[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to the First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Ryan Johnson. He is the CTO of Seek, the Analytics App Store For Your Business.

Ryan, how are you my friend?

[00:00:39] Ryan: I am doing fantastic. I appreciate you bringing me on the show.

[00:00:42] Jay: Oh, it's great. I'll get this out of the way. This hat, I am wearing for you. I was at the conference with you in San Diego for seven CTOs, I guess a few weeks ago. And, you saw me at the airport, I think you saw the hat before you saw me. And, you came up and said hello. We had a great chat and, I'm glad you did.

So thank you for doing that. what was the biggest thing you took away from that conference in San Diego?

[00:01:01] Ryan: Yeah. You know, like Seven CTOs is an interesting conference, right? Because, you know, I've been part of a lot of different sort of CTO networks in the past. And other sort of like other networks with technical leadership worlds and honestly just the walking away with just being in the room with other CTOs, VPs of engineering, other kind of, I called a bit nerd con if you willI think it was one of those graces where it's like such authenticity.

Of like what we're faced with this next year, and beyond with this emerging technology around AI. I know everyone doesn't wanna talk about AI all the time, but it is one of those moments where it was also just time to sort of just refresh and sort of source ourselves and just kind of go after a lot of the great aspects of just supporting and sharing with one another.

[00:01:43] Jay: I could not have said that better. I think Having a safe space is like an interesting thing to do for a group that large and like with that amount of, you know, success in the room, nobody really kind of brings that in with them. It's just everybody's on the same page and, you know, I think Etienne and the team have built something, very powerful.

So I agree. it was a recharge, for sure. And I'm not even like, you know, an active participant we just sponsored, but I get to like, participate and I get to hang out and like meet people and it's such a fun group. And I finally, you know, Calvin loves to say, you know, he felt, Hey, this is his tribe.

And it definitely feels like I'm running, amongst the same group of folks, so. Awesome, awesome time out there. so tell me a little bit about your background, man. Where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:02:28] Ryan: You know, it's interesting, you know, I grew up on a farm, out in, well, you know, Central California, which I don't know if a lot of people know California's got a lot of farms. but there is, but most people know California, especially in the tech world, mainly for Silicon Valley or even like Hollywood, things like that.

But I grew up on a farm, area and sort of like community. Out in Central California. Spent a lot of time out there. you know, sort of like taking care of goats. you know, that was kind of where I got my start. people was not a thing. That was, it was very, there's a lack of people if you will, so, you know, going out to college and sort of like being able to get better at understanding how to connect with folks and how to, even fix my face at times to sort of like show up in a manner that is authentic, was something that I had to learn.

and I guess going back to the real question of like, well, how did that affect me as a leader. I think my background showed me all aspects of life, right? of like why it's important to do hard work, why it's important to connect authentically with people and just be of service to others. And I think that's maybe the best way I could get a good start if you will.

[00:03:29] Jay: I love that. Are you gonna go back to that? You know, most people like cycle back. Are you gonna go back to the farm life eventually? Like when you're all said and done.

[00:03:36] Ryan: Well, ironically, you know, like my wife, are in real estate and we've been, both, workaholics in the tech world. But sometimes, every once in a while we have one of those moments we're sitting around with each other at dinner and we're like, you know what? We're gonna go build a fancy duck farm. You know, that's what we're gonna do.

We're just gonna go start, you know, breeding fancy ducks. and that'll be what we do, mainly because I'm obsessed with birds. But, you know, it's a dream. Don't think it's ever gonna happen, but we do chat about it.

[00:03:59] Jay: I love that there's a program here where you can. They'll give you duck eggs from the farm, and you give you an incubator and you bring 'em home and your kids get to hatch 'em and they get to raise 'em, and then you take 'em back to the farm and you give them back to the people. And we did that.

We did that last spring. And like I said, I grew up in Virginia in the middle of nowhere, like on a farm. And, Man going back to that farm and it was like a beautiful spring day and there's like goats and chickens. I'm like, God, why am I not, why is this not my life every day? you know, I don't know if I'd be saying that when it's 30 degrees, right now and like having to feed goats outside and stuff in the wintertime.

But I can commiserate with that. I would love, you know, to eventually maybe own a fancy duck farm. Maybe we'll do it together someday.

Alright, well, what was your first business, man? What was the first real business you started?

