STRV CEO - Lubo Smid

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we have a special treat. Lubo, the CEO of STRV, flew down from California to record this podcast in person. And we discuss trusting your gut to make decisions, the correlation between health and happiness, and the mindset it takes to achieve your goals. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:22) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. One thing I definitely was interested in talking about this morning—so we've always referred to your company as STRV.

(Lubo at 00:00:41) Yeah, that's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:42) Okay. But then we were stalking your Instagram.

(Lubo at 00:00:46) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:46) And seeing how you live life and looking at your company and the culture and all of that. And then I was like, maybe it means strive. And is that what it means, or does it just mean STRV?

(Lubo at 00:00:58) That's where it comes from.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:01) Okay.

(Lubo at 00:01:01) We actually initially wanted to call the company Strive. And we have gone through a couple of rebrandings. I'm happy to talk about that too, to kind of figure out the best brand that will reflect who we are. But for a moment, we were actually using the name Strive, but we were not able to acquire the domain, stripe.com. That seemed to be pretty difficult.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:31) Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:01:33) And then it was just confusing, right? So I did not really want to confuse people when they hear about Strive, and then it says STRV. So we just use STRV, but yeah, the word strive is where it comes from.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:50) Yeah. So it does match the culture.

(Lubo at 00:01:52) It does match the culture a lot. Yeah, that's for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:55) So how did you first meet your cofounders?

(Lubo at 00:02:00) We all pretty much met through studies. So we have four cofounders, and I went to high school with one of them. I went to college with two of them. And one of the cofounders went to high school with the fourth one. So we know each other—we have known each other for probably about 15 years, maybe even more. It's been a long time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:31) And then at what moment were you like, let's do a company together?

(Lubo at 00:02:36) It was a process. It's not that one day you decide—oh, I mean, some people have that, but it was certainly not our case. In our case, it was more step by step, and I was actually the last one to join. It was a little over eight years ago. And yeah, I started as a freelance engineer doing small websites here and there. Then I kind of got to having bigger clients, and then I needed a partner. So one of my cofounders right now was actually helping me with the design. And the two other guys, they had it pretty much the same, so they also worked together. Then I left for studies in the UK, and I kind of stopped doing everything. I was like, now I enjoy the life in a foreign country.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:43) Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:03:44) And it was a hell of a year. A lot of fun. But I stopped pretty much working for that year. And that was the time when my partner joined the guys. And then once I finished, it was a year and a half later. Then I was looking for what to do. And yeah, that was very much a very easy choice to join them. And yeah, since then, I've been building the company, made it from—well, yeah, probably less than 10 people when I joined—to about 200 right now. And yeah, it's been a long journey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:26) So what were you studying?

(Lubo at 00:04:28) I did information management, basically a mix between computer science and a business degree, which—yeah, it's kind of rare that you actually study what you do, or at least among my friends and people that I have around me. They go and they study history, and then they end up working in tech, for example. So in my case, it's actually—yeah, I have studied what I do right now. And I think knowing the inside of the technology, knowing programming, and actually having an experience to do that and leading the team of engineers and doing all of that stuff around, I think sets me pretty well to support the company on the business side as well. And I would definitely not call myself purely a business guy, because in the end, even the way how I approach, for example, sales or management, is through a lens of an engineer. And I will rather focus on what's the value that we can bring, rather than doing a great sales pitch that will be full of superlatives and all that stuff. And I can't do that. And especially, I come from the Czech Republic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:43) Mhmm.

(Lubo at 00:05:43) And we tend to be very humble and very reserved when it comes to self-presenting. So sometimes it's a little hard for me to switch between the two. So when I'm in Europe, in Prague, and I'm presenting something, I have to always remember that I can't really use the common practice from the US, because a lot of people would think that I'm a douchebag.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:29) I love it.

(Lubo at 00:06:29) Yeah. Because here, it's way more common that people are very good in presentations and self-promoting. And I don't mean it in a bad way. It's a great skill, but I think overall, people from Eastern and Central Europe are not, in general, that good at it. And so for me, when I go back and forth, I kind of have to switch the way how I speak with, for example, potential clients and the team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:08) Yeah. So I want to understand that better. And I've definitely seen the culture differences because I've gotten to travel—Sweden and visit some other places. And so I can tell that there's definitely different energies in the different locations. But in your mind as a presenter, what is the biggest difference, in how you would differentiate America versus Prague?

(Lubo at 00:07:37) There is—we can edit it out. We can be as real as possible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:41) We can be as real as possible.

