The Exchanges

Q So if, if I were to be really horrible here and ask you to summarize a biggest takeaway from your time at Apple and, and kind of condensing those years at Apple, is there any big takeaways that you have taken from your time at Apple and applied now to your new role as startup founder with Instrumental?

A Well, two things. I think one at a strategic level and one at a tactical level. At a strategic level, Apple introduced me to the space that Instrumental works in. Um, I got to See what manufacturing of consumer electronic devices is really like, and that exposure led me to understand the problems that our customers face. Essentially, I'm building a product for what I used to do. We help hardware engineers find and fix issues on their manufacturing lines, and that enables them to ship on time so they don't have to spend weeks in China like I had to do. And in the future, you know, we'll, we'll use that data that we're collecting and providing to our customers to develop Artificial intelligence algorithms, which is kind of where the, the AI and instrumental that AI comes from. And on a more tactical level, Apple has some great core values that I wanted to replicate at instrumental. And the two that we've adopted are to make the decision based on what's best for the customer. That's a very unifying quality to have across the team because then people aren't arguing against each other. They're all arguing for the customer. And the second is to design down to the details. And I think that Most people can agree that Apple does that really well, and it creates a really high quality product, and we aspire to do the same.

AI assessment note: “Well, two things. I think one at a strategic level and one at a tactical level.”

Q So if, if I were to be really horrible here and ask you to summarize a biggest takeaway from your time at Apple and, and kind of condensing those years at Apple, is there any big takeaways that you have taken from your time at Apple and applied now to your new role as startup founder with Instrumental?

A Well, two things. I think one at a strategic level and one at a tactical level. At a strategic level, Apple introduced me to the space that Instrumental works in. Um, I got to See what manufacturing of consumer electronic devices is really like, and that exposure led me to understand the problems that our customers face. Essentially, I'm building a product for what I used to do. We help hardware engineers find and fix issues on their manufacturing lines, and that enables them to ship on time so they don't have to spend weeks in China like I had to do. And in the future, you know, we'll, we'll use that data that we're collecting and providing to our customers to develop Artificial intelligence algorithms, which is kind of where the, the AI and instrumental that AI comes from. And on a more tactical level, Apple has some great core values that I wanted to replicate at instrumental. And the two that we've adopted are to make the decision based on what's best for the customer. That's a very unifying quality to have across the team because then people aren't arguing against each other. They're all arguing for the customer. And the second is to design down to the details. And I think that Most people can agree that Apple does that really well, and it creates a really high quality product, and we aspire to do the same.

AI assessment note: “Well, two things. I think one at a strategic level and one at a tactical level.”

Q You mentioned your workflow there for, for learning new things and the methodology around it. One that you've not struggled with though, for sure, and have mastered is, is obviously the engineering prioritization process. So, so talk to me about this and how this process Begins, and how you decide what to prioritize on?

A Yeah, great question. I think what's really our kind of advantage here is that my co-founder and I are both mechanical engineers, and somehow we've started a software company, and so we got to start out knowing nothing about how to manage a software team and engineering prioritization in a software team, because hardware is fundamentally different, and I think in the end, that enables us To start from scratch and keep only what truly works. So we keep a running stack rank in a Google doc of all of the potential initiatives that the engineering team could be working on. And that includes things like features or security updates, et cetera. And then we score each of those initiatives based on business goals that are identified on a quarterly basis. And so a business goal might be something like build XYZ feature to increase Product value. What we realized though, is that that didn't work out amazingly well, because while it's easy to tell whether the team built the feature or not, it was difficult to understand if that actually increased product value. So we've kind of started to evolve this stack ranking process. And, and what we do instead is we have a, we have a top line business goal, which I am confident will result in an excellent business. And in this case is a revenue goal. And then we have what we call the playbook, which are the individual metrics underneath that Suppor…

AI assessment note: “we keep a running stack rank in a Google doc of all of the potential initiatives”

Q Wow. So many, so many good things to dig into there for me. How do you fabricate FOMO? How can you insert that element of competitiveness within the VC ecosystem, which as I know as a VC is inherently competitive,

