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So Ideal Scale, please share with me a little bit about your business.

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Sure. So Ideal Scale is a business that's been around 15 years.

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We are the largest innovation software company on the planet.

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Our customers include major organizations like Pfizer, Comcast, US Post, etc.

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And what our software does is it helps

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these large complex organizations innovate faster, better and more systematically.

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OK, OK. And you said it's been around for 15 years.

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Yeah. So I'm not the founder.

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I'm a professional CEO that was brought in.

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But yeah, we've been around 15 years.

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We're in seven countries now and continuing to grow.

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OK, so you are the CEO.

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And how long have you been the CEO?

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Two years. I was hired from another company a couple of years ago.

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All right. Do me a favor.

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Just tell me about your journey, because I see that you're still in the corporate

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world and you got to a big place.

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So I'd love to hear about it.

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Yeah.

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And so my quick background is grew up in a mix of Canada and India.

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Went to Dartmouth for undergraduate business school at Harvard.

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I spent the first 10 years of my career on Wall Street as a professional investor

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doing private equity deals and stock transactions.

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And then for the last four or five years, I have been a professional CEO.

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So either private equity firms or

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entrepreneurs who are ready to retire hire me to run their businesses for them

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and help take that business to the next stage of growth.

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OK, OK.

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And you said that so clear and concise.

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I love that.

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One thing about the transition that you're making.

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And of course, we speak to often mostly

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entrepreneurs, business owners, book writers, authors, all that.

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However, with your journey, what keeps you in this field of CEO?

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And and and then what made the move to ideal scale?

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What was that move like?

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Sure. So what I what motivates me in life and gets me up in the morning

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professionally is building something and making a difference.

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And I don't mean making a difference in a fuzzy, like, you know, save the world type

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thing, but I like knowing that I created jobs or that I made an impact in my tiny

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little community doesn't have to be going changing the world.

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I like knowing that I mattered.

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And at ideal scale, I get that feeling every day.

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Right. I get to create jobs.

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The average tech company has fired 30 percent of their employees in the last two

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years. We've grown 30 percent.

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So I feel really good that my employees have jobs.

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They get to pay for their families, their homes, whatever.

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I like that I get to create our product, actually creates a lot of value for our

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customers. I could see that every day.

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They get to develop cool ideas with our software.

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They become better companies, better

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government organizations, Doctors Without Borders uses us.

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So we make a difference like our product makes a difference in the world.

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And what drew me to Ideascale specifically was two things.

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Number one, it was a tremendous professional opportunity.

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Right. When you are reasonably young and someone gives you a call to be CEO of a

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successful company, that's an awesome career opportunity for me personally.

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But then secondly, what Ideascale does, its product is something I really believe

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in because it flips the entire idea of whose ideas matter in a big

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organization. It's the boss's ideas that matter.

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No one cares about the junior guys or the girl in the side light office.

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Our software makes it so that the best ideas win, no matter if they're from

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someone on the other side of the world or someone very junior or someone who looks

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a little bit different, best ideas win rather than loudest voices.

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Yes, absolutely.

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And I love that ending.

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The best idea wins rather than the loudest voices.

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And you're correct.

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It's interesting how you have such passion behind it.

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And as a leader and CEO, what do you find that you add to your company that keeps

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the employees and it keeps it growing?

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Sure. So as I think about my strengths and weaknesses,

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I think that there's two areas where I'm truly world class or really, really good

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at. Number one is given my finance background, I understand how businesses work,

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whether it be a hardware store or pharmaceutical company.

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I understand how businesses, all the pieces fit together, how it makes money,

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how it generates profits.

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And you obviously need profits in order to be able to pay your employees to build

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a product to your customer or whatever. Right.

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That's number one. I understand how businesses work really well.

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Number two is I think I'm one of the rare

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individuals that has worked in almost every part of a business.

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I've worked in HR and finance and sales and marketing and operations and technology.

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And so I understand how all these pieces

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fit together rather than thinking of certain departments as subordinated to

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other departments. I think that's a mistake a lot of business leaders make.

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It's

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I love you here to hear about your strengths.

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And one of the things that I think about as you talk about your career and your

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journey is in my eyes and I'm sure a lot of other people, you would be considered

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successful when you say that you're young. May I ask just really quick,

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how old you are, Bill? I'm 37.

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Nice, nice.

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So there's one question I'm going to put on here for you, because in our eyes,

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I would say you're successful.

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But what is success to you?

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Sure. Success to me is so I don't think about whether I'm successful or not,

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thankfully, you know, I mean,

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I would define success as

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every day or every week do I wake up and have felt that I made a difference

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somewhat to someone, right? That could be my family life.