(Lubo at 00:07:43) No, I mean, I will probably not say anything that would not be true or that I don't feel strongly about. But I think one piece is the self-promotion and kind of the public speaking skills in a way that—and I think that's certainly affected by kind of the regime and the era that we were growing in, or probably not me, but even the previous generations. I think that I haven't seen much or anything—for the majority of my life, everything was just fine. But the previous generations, they had a pretty tough time there. I don't think that's something that here in the US someone experienced a whole lot. There were other things, but—

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:33) So would it be like, if I were presenting, the differences in me presenting—maybe there would be here in America, there'd be more emphasis on recognition I've received, awards I've won, things I've done, whereas there we would just go right into the business value?

(Lubo at 00:08:46) 100%. Yeah. And even when it comes to, for example, hiring or even application for a college, here in the US, there's a whole lot of emphasis on what kind of volunteering have you done and these sort of activities. And to be honest, yeah, now it starts to be happening in Europe too. But for example, when I was applying for a college, no one cared at all. It was purely about what are your grades, how well did you do on this application test, and that was it, right? So I think here, there's a bit more soft skills and that kind of experience involved. So that's also one of the differences. And then what it also comes down to is the way how the business is conducted. And to be honest, that was one of the huge reasons why we decided to move over from Europe to do business in the US, because it was just not fun. It's extremely hard to—or at least it was. I think it's changing a little or it has changed since then, but let's say eight years ago or even longer than that, people just did not see a whole lot of value, and they would always go after the lowest price tag.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:37) In Europe?

(Lubo at 00:10:37) Yeah. You know, that's—I love that you say that, because I stopped running ads in Europe for our leadership company because the sales cycle over there is so different.

(Lubo at 00:10:50) First of all, it's 10 times longer. It's a much longer sales cycle. And then—and nothing bad about the people. It's just how they were purchasing was irregular to how we're used to doing it in the United States. And then in the United States, it was just happening faster or it'd be more clear if we're doing this or not. And over there, it was less clear—are we moving forward? Are we doing this? What's going on? And so for that reason, being a startup, we just said, let's just focus on companies right here in the United States.

(Lubo at 00:11:26) Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And we had the same—we were in front of the same decision, basically. And yeah, eight years ago when we were kind of on the verge whether we continue doing something in Europe or whether we go full on and we move over to the US. And that's what we did in the end. But you know, yeah, the sales cycle is way longer. It's not as relationship-based as it's here, right? Here, if you like someone and you feel like they would be a good partner, you figure out a way how to make it work. Although in Europe, they will mostly—and I don't want to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:11) Yeah, we're generalizing a lot.

(Lubo at 00:12:13) Yeah. I don't want to generalize entirely, because since recently we have some great corporations in Europe too. But it was a lot of just comparing kind of the numbers without even looking what these numbers mean, which oftentimes is also very important in order to kind of decide what company would you want to go with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:40) And so what's your primary product that you sell? What's the primary way you generate revenue?

(Lubo at 00:12:45) So STRV is basically a boutique design and engineering company that helps our clients and partners to build custom software solutions. And that's our major part of the business. We help companies not just here in the US, but now pretty much all over the world to build great pieces of software that help their business. And that's what we have been doing over—

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:21) A decade. You have great designers. Great design team. I really—whenever I talk to people and I'm researching their companies, I don't tell people when they have bad design, but whenever I see people that have good design, I'm like, oh, you've got really good design.

(Lubo at 00:13:37) Yeah. It's been a big passion of ours to make sure that everything is really polished. And I think that since the very early days of doing mobile applications, we always wanted to be standing out. And then it's partially about standing out, but also about sticking with kind of the general guidelines of the platforms, right? Because it's funny, but what you would see often is that if you look at how iOS application looks like and Android application looks like, and these groups of users, they have totally different patterns, how they interact and so on. You can make the same app for both platforms. And oftentimes we would see, oh, there is an iOS pattern applied on Android. And you don't want to mess with that. And I think that, yeah, it's about visuals, but it's also about trying to fit within the platform the best way possible and making the user experience great. And that's just part of, I think, the core. But I'm very happy that you mentioned.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:59) Because it seeps through your entire company. I saw your shirts. You guys have different shirts, right? And they're more than just the ones that—

(Lubo at 00:15:08) This is the simple one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:09) That's the simple one. Yeah, you got some really cool-looking ones. And then you also—I don't know which office it was in, but I saw you have this designed wall. It's like, this is STRV. And to me, I was like, oh, I wonder if he has a designer that's just working on internal company brand stuff, because you put a lot of little detail into everything.

