in.
(14:32):
But what you brought up, I thinkis even more precise and
salient, right?
Which is this idea that, ifyou're working with busy
professionals at an enterprisewhere new tools are real hard to
implement, adoption is real hardto, you know, get.
Getting people to care aboutsomething enough to like engage
(14:55):
with a new technology is veryhard! What are ways that you can
reduce that barrier?
Where am I using artificialintelligence?
AI that was in the tools thatI'm already using, right?
So like I use Descript to editmy podcast and there's an AI
that pulls out all the ahs andums from what I do.
I didn't want to take my videofiles and put it through CapCut
(15:17):
or some other video editing justso that I could like have a
clean transcript.
That sort of integration oflike, bring the value to me! I
signed up for Canva because it'sAI background removal, right?
Something that, like when Istarted in marketing, somebody
had a job to like cut out, youknow, people from photographs.
(15:39):
Canva is a one click and I'mdone! And like that utility is
so fast, it's so immediate.
It's in the workflow that I'mtrying to do.
I love that tool and I pay morefor it because it has what I
need.
And also when you think aboutthis fragmented ecosystem,
right?
If you need everybody to come toyour platform to get value
(16:00):
you're asking people to spreadtheir attention.
And if you can show up with thatinsight, you know, like the idea
of, could you have insightsattached to a Jira ticket?
Oh my goodness! You know, asmart front-end developer wants
to know why they're doingsomething.
A marketer wants to know whatare the motivations for the
(16:21):
person they're talking to, andif you can start to highlight
that in place?! I'm gonna finishthe commercial that I apparently
decided to do for Rutabaga!
Dwayne (16:31):
No, no! You could, you can promote us all you want!
Nathan C (16:34):
You can tell as a marketer who cares about data,
this is a tool that I'm into!So, you talked about how you got
here, some of the pains that yousaw and the growth that you're
using to iteratively build thisidea.
I love this idea of Version 35.
Let's think about that future alittle bit.
The name of the show is The GlowUp, and that's a notable
(16:56):
transformation.
So as you have this stepwiseapproach, what's the big goal in
the next six months?
What are you hoping to just slamdunk?
Dwayne (17:05):
Yeah.
Well we're you know, we're earlystage, right now we're in like a
call it an invite- only meaning,we're not generally available.
You can't go to the site andlike sign up.
It's selective in that like we,we have this like certain group
that we want, but we wanna makesure it's people that understand
the stage we're in and are in itto be like a design partner, not
just use the tool and and notgive us feedback.
(17:26):
So in the next six months,really getting to be GA and
start to scale the business isour big goal.
Instead of some of thatimmediate tangibility of like
really getting into market andstarting to scale the business,
I guess is kind of the thing.
Nathan C (17:39):
You know, Dwayne you said something that I wanna push
back just a tiny bit on, right?
Like you were kind ofapologizing for being in this
closed alpha, right?
And I honestly think, one of thepieces of advice that you get as
a founder so often, right, is ifyour audience is everyone, your
audience is no one.
(18:00):
And I think it's incrediblysmart to make sure you're
connecting with folks who canuse the tool.
There is nothing moredisappointing, as somebody who's
working in business trying toget something done, sees a
software that seems like it'sgonna solve all their problems,
and then it's not ready forwhere they are.
(18:21):
So, while it is painful andwhile so much of the momentum in
a startup conversation is abouthow do we grow, how do we get to
customers?
I honestly think it's worth someapplause that you're focused on
actually knowing and connectingwith folks who can get value
today.
Right?
Because if they get value,they're gonna tell their
friends, right?
(18:42):
These are tight knitcommunities.
Dwayne (18:43):
Yeah.
I think it,"invite-only" justsounds kind of snooty and it's
not meant to be snooty.
It's more of just like, I wannamake sure that you understand
what you're getting into andwe're a good fit for each other.
We're early stage so it's notgonna be as slick and polished
as some other software.
We have that expectation oflike, you know, we're looking
for feedback.
We want somebody that's gonnalike be on our design advisory
board and, help us grow and bebetter and you know, so yeah.
Nathan C (19:06):
Those are the kind of partnerships that can be really
cool, right?
Like when you have thatopportunity to really impact and
get something that, helps youmove the needle.
Fantastic six month goals! Getto GA.