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That could be in my professional life, in my in my company life.

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Hey, did I keep people employed every week?

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So like last year, which was a very tough year for the software industry,

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I defined it as successful because we didn't fire people.

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We hired people. And that made me feel successful.

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If I continue to do that this year,

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next year, then I'll then I'll feel pretty happy about myself.

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And I get that, like you said, you know, to they let go of a lot of people.

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I feel like everywhere was a layoff or or a change in business and everything.

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I think that could happen there after the pandemic did happen.

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And then for you guys to continue to keep hiring and you were the CEO of that,

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I think that that's amazing.

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One thing that I found in corporate business is

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leaders such as yourself.

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I am just going to be honest.

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I expected you to have all the answers.

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So how do you do when someone expects for you to have all the answers?

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Well, I don't think at an idea scale,

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at least no one expects me to have all the answers on everything.

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There's areas where I'm less strong or not an expert.

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Right. So I know nothing about

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making things look beautiful, for example.

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So when somebody asks my advice on how this page should look,

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my response is often, you're the expert.

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Why are you asking me? Right.

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Like one of my design guys often ask me for my feedback.

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And I'm like, you're you're the best in class at our company at this.

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Why are you asking me? I do not have a high for design.

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So I think at idea scale, people don't expect me to have all the answers.

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And I am very honest when I have an area of expertise.

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I'll offer an opinion.

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If I don't know something, I will either say, hey, I don't know.

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Go ask someone else or I will go research it and say, like, hey,

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here's what Wikipedia says or here's what Chachi says or here's

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what somebody else really smart says.

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Yeah. And that's so funny because I remember starting in the corporate field.

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I would go in there and I'm like, well, why don't they know that?

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Why don't you know that you're supposed to know everything?

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And as I sit here and I speak to so many guests in many different areas,

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they the challenge not that they face, but as they coach and help other businesses

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is the fact that CEOs and people in very high positions are often said to have a

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a an idea of thinking that they they should know everything.

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Right. And then that's why they're in coaching and everything.

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So it's something that I had to ask you because I'm like, what in the world?

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But I believed that when I was in the corporate world as well.

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So as you are where you are now,

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what is your vision for your next year or two years?

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Sure. So on my in my personal life, I'm about to have my first kid in a few weeks.

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So that's going to be take up a huge portion of my life.

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And that's going to affect my vision in my life.

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In my professional life, I think idea

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skills that are really, really cool pointed in its trajectory.

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So number one, we're we started expanding globally earlier this year.

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We went from really an America based company to now we're in seven countries.

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And we're hoping to continue to do that over the next couple of years.

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That's a big change.

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Number one. And that feels really good to have employees now in Mexico and Brazil

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and South Africa and India.

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And number two is our products.

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We I think historically we were one product company that we had the best in class

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idea management solution over the past year.

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We've added whiteboarding.

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And over the past over the next few months, we are actually going to be

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releasing a whole bunch of new modules so that we can help our customers solve

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all of their innovation problems and be the one stop shop for everything

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innovation related. OK, and I will not sit here and tell you

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that I know a lot about that, however, I'm very familiar with with the whiteboard

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and and the innovation part.

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I did see your quote speaking about being innovative.

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And if you're not innovative, you're obsolete and and not wanting to become

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obsolete. And so so many business are are trying to thrive.

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We've seen several business here in San

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Antonio, Texas, that were really big before the pandemic that just didn't thrive.

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How do you believe that ideal scale thrived during the pandemic?

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Sure.

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To so firstly, I just want to reiterate

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the quote you said, because I don't want to make sure your audience doesn't miss it,

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which is if you're not innovating, just remember that your competitors are right.

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You if you don't innovate, you become obsolete.

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It might happen tomorrow.

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It might take a year, might take five years, but eventually you're gone.

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That happens to the biggest of us. Right.

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Intel's facing that that was the biggest

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semiconductor chip company in the world for the last 60 years.

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And they are just being decimated right now

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because they did not remain as innovative as some of their peers.

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For Ideascale during the pandemic, I actually was not at Ideascale.

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Then because I go in recently recently.

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So I would say that, look, we were already a remote first organization even before

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COVID, so I don't think COVID disrupted our operations as much as it did other

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businesses at the time when COVID was happening.

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I was actually running a trucking business

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that was far, far more effective because that was real people in warehouses,

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in trucks, driving essential goods around the country.

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And we had to keep running because obviously people still needed food.

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They still needed toilet paper.

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They still needed the real necessities of life.

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And you can't do that with, you know, software.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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And I say that because, again, it's Ideascale can't run without people.

