Spencer Davis

It has been interesting to learn how large corporations keep innovative small companies (like mine) from becoming competition by following these legal developments: https://lnkd.in/g-YUtmxC It's great to be a part of an organization that is not having it.

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Taylor Johnson and I want to build Exo Technologies in public. We’re going to blog more about some of our current development (when we can), learnings from past lives and how that changes biz decisions today, and be transparent with how things are going (including revenue and mentality around this services business). Here’s a first update. We’ve on boarded another Solana fullstack developer as a sub contractor. We’ve worked with this engineer in the Solana ecosystem for almost 3 years and know they can deliver at a level up to Exo Tech’s standards Kicked off a new project with our 3rd client. This is one is in the Real World Asset (RWA) space, and we expect to do a lot more with RWAs going forward. We’ve continued development on Pye Finance's Pye Core and it’s code complete! It has support for mSOL, jitoSOL, Sanctum LSTs, any SPL StakePool LST, and even native Solana staking. Now onto the indexing and integrations to their client side. On the business side, there’s a lot of demand, but we’re not sure if this is a short term thing. So we need to either A) work out longer term contracts in order to better plan capacity without a cashflow crunch B) sign agreements with groups but have start dates in the future We did $50K in revenue for October and we’re on track for $111K for November. Let me know what you think about this update or what you want to hear about bootstrapping this business!

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If you really need multiple backend repos before you have multiple teams question whether you should be multiple companies. If not you’re probably better off as a monorepo if so you’ve got bigger concerns. At UpContent we’re actively retreating from the architectural complexity of micro-repos, as a smaller team it’s just unnecessary and most tech these days support multiple separately deployable components/services in a mono repo. Exceptions might be tiny services that don’t hit your main db and for whatever reason are in another language. People always forget that part of microservice architecture principles were separate databases and no shared code. People also forget they were a way for large companies to segregate duties with fully autonomous teams each owning a service not a strategy for startups with one team. Multi-repo is a very valuable tool in the tool box but it is one for after your first team split and when you process in place to handle cross team coordination.

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Some software companies make it really f***ing hard to buy their product. 😡 I had an experience recently, And thought how that would look if it were an in person interaction. Lil’ awkward don’t ya think? 🤔 Here’s the thing - I’m not some giant #PLG advocate who thinks every product on the face of the planet should be self-serve and that sales people aren’t needed. You do need sales people ✅ You do need to ruthlessly qualify your prospects ✅ And because the above are needed, you’ll naturally have some friction in the buying process. But most software companies today have OVERCORRECTED for this. So what to do then? Here’s what I would do 👇🏻 Find some feature set that can deliver value to your customers immediately, and package that into a self serve version of your product. Look at your sales folks as a “sales success team” (eg more like a customer success team), Who’s job is to share best practices, provide additional use cases for the product, and unlock the extra features needed for your customers to accomplish these things. Easier said then done, I know. I also know that some products are so inherently complex that self-serve seems out of reach. But think of all the things we have now, that used to feel out of reach. 🤔 So just because it doesn’t seem possible, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, egh? Happy Monday y’all ✌️ #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #customerlifecycle #buyingprocess #buyerexperience

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Building off of yesterday's fictional book announcement (https://lnkd.in/gBAU8nyZ) Here's the next book in the Nate Taylor Management Series.

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There's an oft-cited stat from Pendo that 80% of software features are rarely, if ever, used. While it's impossible to know the accuracy of that, it's not hard to believe. I've been part of multiple feature factories, where emphasis was put on new features to 'claim' rather than taking time to ensure we've actually solved the desired problem before moving onto the next. If you're a Product Manager/Leader in the Indy area, join us on August 14 for a conversation around best practices for measuring product success. We'll have food, drinks, and hopefully some great learnings! (Registration link in the comments)

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If only they had a service blueprint, outlining how this important flow is accomplished from a user standpoint, to see the different teams and services and components involved… they could fix the gap and make things easier for themselves. I have special respect for Customer Care because they have deal with trying to help upset customers and also deal with the broken systems and services in the company. 💕💕 To the companies trying to modernize, looking at all the software components and coupling first, a word of advice: start with the users! https://lnkd.in/gT7F4hAW