So, to those goals and the restof the work that you're doing at
Rutabaga, is there anything thatyou're looking for, whether it's
partnerships, testers, research,or more?
Dwayne (19:31):
Yeah, I'd say a couple of things.
One, if somebody wants to be onthe invite only, like if you
think, you have a need to,ingest research and be able to
make sense of it quickly and arewilling to provide feedback and
stuff, gimme a call.
Love to talk with you and see ifthere's a good fit there.
Also, if, you just wanna take alook at what we're doing and
provide feedback, like I said, Italk to dozens of people a week
(19:53):
and, I'm always looking forpeople tell me what they hate
about it, what they love aboutit, ideas they have about how it
could be better.
You know, just, I'm looking forreally candid feedback all the
time.
Like I sincerely, right now ourquote unquote sales is all
pretty much inbound, where we'reputting out thought leadership
and when someone follows us onLinkedIn, I write them a note
(20:14):
and say,"Hey, thanks forfollowing.
Really appreciate it." Oh yeah,that's probably how we got
connected! And say,"If you'dlike to take a look behind the
scenes, I'd love to show you."One of three things happens, and
they're all good.
The worst thing that can happenis I get feedback and you know,
as a early stage founder, that'salways good.
What usually ends up happeningis I also get an advocate out of
it.
They're like, oh, I'd love tohelp.
I got people I can introduce youto, or whatever.
(20:34):
And then sometimes they'reactually a decision maker that's
needs, needs us.
It's like,"Oh, well how do I getsigned up with Rutabaga?" And
so, any of those three things,it's a win! I'd love to just
talk to people'cause you knowyou might end up loving what we
have, even if you can't use itand end up being an advocate.
Nathan C (20:49):
This is really fantastic advice that any
founder can use, right?
Be enthusiastic, connect withpeople who show interest and
when you have a simple,relatable offer, for the right
folks, you can learn so muchfrom how people engage.
One of the things that I love tomake time for on The Glow Up is
a community spotlight or shoutout, to groups doing good work.
(21:14):
Maybe they're an impact org,nonprofit or other.
Is there somebody that you'dlike to give a, or some group
that you'd like to give a shoutout to?
Dwayne (21:22):
Yeah.
So our logo and mascot is arhinoceros and I have a fondness
for rhinos.
The Rhino Recovery Fund, I'llthrow out a note for them'cause
they're an endangered speciesand they need help.
So I'll throw out a shout outfor the Rhino Recovery Fund
'cause I think they're doinggood work.
Nathan C (21:37):
This is the first shout out to one of the largest
animals on the planet.
And I love the connection tosustainability and advocacy
groups.
Thank you! If people wanna learnmore, if they wanna engage with
you as an early tester orprovide some feedback if they
think they're an insights drivenprofessional, who could use a
(22:01):
tool like this, how can peoplelearn more?
How can they connect with you?
Dwayne (22:04):
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, super easy.
You know, thelinkedin.com/in/dwayne, and then
my email is justDwayne@rutabaga.app, so get me
there as well.
Nathan C (22:16):
Amazing! Well Dwayne, those who know me on The Glow Up
know that consumer insights, aniterative process, bringing the
customer and research toeveryone on the team and
building a product that's bothaligned with its customers as
well as where technology andtrends are taking us are just my
(22:39):
favorite topics to talk about.
I'll probably have to follow upwith you to learn more about
getting my hands into someinsights tools like this,
because I'm just so inspired tosee what could I learn from my
research and consumer data asI'm growing and iterating on
what Awesome Future does.
(22:59):
I could see it being bothsomething I used to build my
company as well as support thecustomers that I work with.
It's a bit of a passion episodefor me today, but I am so
thrilled to have you.
Thank you so much for joining uson The Glow Up!
Dwayne (23:12):
Thanks! This was fun.
I appreciate you having me andputting in a good word for
Rutabaga! Really appreciate it!
Nathan C (23:17):
Heck yeah! I learned about Rutabaga because I was at
a networking event here inPortland and somebody said,"You
do consumer insights?! I know atool that you should probably
know about!" So that leadershipseems to be working.
Dwayne (23:31):
Good to hear!
Nathan C (23:32):
It's great to talk with you, Dwayne! Thanks again
for joining us on the call.
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