[00:04:40] Ryan: Yeah, so I would say that was actually, and again, gonna date myself here a little bit. This is pre smartphone days. you know, I was part of, the original team building actually, you know, this computer pen that recorded everything that you wrote and linked it to what you,basically heard, like sort of, sorry,

Listen to everything that you heard and then like, basically like would link that to what you wrote on a piece of pad, right? on paper. So, this was a company called Livescribe back in the day. And, you know, being part of the, product team at the start, kind of building out the emulation software to set up design with the UIs would look like.

also I remember kind of designing what the actual like a digital. Like the pixels themselves of what the actual, it was an 80 by 32 pixel screen on that little thing, when we first were developing it. And I think that was a really just such a great opportunity to kind of learn so many aspects of both engineering, but also design, I would say.

which was, kind of the first company I was part of.

[00:05:34] Jay: Okay, and what was the first company you founded after that?

[00:05:38] Ryan: You know, it was interesting after I'd exited out of, you know, Livescribe, one of the things where we ended up moving out to Boston. my wife, who's the smart one in the relationship, we went out to, she got her, she was gonna get her PhD over at Harvard. And so we spent a lot of time out in Boston and New York for majority about, a good, good couple years, but.

One of the companies that I started out there because, it was basically a web development agency. and it started out as a WordPress agency actually. back in the day WordPress was hip, not anymore. you know, it's all Squarespace and wonderful, wonderful, butterflies these days, but.

WordPress was the jam at the time. And it's funny because I had at that time never built a website before. and I remember just walking down, we had a little apartment there near Fenway and there was a street called Newbury Street. And, Newbury Street is basically like where all the shops are, the little mom and pops, and then it kind of goes upwards to the, you know, the Chanels and all that, you know, the fancy to-do stores and things like that.

but yeah, I just started a web development agency by basically walking up and down the street. Checked one of my phones if they had a mobile, website yet, and they didn't in most cases. And just walking in, introduce myself and saying, Hey, have you thought about your web presence and your mobile presence? And they're like, no, I have not.

And was actually how I got my first couple company, like kind of a customers there. my first customer actually was a. I think, it was called Audrey's Pet Shop. and it was this tiny little pet store with just like, you know, a very independent pet store. And I walked in, I was like, introduced myself and I said, Hey, look, I would love to build you a website.

would you be interested in that? And we grabbed coffee and that was my first client. And it was a very small contract. It was only like 5k at the time. And that company had turned into 15 people and, within a year we were doing web enterprise application design and going out there and going with a quantitative trading. Like, it was insane, with that kind of line of work.

[00:07:32] Jay: So does that model. Have any hope of working today still? Like is it, if somebody's gonna, like, if you're gonna go tell somebody, you know, go start. They're starting their own agency, they're starting their own. Like, does that work anymore? Are people so saturated? Like when you walk in, they're not, you know, 'cause there wasn't as much, you know, digital communications and stuff back then where you're getting inundated constantly and being spam with all sorts of, you know, solicitations for vendors that may be doing something you need.

Is that still an avenue you could, like you would ever advise somebody these days to take.

[00:08:06] Ryan: No, I don't think so.,

I think it's because corridor sales in itself is not necessarily the place you're probably gonna do scale.

[00:08:12] Jay: Sure.

[00:08:13] Ryan: but I think the takeaway there, I probably, my, advice for people when they're, thinking about, developing that first customer relationship, and it's the key word there.

A relationship and an authentic relationship and developing, how you can serve another person. I think the lesson there is like, what I think is missing from sales and what's missing from that journey today of getting started is that there's a lot of inauthentic, just spamming.

I think that's, quite frankly, I don't even know what that looks like today, but I know in terms of the relationships that we have with our customers, it's about, the relationships that we've had existing.

We, start by saying, how can we best serve you? How can we, what are your problems? Like if you're not actually taking the time to understand where that play person is at? And instead it's just a automated sales engine that's just emailing and spamming out stuff on LinkedIn and advertisements.

I don't do that, quite frankly, You know most business that I've built, this is the seventh company I've built here at Seek, you know, I think it really is about that authentic connection and being of service to your friends, your colleagues, the people that you've done, and when you develop that culture around being a service to others and your partners and your customers, I think that's really the only place to start, you know.

