Tell me about your vision.
Ah, excellent response.
So I'll say this, I built five, four companies.
I built more than four companies,
but four successful, relatively successful companies.
And this is the fifth.
And my vision for this was, it's a give back tour.
And so my real vision for this
is to make this so successful
that it contributes to the ecosystem.
A whole bunch of people who have lived through the ups
and downs of an early stage company to a mature company
and are able through that experience
to have a better chance of starting their own,
or at least getting a great position within a company
that would best suit where they wanna be in their career.
But to really share my experiences,
both with my own team, but with other teams,
because I mentor a lot of entrepreneurs.
So it really is a give back tour.
In terms of economics and goals, there's lots of that.
But I work basically on three-year cycles.
And so the vision, what I have right now
in terms of a company is what I would describe
as a travel agency if you're looking
for an outsourced agency.
So in the old days before the internet,
when you wanted to go on a trip somewhere in the world,
you would go to a travel agent
who would have been to those places,
knows where to stay, knows what restaurants to go to
and all those things.
And when you're looking for outsourcing,
there are so many choices around the world
and in your own city, let alone in your own country,
that it's overwhelming.
So we've built a big database on who's good at what.
And then we can guide them and give them a short list
based on not only who's good at what,
but who has the right team at the time of asking.
Because even a good company that might be appropriate
for based on their experience and what they have on paper
and the people that have worked in that company,
those people might not be available when they're asking.
So it's a waste of time to talk to them.
It's only to the people that have the right people
who have built the same projects in the same tech stack
and are available at the time of asking.
So we use a lot of data to get to a small list of companies
that are best suited and then we do that.
That's a lot of handholding through a process.
So when I say we're a travel agent,
we really know how to get through all that data,
get through all the resumes, get through everything.
But we're automating so much of that process now
thanks to AI that we can slowly lift that
into what I would describe more as
going from travel agency to Expedia.
And so at that point, and because engineers
who are generally our customers, lead engineers,
they don't like to talk to salespeople and be guided through.
They like to solve their own problems
and they wanna do it all on their own.
But there's so many places you can go wrong still,
like just how you interview an agency.
There's so many tips and tricks.
So until we've sort of worked through that
and productized that in some way that allows them,
it's I would call it bunkers, we will be moving
from high touch to medium touch to no touch.
That's the vision for the company.
And my vision is to be the top company
that people go to when they wanna outsource
for engineering or data science,
not on an individual basis, but from a B2B basis.
So you get a whole team or you get a company
that has a team, et cetera.
There's lots of companies that do individual stuff,
like job work and others, but that's the vision.
Okay, well, that goes to my next question, Sean.
Where did this vision of you come from?
Experience, like I said, I built a couple of tech companies.
Finding engineers when you're looking to hire them
is a slow process and good engineers
are always already working.
So you have to pull them out of where they're working.
And sometimes you need speed and expertise at the same time.
You need to get those people in now.
I've got a client who needs to get this built
or else we're not gonna get the sale.
My technical debt is so bad, I need to get rid of it,
but all my engineers are working on these other clients.
For many reasons, people need to outsource.
And when you do, unlike finding engineers to hire,
it's the opposite problem.
I describe it as going from a desert out there
for finding a good engineer to water, water everywhere,
but not a drop to drink.
And so the vision is that, yeah, there's upwork
and there's those things.
And hiring individuals and putting them together
is not necessarily making a team.
And at the other end of the extreme,
you've got the bigs, Capgemini, Infosys,
everybody else who are the big
digital transformation companies, IBM, Deloitte,
but in the middle where most people live,
small and medium sized enterprises,
high growth tech companies, there is nowhere you can go
to filter out who's good at what
and know who's available in that company
that's good or not good.
You have to do your own due diligence.
And so that's the challenge.
You're busy, you're growing, you need speed
and you need quality, you need it now.
So, but you don't have time
because you don't have time,
you can't do all the due diligence on all these companies.
So you don't have good data.
And without good data, you can't make a really good decision.
And that's where the vision came from.
It was offer that service as an opportunity.
And what's great about it is the matching,
why, you know, what's amazing is these engineers sort of say,
hey, you know, I got this call because my CEO told me,
you know, met you and said, you're a good guy,
but you know, I'm only taking this call
because I was told by my CEO, right?
Reluctant to, you know, I've heard from recruiters
and agencies all, you know, I get a hundred emails
from all these agencies a day.
I don't, why do I want to talk to you?
We're not an agency and we're not a recruiter.
We're helping you get through that mess.
They slowly ease up and then they get to the point
where when they finally get to the last sort of three
companies that we're interviewing for,
to present to them, they're like, whoa,
this could actually work.
And then when they actually sign them on
and actually go through the first sprint,
they're like, they call me and go, I need 10 more.
That's awesome. Like give me more.
And so the customer, the fit is amazing.
And so we're very happy that we're making both the vendor,
many of which on the vendor side, you know,
agencies will do anything to get business.
And they're generally capable of, you know,
massaging things or trying to make things fit,
but I don't want square pegs trying to fit in round holes.
And so I want, I find the round pegs that fit that hole.
And we, and we find five or six of them,
and maybe it's red, blue, and green, who knows,
but the point is the client gets the options,
the right fit.
And when the right, when it's the right fit, it's magic.
Like they just love the outcome.
And the agency loves the outcome
because they love to work with that client.
It's not just technical fit.
It's also cultural fit, work style fit,
and everything else that we filter for.
So what I love about it is that happy ending is that
the companies really work well together.
That is amazing.
That is, that's a great, unique vision.
I have to say, I have never heard it described it that way.
Cause I have, I get contacted by agencies all the time.
Hey, we got a job for you here.
You got a job for you there.
I'm like, I don't know.
I don't think you know what I need.
I don't think you know what I want, right?
Exactly.
That is amazing.
I think you've kind of answered this question,
but would you say that is also your lie
of why you do it, what you do?
Yeah, because it's so unfortunate.
That's just all, for all these agencies,
I feel bad for them because some of them
are really, really good and they deserve to get some work.
But in the inbox of all their people they're pushing to,
it's just white noise and no one's paying
any attention to it.
So how do they get the business?
How do they cut through that traffic?
And that's one of the whys is to help the agencies
get better management and get the real business
that they actually deserve.
But we don't represent the agencies to be clear.
We don't take any money from agencies.
And for the client, oh my gosh, I mean, how much time,
like it's not the fact that you would waste
three to four months doing the research
to find the agency only to find out
that you got a hoodwinked and it was a bait and switch.
They brought some people to the interview
and they're not available at the time of the contract.
Oh, funny how that worked out.
But I've got these other people who are just as good,
just as good, that they just recruited
to get this contract going.
And so you end up with this, it's just like a startup,
you know, you've heard of the cycle of a startup
that's sort of this hope and aspirational period
where you get your first customers
and then you get this trough of despair as it's called.
And then the storm was here.
Yeah, so the same thing happens with most clients
in that when they go on their own,
they get really pumped based on the call they had
with the CEO or the CTO of the agency
and they sound like they're gonna be perfect.
They know exactly what we need to do.
But that's the thing is they take those calls
all day long every day.
So they know exactly what to say to make them sound good.
And the vendor, the buyer is, you know,
maybe the first time they've ever done,
gone through this process.
They don't really have a good process to figure things out.
So their expectations go up, the reality is down here.
And then after a couple of sprints, they go,
oh my gosh, we made a big mistake.
And either they cut loose after a couple of months,
or they just plow on and try and make it work.
I've sunk so much time into this,
I'm gonna make it happen.
I'm gonna train these guys how to understand our business.
That should never happen.
And that's the why.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.