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"Do you think I should be a founder?" is a question I get asked a lot. It's #SeattleTechWeek and I'm seeing great quotes and advice being shared, so I wanted to share an early story before we had any funding. I had been trying for our initial funding for months. I was learning, we continued to work on the product, marketing, and investor pitch. We were improving but it was still one rejection after another. I will never forget the moment after a pitch that went particularly poorly. I found myself staring at my calendar realizing I didn't have anything next. No more pitches, no meetings... just nothingness. I had called every favor, exhausted every network connection I had, and I felt no closer than the day I quit my job. I opened my slides to iterate and look for improvements, but what was the point? Onward, let's go. There is always the next person you can approach. This person I didn't know well, he was a tech exec I'd worked with previously. I had a lot of respect for him, and noticed he was connected to an investor that I hadn't reached. Requested an intro and the he told me "Ozan... you have no customers, no revenue, and your team is quite small. Unfortunately there isn't enough here for me to justify the introduction." It seemed reasonable enough, and I thanked him for his time anyways. I thought... maybe asking for the intro was disrespectful. The next day I was sitting at my kitchen table across from my advisor and mentioned my failed attempt at securing the intro. I'll never forget him saying "Hmmmm, I don't know that person, but let me say something. Fuck that guy, fuck him. That's such a load of bullshit! You've quit your job where you were a top performer, you're putting everything on the line, you're dipping uncomfortably deep to the end of your savings, you're out there hustling with very little support, and he can't even do the bare minimum? No that's not reasonable, that's bullshit." It didn't matter whether or not the person was justified in not making an intro. It didn't matter if my advisor was biased towards my perspective. What did matter was that it was an extremely dark week for me, after so many rejections, with what seemed like no light at the end of the tunnel, and it reminded me that I'm not always wrong. "Do you think I should be a founder?" is therefore such a hard question to answer. It was mentioned this week that startups are hard and they're not for everyone. I don't say it, but the first thought in my head is always "If you have to ask, then probably not." It's a long, lonely journey. It's filled with dark days, doubt, very little support, and more often than not it doesn't feel logical. But - there are some amazing moments as well. When I have to sum it up I mention that it's an endless string of high highs and low lows. If you do it, the number one thing I'd say is never ever stop asking for favors. I'm still asking for them 6 years later, and the answer I usually get hasn't changed either. Push.

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Firewood pricing is madness. What does this have to do with buying tech services? I'll explain later. Back to the wood... Some charge per bag and attempt to put a weight on the bag. But weight of a bag of 10-20 pieces of wood can never be exact, and that difference can add up over dozens of bags. Others charge per piece. But pieces of wood aren't equal -- sometimes grossly unequal. When buying in bulk, there's an even more opaque idea of a "bakkie" load -- who knows what that is. I suppose the problem is inherent to the domain. Firewood is made by taking branches of varying sizes and chopping them into pieces with an axe. It's impossible, within that methodology, to achieve a consistent product, and thus to apply a consistent price to it. Buying technology services is not unlike this. There can be no single price for an 'app' because apps have different functions and are sized differently. But how do you attach a price to a function, or a size? What is 'size' when it comes to apps anyway? Pages? Endpoints? Services? It's inherently vague. I don't have the answers, but as a seller of technology services and a buyer of firewood, I lean on having a trusting relationship with my buyer/seller counterpart. If the price isn't exactly right, it's the context of a trusting relationship with open communication that will fix the price issue. If the trust isn't right, no price will fix it.

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Slow and steady... I've been building this thing called BrandGhost. When I jumped back on the content creation train in 2023 after a 10 year vacation, I needed a different approach. I'm wildly prone to burning out doing this kind of stuff, but I know I needed to: - be consistent - keep posting more - post to more platforms - not actually give up this time The problem is that doing the first step seemed impossible. I started building the systems behind BrandGhost from the beginning -- but BrandGhost is now a platform you can try out for yourself today 🙂 If you're a content creator or a business owner that doesn't want to fuss with regularly jumping onto social media to post: we got you covered. 👻 Link below 👇