[00:09:27] Jay: Yep. No, I could not agree more. I was just having this conversation with a marketing consultant earlier, and it's just shocking how many people. Think that they can just sell what they wanna sell because they think they're good at it, not because they even know who they're selling at, or, you know, I mean, that's the whole point of this podcast, right?

Is like a lot of people just don't even know how to relate to that first customer. And I think it's a really good point is like you're serving that you gotta find the pain point that hurts the most and how can you help with it, right? I mean, it's really all it is. At the end of the day, nobody else, nobody cares about how great you are.

Whatever you do. It's like, can you fix the thing? I mean, it's, we all have. If your sink's overflowing, you're not gonna go, like, you know, look who has the best website? Like for a plumber, you're like, who can fix this now? That's good. Like, that's what I wanna know. So I totally agree with that sentiment.

All right. So what was after, the website development agency? I know you've kind of been in a bunch of different places. what did you spin up after that?

[00:10:20] Ryan: So I actually, I ended up, you know, selling that back to my partners, And I ended up going off on my own actually for quite a while and did some consulting around some larger FinTech. this was a Fortune 100, large banking, finserv tech companies like that. I started off by one of the, I helped actually design and develop a team around building out a, basically.

fixed income and analyst website, sort of like an analyst, for people to kind of like, I guess at scale develop and analyze investment portfolios at like thousands at a time. Right. And, you know, when I, once I sold that to that company, I ended up joining temporarily to help them continue to build that.

and that was basically. Going and helping them fix some issues around retention, around engineers. that was this time period where I helped them scale out their engineering team from about 150 to about 300 engineers that were moving towards a lot more internal software developments. So I got in right before that in sense of selling my company to them, if you will,

and my platform that we had built.

and then we kind of like scaled that out and fixed a lot of the issues and the culture of the engineering issues that they had there. So I really did spend a lot of time whereas a consultant, you know, I was, trying to Teach myself, how to sort of like get in with the larger fortune 100s. And I think that yeah, being like a smaller web agency didn't have that profile.

So like I really had to come in and I built a new group that was sort of in that side and that turned some, a couple other opportunities. One of them being this company I started, back in 2014. with, some great, great, folks out there in Boston that I met at Northeastern University, which was Elson.

it was this, quantitative trading platform and sort of, portfolio management, software tool. and we were working with companies like, Thomson Reuters, Refinitiv, JP Morgan, all those such things.

[00:12:09] Jay: What was the, Method to kind of break into that Fortune 100. I mean, I know it's relationships and maybe people you knew, et cetera, but how, I mean, how do you kind of get in and spider and re, you know, I mean, a lot of people have that same problem, right? Like they have a, they have an agency in one space, maybe in a smaller market or whatever, and you can't kind of, you keep banging your head against the ceiling.

Like how did you go from that? I'm not gonna say mom and pop shop, but how did you go from kind of the, smaller design agency to go cracking into these big boys that, you know, have a lot of budget to spend?

[00:12:37] Ryan: Yeah. You know what's interesting? I wish there was an easy answer that it's just like, oh, we sold, I picked up the phone and someone picked up but it never happens that way, right? It's like years of relationship building. It's, proving that you brought value in your career along the way and I think I'll take a step back. You know, like when I moved, when we had displaced ourselves from California and my investor network, my colleagues were all out there in California, then we went out to Boston.

I was like. I got nothing. I got no contacts. I've got, that was why I just started walking up and down Newbury Street. Right. Just trying to have all those types of connections from the start. I decided that in 2012 to go back to Northeastern University because I was like, Hey, getting a master's is probably, to me, education wasn't the book Smarts wasn't as important as the connections and the relationships you're gonna build.

Northeastern put me in touch with just such amazing individuals, including someone who worked at Thomson Reuters. Who worked at JP Morgan,at informal global markets, things like that, you know, and those mentorships, those people that, decided to bring me into their network is where those relationships were seated.

Does that make sense? I had built a website for one, I had built another platform for another, and so that turned into that more individual consulting. The tone as well as that people knew that I was proven to want to build value for them and not take value, right? For myself. and I think that is, and it took years, it took, you know, a good three or four years before I could just introduce myself as an individual saying, I'm gonna help you solve your 60% retention rate of your hiring problems, right? 

[00:14:11] Jay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:12] Ryan: those are elements of just developing, again, relationship based, careers. if you will right.