A Absolutely. And I think what's kind of frustrating about FOMO when you hear about it as an entrepreneur is that, you know, you kind of, you're told you need a term sheet in order to get a term sheet, but that creates a chicken and egg problem. And I think the, the creativity here is in finding other ways to create FOMO when you don't have a term sheet to start with, or you don't have a preemptive, um, a preemptive term sheet. And so what we did, and I cannot take credit for this, This is, I fell into this, and, but I think that there's something really interesting here for others to take away, is that a few months after taking angel funding, we applied to Y Combinator, fully intending to try to get in because we thought it would be a great network for our company, and our application was selected for an in-person interview, and I picked a date three weeks out, and I happened to be meeting with a VC that I'd been kind of developing a relationship with over the last couple of months, and I asked him, what do you think about Y Combinator? Should I do Y Combinator? And he said, You don't need YC. You can raise money now. And he suggested that I go talk to all the other VCs I'd been building relationships with, tell them that I had an interview scheduled and ask for their advice on whether we should do YC or not. And what I realized afterwards is that he had helped me create a FOMO …

AI assessment note: “he had helped me create a FOMO situation with the YC interview”

Q Wow. So many, so many good things to dig into there for me. How do you fabricate FOMO? How can you insert that element of competitiveness within the VC ecosystem, which as I know as a VC is inherently competitive,

A Absolutely. And I think what's kind of frustrating about FOMO when you hear about it as an entrepreneur is that, you know, you kind of, you're told you need a term sheet in order to get a term sheet, but that creates a chicken and egg problem. And I think the, the creativity here is in finding other ways to create FOMO when you don't have a term sheet to start with, or you don't have a preemptive, um, a preemptive term sheet. And so what we did, and I cannot take credit for this, This is, I fell into this, and, but I think that there's something really interesting here for others to take away, is that a few months after taking angel funding, we applied to Y Combinator, fully intending to try to get in because we thought it would be a great network for our company, and our application was selected for an in-person interview, and I picked a date three weeks out, and I happened to be meeting with a VC that I'd been kind of developing a relationship with over the last couple of months, and I asked him, what do you think about Y Combinator? Should I do Y Combinator? And he said, You don't need YC. You can raise money now. And he suggested that I go talk to all the other VCs I'd been building relationships with, tell them that I had an interview scheduled and ask for their advice on whether we should do YC or not. And what I realized afterwards is that he had helped me create a FOMO …

AI assessment note: “tell them that I had an interview scheduled and ask for their advice”

Q You mentioned your workflow there for, for learning new things and the methodology around it. One that you've not struggled with though, for sure, and have mastered is, is obviously the engineering prioritization process. So, so talk to me about this and how this process Begins, and how you decide what to prioritize on?

A Yeah, great question. I think what's really our kind of advantage here is that my co-founder and I are both mechanical engineers, and somehow we've started a software company, and so we got to start out knowing nothing about how to manage a software team and engineering prioritization in a software team, because hardware is fundamentally different, and I think in the end, that enables us To start from scratch and keep only what truly works. So we keep a running stack rank in a Google doc of all of the potential initiatives that the engineering team could be working on. And that includes things like features or security updates, et cetera. And then we score each of those initiatives based on business goals that are identified on a quarterly basis. And so a business goal might be something like build XYZ feature to increase Product value. What we realized though, is that that didn't work out amazingly well, because while it's easy to tell whether the team built the feature or not, it was difficult to understand if that actually increased product value. So we've kind of started to evolve this stack ranking process. And, and what we do instead is we have a, we have a top line business goal, which I am confident will result in an excellent business. And in this case is a revenue goal. And then we have what we call the playbook, which are the individual metrics underneath that Suppor…

AI assessment note: “we keep a running stack rank in a Google doc of all of the potential initiatives”

Q Can I ask, you said about building the relations there and kind of then using them with the YC connection. How did you look to build the relations then? Coming from an engineering background and Apple where you obviously weren't so inserted into the VC community like, like VCs or startup founders might traditionally be. So how did you look to build those relationships?