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And then I know you weren't here, but you made the decision to come to Ideascale.

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So I know within that offer, there was like you had to have some type of

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information and some type of idea as to why you would want to take this position

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and such a big position with a company that may not have been.

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And I appreciate you sharing that information with me.

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As you continue on and you move forward in all of this, how do you plan on

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continuing the growth in Ideascale?

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And I know that things are being made in order to make the company

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be one of the best companies to choose from.

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But there's still going to be some growth.

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So once you get to that point, where do you go to then?

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Sure.

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So the beautiful part of our space is two things.

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I'm going to brag a little bit.

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We are by far the best rated solution in our software area.

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Right. If you go to any of the Yelp for software sites, we're the best.

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No one doubts that.

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They love our software.

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They love our customer service.

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So that's number one.

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Number two is I'm in the fortunate place

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where this is still a nascent or young area.

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It's not like somebody already owns the software.

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If you go to, you know, if you need an email address, you basically go to Gmail,

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Hotmail or Yahoo, right?

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That space is dominated.

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No one's starting up another email company anytime soon because Google or Yahoo

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or Yandex or those guys have won that space.

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In our space, it turns out most of my customers, they don't have any software solution.

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I'm often competing against like physical

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post-it notes from 3M or Excel spreadsheets.

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So I have a lot of room to grow.

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And the great thing is a lot of my customers are realizing more and more.

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So, hey, they need real innovation software, not a piece of paper in a pen.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's.

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Don't get me wrong, I still write notes.

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But notes are a great way for short term things.

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They're not great as an individual.

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They're terrible if you want to share those notes with thousands of people.

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That's cool.

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Like paper is not a collaborative effort.

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Paper is a personal effort, right?

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Absolutely. And it's so funny.

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When you said that, I looked down, I was like, yeah, I wrote a whole bunch of notes

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on something that actually need to get somewhere and go somewhere.

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I want to make sure that I address that you're about to have a baby.

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Congratulations.

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Thank you. This is this is this is my office right now,

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but it's quickly becoming a nursery.

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May I ask what you're having?

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I don't know yet.

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I've asked not to be told.

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So my wife knows. But, you know, look, it doesn't matter to me whether it's a boy

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or girl, I'm going to love them equally as much.

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So I've asked not to be told.

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I won't know until the day of what I know.

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That's super exciting and very different.

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I love the color in that room.

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It's very pretty.

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And so, yeah, no, no more office.

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So it sounds like you'll be going to the garage,

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the garage, the the

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the living room, maybe a co-work, we workspace.

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There's a Capital One cafe nearby that I really like.

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Yeah, yes.

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It's just like you said, your vision is going to change.

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And I think it's going to change a lot.

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Yeah, exactly. You asked what I've personally I have no idea.

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I've never had a kid before.

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And so I don't even have a vision for what the next year or two is going to look

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like, because it's going to be way crazier than anything I can imagine.

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I tell you.

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So personally, I have four of them, 29, 24, 14 and 10.

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So with that being said, every child, every span, every life, every year

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changes the vision.

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I don't I tell you, sometimes I'm like, do I still have a vision?

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Or is it just the vision to go clean the kitchen

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behind the kids?

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Hey, it's good.

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And I'm super excited for you.

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I do have another question.

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What is the reason for you choosing to do a podcast?

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Sure. I think there's two areas.

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Number two reasons.

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Number one is I think I, my personally and Ideascale as a company,

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have some really good thoughts on how people as individuals or large

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organizations can become more innovative.

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And I'm trying to share those thoughts.

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The biggest, the most important thought

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that I'm trying to share is that the idea meritocracies are really important

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for healthy, innovative organizations.

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If you don't, if you let the loudest voices win rather than the best ideas,

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your organization is doomed to failure over the long run.

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The second is, is to just make sure that people are aware that my software is

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entirely free if you're less than 100 people.

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So for your audience as entrepreneurs or small businesses,

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if you're less than 100 people, our software is completely free.

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Just go to Ideascale.com, click Get Started Free.

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Takes 30 seconds to sign up.

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No downloads. It's entirely on the web.

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Obviously, if you're a larger organization, I would love if you come to us as a

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customer, but we really want to make sure we want to support the global ecosystem.

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We want to support small businesses,

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individual entrepreneurs who are constantly innovating and starting new companies.

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And so we want to be the innovation ecosystem for you guys as well.

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Thank you for being here today.

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I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.

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This is going to get more and more fun.

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We'll have more and more engagement as well.

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We invite people to participate in the show.

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And thank you for giving us your time and attention.

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Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.