[00:14:18] Jay: How does that look for you today? I mean, look, you've established a relationship. You've bought and sold a bunch of companies. You do all these different things. You're part of these, you know, these bigger partnership deals with lots of big known brands and all sorts. But what are you doing now?

Like, I'm, you know, as a, guy starting out, you know, like the need for network is massive and then like, you know, it kind of ebbs and flows and then you kind of, so where are you at now on that curve? are you still kind of getting out there into new spaces to kind of meet new people?

Are you kind of settled into the network you're in? Like how are you dealing with your network today after it's been established?

[00:14:48] Ryan: You know, it's interesting. I used to be better at the outside world, I think. COVID hit, and really put me back into a state where I'm, well I wasn't going to conferences I wasn't

going out there with external calls a lot, everything just existed through a screen for many, many years and that's something that I've been fighting back against, right? Relearning habits of connecting authentically with people in person. it's funny, there's sort of an internal joke at my company and many of my companies in the past.

Like, you know, there's this, there's a magic door and like rhyme exists. Everything. It's like if as long as I've got everything controlled within my screens and my processes and everything that I need, I can order food from Magic Door. I can order Amazon, like, everything is sort of, I open it and I get it.

It's like I never go outside.

[00:15:31] Jay: Yeah. I like that. 

[00:15:33] Ryan: And I think that has actually in some ways been, not that it's slowed down the relationships I've had, but I think that now is where Seek is growing from this, earlier stage company to having this tremendous amount of work next year of. related GoPuff and even beyond, that I can't speak any names right now, but, very large deals coming through.

this next year, I'm gonna have to go out there. I'm gonna have to get back on the road. I'm gonna have to actually develop those relationships broader than ever before. And where those relationships today have brought me today as part of those success, and I actually have an amazing CEO as a colleague and a partner.

Erik Mitchell, and he, again, just exemplifies that relationship building. 

[00:16:15] Jay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:17] Ryan: he built his whole career was designed, of building Amazing value for the companies he worked for, but also as a consultant himself, the relationships he built for those other companies too. And, you know, his mindset of just, he's so much better sales than I am, by the and he's, so, I won't even consider myself salesperson, by the way, but in terms of wanting to build and having that spirit of creativity and just that joy of creation. That's what I bring. I just want to keep making sure that we're building value though. And part of that is in products. Part of that is in advice and expertise, but also it's in the tech, it's in the people, it's in, you know, like wanting to invest back in the people that we know and making sure that culture exists in our entire company, from front end engineer

To a salesperson, it's like we have to show up, not only serving each other but most importantly, with the mindset of being close to our customers and how much value we're bringing to them.

[00:17:17] Jay: You said great engineers will ask a lot of questions because they trust the process of dialogue. I'm, you know, I love, just like read, like things that people posted. but I do have a Is there, what is the, you know, I would love to know an example. you know, 'cause I like that thought of engineers asking question, but what is. Do you have any examples of engineers, you know, maybe outside of their lane, quote unquote, or like asking things that are, you know, business related or process related that has actually made a big change in what you guys were doing? Like, what's an example of somewhere you've seen that applied where they, you know, somebody kind of takes that leap to maybe ask something they normally wouldn't, or, you know, maybe they're introverted and they ask the question in front of a group or whatever it is. Is there any kind of good examples, of where that really made an impact and changed something for you guys?

[00:18:03] Ryan: You know. I'll go back to the original statement, which is that like, you know, I think that engineers in general are going to ask, seemingly invasive questions. but good questions. And I think that it comes back to just that baseline of wanting to have that joy of creation is that we all started by trying to solve puzzles and a puzzle.

You have to know the pieces. You have to understand the context. You have to understand like if you want to solve something and do it either fast or better or quicker, things like that. I think inherently, engineers have our sort of programmed that way and I think that in

Involving your engineers as part of the product and sales process of what is the experience we're actually trying to build offers, a new insights that I don't think if you're just a sales or just a product, you know, sort of like lead there. they will have insights and again, I say seemingly invasive because I think if you take away the intent of them.

it does seem very invasive 

[00:19:03] Jay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:04] Ryan: lot questions like, well, why did you design it that way? Or Why are we going, why are we building this first versus later? You know what I mean? or this is, have you even thought about how difficult this is gonna be to build? Right. Those are seemingly invasive questions, but if you understand that.