A Great question. And it kind of goes back to the methodology of learning new things that we just talked about. The problem there being I had no, I had no entrepreneurial background when I started my company. Um, that was the problem. And so kind of my method there was I went out to go find one and a great way to start an entrepreneurial network is to meet other founders. So I hosted dinners at my house, several of them with several different groups of founders. I knew like two founders. And so I asked them to bring two other founders that they know. And I met those people and And then had additional dinners where I invited those people, and they invited other people, and so free food is a great way to meet founders. Founders are how I met many of the VCs that in my early days that I had been introduced to, or other people in my network, and so I didn't know what I should be doing in this proverbial, like, build relationships with VCs. People say that all the time, but it feels like you're always pitching anyway, so I How do you build a relationship when you're not pitching? And I think what I, I have kind of stumbled into is you just go and ask advice. This is a great way to get like half an hour of free consulting about what you should be worried about in your business and what you should be doing about X, Y, Z, or the other. And that's kind of how I've approached it.

AI assessment note: “hosted dinners at my house, several of them with several different groups of founders”

Q I can't help but ask this. It's all in the schedule. Why is manufacturing kind of so unloved?

A It's pretty antiquated, and the processes are pretty antiquated, and the people who work in this space are really always just focused on executing, and so they don't have a lot of time to think about how it could be better and what technologies could be better, and I think that, you know, we live in this in society of consumer software, and we kind of expect that same consumer software to carry over to this industry, and it just hasn't, It hasn't converted well. And so that's kind of what we're doing is we're trying to bring these new technologies that, that everybody is familiar with and used to from the consumer side into an industry that, that is just, you know, it's not very sexy. And I think that's maybe why.

AI assessment note: “into an industry that, that is just, you know, it's not very sexy.”

Q I'm noticing a trend with the Korean ribs and the dinners. This is a good way to get things done. I'm intrigued with the fundraising process. Were there any mishaps along the way or any stumbles that potentially kind of halted your progress and made it slightly difficult for you in the process?

A Yeah, I think that I have one kind of last piece of advice that I think would be great to share with the broader founder community based on what we've experienced. And Really, that piece of advice is that even once you get a term sheet, even if you like it, your high watermark term sheet, you love the investor, don't get lazy and start closing off other promising conversations with other investors that you'd actually consider by rushing them too much. We had our high watermark term sheet pulled on us for what we believe was no fault of our own. A week after we thought we'd finished the pre-signing due diligence and had Started trading red lines back and forth, and that pulled term sheet created difficulties for us in our process because we'd already started shutting down other conversations, and then we couldn't really open those conversations up again, and so I think the lesson here is that even though it's very bad behavior, pulled term sheets do happen. They can happen to you. They can happen to good companies. We believe we're a good company, and I think the best defense seems to be to have at least Two high watermark term sheets that you can work with in parallel, and to kind of not close down conversations just because you think you're done, and you just really want to be done with the fundraising process.

AI assessment note: “We had our high watermark term sheet pulled on us”

Q I do want to touch on the culture screening there, because often if you kind of go for the, would I like to have another conversation with them, it can lead to a, to a company of very similar profiled people. How do you look to kind of insert an element of diversity and different thinking into the kind of fabric of the company with the culture screening like that?

A Absolutely, and it's a great question, and one that's really important to us. I think Instrumental has ended up being a team of very kind of angular people, but we're angular in different ways, and ultimately, our screen is for passion, and so we ask candidates to tell us about something they're passionate about, and that could be work-related or not. Usually, it's not. The best ones usually are things like food or hiking or biking, and being able to hear candidate actually get into a place where they're talking about something they're passionate about, Can help you to understand if this is someone that you'd want to be around. And so while everybody at instrumental has their own unique flavor and personality and bring something different to the table, we all bring passion to the table. And I think that's really important to who we are at the core.