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Now that we’ve delivered custom workforce management solutions for a few contractors in California, I’ve had a chance to really see the folks in the field and the management issues that trace back to the days when laptops were a luxury thing. (I’m talking about small to mid-sized organizations here.) It turned out to be quite a conservative vertical, with many still relying on outdated stuff. Challenges Faced by Field Service Businesses: A survey by Verizon Connect highlights the most challenging issues: - Customer satisfaction (56%) - Profit margins (48%) - Talent acquisition and retention (47%) Other challenges include: Technology Alignment: Many companies use multiple outdated technologies that don’t integrate whatsoever. Operational Cost Increase: Dispatches generate revenue but also generate crazy overhead. Talent Pool: Poor technology frustrates field staff, leading to higher turnover. When it comes to field service management, some industries are particularly notorious for poor management. The top five industries that struggle the most with FSM are: Telecommunications: Companies in this sector often face challenges with scheduling, dispatching, and maintaining the vast network infrastructure, leading to delays and inefficiencies​ Utilities: The management of services like electricity, water, and gas supply is complex, often plagued by outdated systems and equipment, leading to frequent service disruptions and customer dissatisfaction​ Healthcare: Field service in healthcare involves the maintenance and repair of critical medical equipment. Issues here can severely impact patient care and safety due to delays in service and equipment downtime​ Construction: Managing field services in construction is challenging due to the dynamic and fragmented nature of projects. Poor coordination and communication often result in project delays and increased costs​ Manufacturing: This industry deals with maintaining machinery and equipment both in-house and at customer sites. Ineffective FSM can lead to prolonged downtimes and significant productivity losses​ TBC

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💻 Small and medium software companies should not follow the herd. If they want to attract top talent—they can differentiate with a remote culture. I've been doing remote work way before the pandemics without any issues. I understand the narrative of those that can't afford remote—fair enough—but they should treat people like adults and let them choose what's best for both parties involved. I don't mind visiting offices from time to time—but going on daily / weekly basis to an office, when work can be done remotely—sorry, that's not for me. And I am a sociable and dynamic person—that's why, in order to deliver high-quality results on time, I want to choose the locations that best fit me. There are plenty of tools for online collaboration—for someone that isn't responsible, I understand why they need to be forced go to an office. 😄

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Happy Monday y'all! I've had a lot of questions recently about why I'm open to work. So, I figured I'd just be transparent and answer en masse. I quit my job at JB Hunt last October. I wasn't laid off; I wasn't fired. I was actually in a situation where I was working above my title alongside other directors in preparation for the next step in my career that was stagnated a bit because of market conditions and internal company shifts. I don't hate the shifts and think they made good business sense, but like any change - it was a bit difficult to see the future of my product and role during the transition. That combined with some other life events made me feel strongly that I needed to step away and reset in a major way. While that may not be a popular reason - perhaps worse to some that getting fired or laid off, it's the truth. My plan was to take a couple of months to reset, then hit the market again in Jan '24 in hopes of finding my next adventure with a clear head and renewed focus. The sad thing is that the market didn't do me any favors. One might argue that I lacked forward vision in sensing the job market downturn, but it caught a lot of us by surprise and I still feel like parting when I did was the right thing for me to do for myself. And for what it's worth, I'd still go back to Hunt if given the opportunity. Why am I telling you this? I hope that the transparency will help in two ways: - I hope this helps you find the internal grace to deal with your own mistakes. Life and work are hard. You do what you can and make decisions as you see fit, then you've got to own them and deal with them. Just how it goes, but your people are here to support you. If they're not, find new people. - I hope that this helps clear the air for anyone looking to hire me or recruit me who thinks I got fired. That shroud of uncertainty on LinkedIn is just perverse and doesn't do anyone on either side of the fence any favors. Y'all stay classy and keep paying it forward! Tech is weird right now and I think that we all need to practice humility, kindness, and genuine gratitude just a little bit more. Look to your right and left today and check on your people - some of them might be struggling to articulate failure and mistakes in a healthy way. If you need to talk strategies, perhaps my own adventures can help you navigate what's going on as well. Happy Monday and let's GOOOO!!!! #softwareengineering #techcareers #opentowork #techjobs #devcommunity #techtalent #engineeringleadership #leadership #careeradvice #careergrowth #techrecruiting #restandrefocus #mondaymotivation

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Our team demo'd something on Friday that blew my socks off. Codename: Project Raptor. (Because if you can't have awesome code names for software projects, what are you even doing???) So...what is it? About a year ago I put together this slide to help illustrate what the future of strategic finance might look like. The idea was pretty simple: Today, even with a great toolkit, humans have to do most of the work of *thinking* up the scenarios to run, then using their tools to run those scenarios, then comparing to outputs to find the winners. Tomorrow, you'll wake up to an email from a finance agent of sorts who has been busy all night running scenarios on your behalf with the latest data and cherry-picking the best ones for you to consider putting into action. Project Raptor makes this vision *very* real. In the same way you might be using ChatGPT to write a great draft of your blog post, you'll be using Project Raptor to build a great draft of your next Annual Budget, along with all the sensitivities and cases you might want to explore. It's going to be freakin' awesome. Can't wait to share more soon...DM me or drop a comment if you're interested in getting involved as a beta tester :) HUGE shoutout to Derek Y. the entire Drivepoint engineering team for blowing me and the rest of the team away.