And you have to assume positive intent. And most engineers, not all by the way, most engineers with joy creation are wanting to build with each other and wanting to build companies. if you will, if you connect them, ultimately it can answer those kind of questions. You ultimately, they're coming at it from the perspective that you can come up with a better solution, because

We explored more options, we explored the context around making better decisions. a lot of time when you start in what I call convergent thinking, where you've already come up with a solution, right? And you put that over to an engineer, of course they're gonna have a lot of questions about it, and you can't just assume that they have that.

So

[00:19:57] Jay: Right.

[00:19:58] Ryan: I would say that, I apologize, I haven't actually asked the answer the question in terms of specific 

[00:20:02] Jay: No, that's all I love all of it. Keep going.

[00:20:04] Ryan: And I think it's because that, I think our entire engineering culture at our company is better for that.

It is, our product managers, our sales staff, everyone in this case communicates and goes through from an engineering perspective.

And those engineers are equally as engaged within the process of building for customers.

[00:20:24] Jay: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:25] Ryan: Right. and that comes back to wanting to deliver the quality and craft that our customers deserve.

Right? and one person, or one designer, even coming up with a solution is never gonna be the best solution or even a better solution, right?

And so I think that's ultimately why it's incredibly important that you allow engineers to ask those type of invasive questions, but also that it's a necessary part of delivering quality.

[00:20:50] Jay: Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, the different developers have different tones to those invasive questions, and I think that's a big, a big, way. It's, the way they land, you know? Yeah. it depends on how they land, you know? so, all right. So looking forward you know, five years from now and Seek is, you know, kind of engineering organization, what leadership, you know, and management skills do you need to level up, do you think, in that time period?

[00:21:17] Ryan: You know, that's a great question. I'm always starting from that service layer, right? And I think that, when we continue to move from, a very flat organization, if you will like, you know, when we have to scale out and support the amount of growth and the amount of careers that we're looking to doubling the engineering team effectively, right.

And then you said five years. So imagine where we're gonna go. I think that it ultimately makes sure that everyone feels heard. And I think that does require everyone feels heard, everyone feels supported, and that requires some more, I would say organizational design.

[00:21:54] Jay: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:57] Ryan: I think that a lot of my companies in the past were maybe scaling from 5 to up to around 25 engineers.

I would say was. about like 150, to 300. That was more of like hiring practices, culture setting, things like that too. I need to, I, want to make sure that I'm prepared to lead the organization and I think that there's, I've have the best mentors and the best, you know, seven CTOs being one of them, right?

sort of networks of making sure that we're growing and understanding what it means to go from 50 to 100 and then from the 100 plus, right, I think, you know this, is that the 50 to 100s are usually the most difficult, right? It's always kind of the biggest, everyone has their own ideas to scale and I think most importantly, what I do know is not to scale too quickly.

Right. Because I think that's the, I want too much get on my soapbox here about what is wrong with Silicon Valley sometimes and tech world where they overly hire people too fast and then people are surprised when there's these massive 30, 20 to 30% layoffs. Right? I know with a strategy, it's something I'll never do.

Because I think it's disingenuous to wanting to support and to be there for the families that work for your company and wanting to build people first, right? But anyways, what do I need to Get on that engine?

[00:23:12] Jay: No,I love that. what was, you know, you started as the builder guy and the, you know, product and engineering and all. what was the mindset shift that you had to make to go from being the builder to a leader of those people? Because a lot of people fit, you know, they always tell you like, never take your best developer and make him the engineering manager.

Right? Because, you know, they're totally different skill sets. what was the shift for you from like being in the weeds, doing the stuff to having to manage the people who built the stuff and being in the weeds?

[00:23:42] Ryan: So, I love the question. I think I can answer the question very quickly, which is I was never the best builder,

[00:23:48] Jay: I love that

[00:23:49] Ryan: in,

[00:23:49] Jay: a great answer.

[00:23:50] Ryan: in the sense that like, you know, I was always the hacker. I could get things up and running, I could build the first prototypes and things like that. I could design, I could actually build the initial things. But in terms of the scale, like, you know, you have to find people that are better architects, they're better builders, they're better thinkers than you.

And I think maybe that's why my career took a path that is, is that I think that maybe my team inadvertently pushed me in the positions where it was better to be, you know, making sure that you're representing the team and going to bat for them with your investors, with the C-level folks, with, you know, your customers, right?