AI assessment note: “our screen is for passion, and so we ask candidates to tell us”

Q I do want to touch on the culture screening there, because often if you kind of go for the, would I like to have another conversation with them, it can lead to a, to a company of very similar profiled people. How do you look to kind of insert an element of diversity and different thinking into the kind of fabric of the company with the culture screening like that?

A Absolutely, and it's a great question, and one that's really important to us. I think Instrumental has ended up being a team of very kind of angular people, but we're angular in different ways, and ultimately, our screen is for passion, and so we ask candidates to tell us about something they're passionate about, and that could be work-related or not. Usually, it's not. The best ones usually are things like food or hiking or biking, and being able to hear candidate actually get into a place where they're talking about something they're passionate about, Can help you to understand if this is someone that you'd want to be around. And so while everybody at instrumental has their own unique flavor and personality and bring something different to the table, we all bring passion to the table. And I think that's really important to who we are at the core.

AI assessment note: “our screen is for passion, and so we ask candidates to tell us about something”

Q Talking about kind of what engineers want to work on there, one that's particularly interesting for me is kind of the role of kind of individual or Autonomy within the team. How do you view this? Is it something that you advocate for, or do you look to kind of have a whole moving entire body moving in, in kind of one process?

A Oh man, I think that's a really hard question. I think the way that we resolve that is that because it's all public information, how we're making this decision, if someone brings new information to the table or has a new idea, it enables it to be fairly ranked against other things in the list. And the stack rank. So I think that's been really great for this. I think the other thing that's been really great is that while we do have only one thing can be at the top of the list, we're often working down the list ahead of the rest of the team. And so we'll have kind of technical leads on a given initiative, work ahead to scope that initiative and understand how much will be required there. And so even on an engineering team of six, we have kind of two initiatives being worked on in parallel and it Because those were the proper staffing for those initiatives.

AI assessment note: “if someone brings new information to the table or has a new idea, it enables it”

Q Talking about kind of what engineers want to work on there, one that's particularly interesting for me is kind of the role of kind of individual or Autonomy within the team. How do you view this? Is it something that you advocate for, or do you look to kind of have a whole moving entire body moving in, in kind of one process?

A Oh man, I think that's a really hard question. I think the way that we resolve that is that because it's all public information, how we're making this decision, if someone brings new information to the table or has a new idea, it enables it to be fairly ranked against other things in the list. And the stack rank. So I think that's been really great for this. I think the other thing that's been really great is that while we do have only one thing can be at the top of the list, we're often working down the list ahead of the rest of the team. And so we'll have kind of technical leads on a given initiative, work ahead to scope that initiative and understand how much will be required there. And so even on an engineering team of six, we have kind of two initiatives being worked on in parallel and it Because those were the proper staffing for those initiatives.

AI assessment note: “the way that we resolve that is that because it's all public information”

Q I was about, I was about to ask, what do you do when you make the irreversible mistake?

A I think there's one more thing that's really important, and that's to start a plan B on the side. Anything that's company critical, like Hiring this first hire or fundraising or whatever. You need to have a plan B, and in this case, our plan B was that we hired a contractor to work on our engineering to get started while we look for the right person, but ultimately, our plan B got evolved into actually trying to reel in that particular contractor and bribing him over barbecue rib lunches to come join our company as our first engineer, and so, ultimately, we had this plan to execute on, but it was our plan B that ended up Resulting in our first engineering hire.

AI assessment note: “I think there's one more thing that's really important, and that's to start a plan B”

Q I was about, I was about to ask, what do you do when you make the irreversible mistake?

A I think there's one more thing that's really important, and that's to start a plan B on the side. Anything that's company critical, like Hiring this first hire or fundraising or whatever. You need to have a plan B, and in this case, our plan B was that we hired a contractor to work on our engineering to get started while we look for the right person, but ultimately, our plan B got evolved into actually trying to reel in that particular contractor and bribing him over barbecue rib lunches to come join our company as our first engineer, and so, ultimately, we had this plan to execute on, but it was our plan B that ended up Resulting in our first engineering hire.

AI assessment note: “I think there's one more thing that's really important, and that's to start a plan B”