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I hate it when I call a company and can’t find the right option in the automated menu, or I end up speaking to agents and we can't understand each other, going in circles. Have you been there too? This is why I’m ecstatic about our feature release at Regal, our "extremely human" AI agents. This will change the game for our customers and their consumers. #contactcenter #ccaas #ai #aiagent #demo #tech

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The Aha! Moment 🎉 🎊 As a software engineer, we often find ourselves deep in the trenches, wrestling with complex concepts that just don't seem to click. It's frustrating, exhausting, and sometimes, you wonder if you'll ever get it. I've been struggling to understand some very difficult concepts in Python for a long time. It felt like hitting a wall over and over. But I persisted, kept pushing through the frustration, and today, something amazing happened. Suddenly, all the pieces started to fall into place. What once felt like chaos now makes perfect sense. It's like a fog lifting, revealing how everything is connected. This is why we keep going. These moments aren’t just about grasping a single concept; they’re about seeing the bigger picture, recognizing patterns, and realizing how it all fits together. It’s a breakthrough that changes how you approach problems. So, if you're in the thick of it right now, feeling stuck, just remember: the aha moment is out there waiting for you. Keep pushing, keep experimenting, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. They often lead to breakthroughs. What's your most memorable aha moment in coding? Share your story—I’d love to hear how you broke through the tough spots! #TechCommunity #CodeStory #SoftwareEngineering

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I've been wanting to have a side project for a while. And I finally finished one! https://utahtech.work/ It's a job board website for the tech industry in Utah. Behind the scenes it has a lot of cool features like handling payments to purchase job listings, email notifications, analytics, searching, filtering, and an admin dashboard. I have a large backlog of additional features that I will be building soon. Now comes the hard part... marketing and SEO! Side note: if you work for an SEO company, please don't try to sell me anything. I'm trying to bootstrap this thing and keep costs as low as possible. Currently my site isn't very useful because there's only one published job listing on it. It's the ol' cold start problem. So if you work for a tech company in Utah that's hiring and you want a free listing, message me the details and I'll get you added to the site. Free of charge! Like the tagline says, it's "The number one site to find a tech job in Utah". Maybe not right now, but someday soon! Will you help me get there?

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I created an application with Angular 17 to efficiently manage construction jobs for construction companies. Fully mobile responsive. Given the current state of the housing market I'll likely hang on to this one for a little while. The entire process was so much fun. I started by discovering a need in the market. Then I interviewed construction company owners and contractors to better understand that need and to start the process of thinking of potential solutions. After determining a solution to multiple problems/opportunities, I designed a POC in Figma. I presented the design to an important stakeholder, then adjusted the design based on feedback. I then created a project in Asana and segmented the project into manageable chunks in the form of features and tasks. I then started to build. Some of the features include the ability to create an account by purchasing a plan for an organization, add contractors to an organization, add new jobs or edit existing jobs, add photos to jobs (this part was really fun - I found a really cost effective way to do this), store profit and cost data, and reporting among others features. I really enjoyed the ability to simply create something new without guard rails other than those outlined in the tasks and features within Asana (business requirements). Onto the next project 😊

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This week's Nadya Dot Release article kicked my butt. It kicked my butt enough that it didn't even ship last week because it wasn't ready. I want each issue to be worth your time to read it and this one took a lot of work to land. You see, I believe that to be great at hard conversations you have to start with altruism. To do this, you have you to take a good look in the mirror, be honest with yourself about what’s in your head and heart, and then discard what doesn't align with your values. All that was really hard to lay out because it's nuanced and it's personal. It is also one of the most powerful things I've learned in my leadership journey. When I come at things with both honest altruism and values-aligned self-interest, I am fearless. It took me many tries to boil it down to the clear, practical advice I strive to give in each issue. I would love to hear how it lands with you. You can read it here: https://lnkd.in/ggK3nTPU. And this picture? It was me before giving a talk at FutureStack Berlin - taking a good look in the mirror to get my game face on.

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