It's that, and it's about enabling a group of people to just build. Together and to build something that, we all care about. Right? Again, like if we're not aligned, and going after the same strategic vision together, then like, what are we building? You've just got a bunch of people sitting in separate rooms.

Literally, you know, we're a fully company. They're not building the same thing or moving in the same direction, the momentum you're building as a company. And I think that's what I learned throughout my career is that I think I was, I kept getting put in positions where not only that people are like, man, Ryan actually cares a lot.

About the people that, we're building with and alongside, but also making sure that, you know, taking the moment to understand where their life is at, making sure to understand that the company is there to show up for them. you know, we talked about that genuine, investment in people is the most important aspect that you can bring.

I think that most of my mentors, most of my CEOs that I partnered with, they just sort of naturally maybe made me gravitate toward those areas because that's what I saw most companies. need the most, is that they just need someone to care both about the people the company and just continuing to build an environment where people can thrive in that creative mode.

[00:25:40] Jay: I love that and I can definitely relate. people always ask me. I'm a developer by back by education, and they always ask me how you got in qa? It's like, 'cause I was a bad developer. Like I didn't, want, I was the hacker type. I was the hacker type. I love coding, but like, at the same time, like, it just, you know, my skills were probably better used somewhere else. so, are you a book guy? Do you read a lot? Are you a podcast guy? How do you consume content? Typically?

[00:26:08] Ryan: I read a lot of blogs right now. It's a lot on LinkedIn. That's part of my, increase of learning how to actually exist in a more digital format and not in person because there's a bit of scale there. But, you know, I do read a lot of books. I read a lot of books most of my career, that kind of help me get out of where I'm at.

and today I don't read a lot of physical books. It's gonna be a lot more video or audio books I would say. 

[00:26:29] Jay: Sure. Okay. Yeah, I'm an audio book guy too. there's certain ones that I try to read, but Is there any, top of mind that, like you've read recently or you like recently?

[00:26:38] Ryan: you know, I think AI Engineering, in O'Reilly. 

But AI engineering is something that I'm going through right now, which I think is really, really helpful from a, understanding what it takes to build product AI capabilities.

Right. I think a lot of books out there, and I think the community just as a whole sometimes is having trouble kind of, understanding like building AI capabilities and tooling and processes for internal. Productivity, if you will, and value for your company, versus how do you actually do this at scale for integrating these into product and product experiences.

And that probably is a little bit more because of my leading towards, designing, crafting user experiences. Right? Like that's again, how do you develop new experiences that this emerging technology around AI, like what can you not developed before and I think that this is very practical information of how to do that at an engineering level.

[00:27:31] Jay: like we could talk all day. I've got a couple more. if, give me your thought on partnerships, like how powerful are they for you guys? what's your general kind of, you know, playbook and kind of, approach to them? How do you guys lead with value in those instances? Because I think you and I both know, and we talked about this a little bit, like. Business in general is about leading with value, but partnerships even more so, right? Because I think you and I could both walk down, Newbury Street, or Market Street in Philadelphia or in San Diego and probably get, you know, 10 referral deals for 10%, you know, from everybody that walks by, right?

'cause everybody likes to hand those out. but those aren't real meaningful, strategic or tactical or even, you know, referral partnerships or just they can just be fly by night and they don't really matter. How do you guys. Make sure that partnerships kind of have a seat at the table. And how do you guys treat partnerships at Seek? 

[00:28:19] Ryan: Yeah, I think that, you know, for example, today we don't have an official referral program because I think, not that I'm against referral programs, right? I think it is like partnerships are literally almost everything of how we develop relationships from the provider and the publisher side of our marketplace, right? So, when we go out and develop a relationship with a provider of applications, right, they, we consider them a partner because in some ways, like they are there to come to our

Marketplace as way to distribute their applications. maybe they're moving and transitioning. A lot of the value that we posit to them is that, look, you've been trying to sell raw data feeds for years, and please stop. Nobody wants raw data feeds because you're literally handing a liability to someone in that regard.

 Your suppliers, your customers is like they ask to become an infrastructure company and a data company and a data science company. And don't get me started on no company in most industries are gonna be able to compete with the brain drain of data scientists and data engineers moving over to AI,

right? So you can, you also can't compete now as an AI company.

Does that make sense? So from that perspective, I think that, you know, we come in and say, look, unless you package this data into actual usable use cases that are easily understandable and interactive, like they have a UI that someone can interact. Like our whole thing is like we're trying fix the self fallacy of self-directed analytics And a lot of these businesses where it's like, you're not gonna be able to build this, I'm sorry.

You've got accumulated data. Then the idea is like, what can you actually, you know, data rich, your insights poor, right? you don't know how to turn that data into actual models and

turn those into actual insights take action on Right. To actually optimize business a lot of times. Or you're spending way too much money doing it. And so when we talk about partnerships, it is, we develop a lot of great relationships on the provider side because that's how we get subscribers.

That's how we get people wanting to come so that a CPG company can get. All of their type of data and look at analyzing their performance and ad performance and inventory levels at across, you know, goPuff,across, you know, dollar General, across, everything like that. Right.

[00:30:28] Jay: No, it makes a lot of sense. all right. we're over. But I have one more question for you. This is not, business related. it's not Seek related. It's not, you know, entrepreneur or what this is about. Ryan, just you buddy. if you could do anything, if you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:30:47] Ryan: Wow, that is, such an open-ended question and my brain loves a good, good question. if I could do anything and I couldn't fail, man,

I don't, it. It's, God, this is, it feels so dirty to answer it this way, but was 

[00:31:06] Jay: please do. This is 

[00:31:06] Ryan: honestly, I'm doing what I love to do.

[00:31:09] Jay: It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great.

[00:31:11] Ryan: No, like I'm loving what I love. I'm doing what I love to do 

[00:31:14] Jay: All right All right. You're gonna give me one those. get those so often. 

[00:31:17] Ryan: Answer, but it's like, 

[00:31:17] Jay: You don't want to go to space and you're afraid of blowing up or you don't wanna go climb Everest 'cause you're afraid you're gonna freeze to death.

[00:31:23] Ryan: You know, I love my wife.

I love our life.

[00:31:25] Jay: alright, alright.

[00:31:26] Ryan: I love team that I've built, and the next build, I don't know, 

[00:31:30] Jay: How about your duck? Your, how about your duck farm?

Your fancy duck farm?

[00:31:34] Ryan: like I said for fun, but I was like, that's a lot of feathers, and, you know, it gets A little dirty,

[00:31:37] Jay: Oh, all right. Maybe you don't want to do that. Maybe you don't wanna do that. All right. Well, it's a fine answer and I think, you know, I give people shit for that answer, but, you know, at a certain point it becomes true. I should,I don't let that fly, by the way.

That's not an answer I normally accept. I always give people shit for that, and I, but I do think. you know, to some degree there's a lot of truth to that after a certain point, right? You could say that at any point and you kind of be blowing smoke. But I think, you know, just the conversations we've had.

I mean, you're very, you know, compassionate, kind of empathetic you're people for, I mean, every time that, you know, the brief amount of times we've talked, have been around people and have been around, you know. Having those people have a good experience and a good career and like growth and all these things that like, you know, so, I will give you a pass on that because I do feel like, from the conversations we had, you do feel like you're doing what you want to be doing.

if you come up with something else. If you're like, I wanna fly a fighter jet, but I'm afraid to crash into a mountain. Or if, like, you know, a Formula One and I don't wanna blow up, like, whatever, just let me know and we'll edit it back in and everybody will be like, oh, that's such a great answer. I can't believe Ryan came up with that on the fly.

But, Ryan, you are fantastic. I thank you for, recognizing me, number one, and in the airport, and I enjoyed our talk there. It made that, you know, 30 minutes go by very quickly. I enjoyed this call. let's please stay in touch. If people wanna reach out to you directly about something they heard today, how do they do that?

[00:33:04] Ryan: Yeah, you guys can reach me at ryan@seekinsights.com. I think that's probably the best way to reach out to me. You can also follow me on LinkedIn. It's Ryan Charles Johnson, in LinkedIn. And, other than that, I'd love to get in touch. I love meeting great people, like yourself, Jay and and other engineers out there that's just wanna be an advocate and continue to help support what we're building everywhere, anywhere at all companies.

[00:33:29] Jay: At all companies, my man. All right, Ryan, you're fantastic. Enjoy the holiday season. we will, you know, stay in touch and hopefully have you on again someday. Thank you for everything. A lot of good stuff in there today, and,we'll catch up again soon. All right, thanks Ryan.

[00:33:41] Ryan: Happy Holidays.

[00:33:42] Jay: You too buddy. See ya. 

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