(Lubo at 00:15:31) Yeah. Actually, my cofounder was laughing that the company must be doing really good. He is focusing on our spinoff startup right now. So actually, all three cofounders are focusing on a spinoff startup right now. So it's just me from the cofounding team running the business right now. And yeah, he was laughing because he saw that we have produced a really nice video of just presenting a hoodie or a sweatshirt that we have made for the team for this past holidays as a gift. So if you can dedicate a lot of time into making something like this, which clearly has very close to zero business value, then I guess you must be doing something good. But yeah, it has close to zero business value, but it has a huge value for brand promotion and more importantly, for the team internally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:40) Well, if you make quality stuff that looks good and it's good material, do you have them for sale online?

(Lubo at 00:16:47) We don't. We have realized—it was our idea, let's—we have really cool merch.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:53) I mean, it's just in my head, it reads Strive. That's a brand that I would wear a Strive hoodie, because it's how I identify as a person. I'm a person who's always—

(Lubo at 00:17:05) We'll get you a hoodie.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:07) Can I have a hoodie? Yeah, of course. You should put them online for sale.

(Lubo at 00:17:08) Of course. Who would buy your stuff?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:13) We were thinking about it, but then we were like, oh, we don't really want to handle that, and we don't even want to—you know, it comes with the process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:25) Yeah, you gotta do drop shipping, merch.

(Lubo at 00:17:28) Exactly. If someone does it for us, then maybe we'll consider, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:33) Get an intern on it and start by just selling it to your friends or people.

(Lubo at 00:17:37) I think that there is even good companies that can pretty much power the whole thing for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:43) Yeah. My book I sell, I do nothing. Amazon has the—they print the copies as they need them on demand, and they fulfill it, and they just take a chunk of it. I don't have to do—I'm sure there's some Shopify. We just had the CTO of Shopify on last week. I'm sure there's some on-demand service where you just upload your graphics and you have your hoodie and stuff.

(Lubo at 00:18:06) Yeah. There's many services like that. I think the one that we used quite a bit is Custom Ink.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:14) Okay.

(Lubo at 00:18:14) And yeah, they do pretty nice stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:17) Do they have—see, because the only problem with the services is you want the hoodie to be quality, right? So when you got—did you order blanks from Custom Ink? Is that how you did it?

(Lubo at 00:18:26) We just ordered smaller batches to test it out. And then once we found that's the right thing—

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:33) So they had the base hoodie that you could then customize?

(Lubo at 00:18:39) Yeah. And they have different levels of quality.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:44) Oh, they do? So nice.

(Lubo at 00:18:45) It's not that, yeah, they have a lot of stuff, but we have a good partner in Prague, and what I like about them is that you can actually interact with them in person, and you can this way get to a really high quality product.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:03) Nice. That face-to-face interaction is something that's so important in business. It's definitely something—

(Lubo at 00:19:09) That's right. That's right. And especially if you are managing a company across the pond, you realize that more and more. And we got tools for it, so we can make it work, but we also do fly a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:24) I also saw, I totally stalked your Instagram for an hour because it's really good. You have really good pics. I was wondering, who is taking these pictures of him all the time? Do you travel with somebody?

(Lubo at 00:19:37) No, no. For the most part, it's just random people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:40) Random stranger? You're like, hey, can you take a picture of me?

(Lubo at 00:19:43) Either that or I just put the phone somewhere.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:45) Oh, there you go. Yeah. Soon we're gonna have the phone be able to just float in the air.

(Lubo at 00:19:50) Yeah. Hopefully.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:52) So I saw your Occupy Mars shirt. I have that shirt. For Halloween, like three years ago, I wore that shirt and then I had my wife wear a sexy red dress with a name tag that said Mars, and a name tag that said Musk. And so I was Elon Musk and she was Mars for Halloween.

(Lubo at 00:20:13) Very good. Yeah. Yeah. I love that shirt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:16) I can't come up with a better Halloween costume.

(Lubo at 00:20:19) Yeah. So once the flights to Mars open, would you consider taking a trip? Would you consider taking a one-way trip? I think that's a better question.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:30) So the one-way trip is absolutely not. I'm not interested in the one-way trip. I hear a lot of people say, like, oh, I'd do the one-way trip. It'd be great to die on Mars. I'm—I feel like I just turned 32, like, last week, and I feel like I'm just getting started and excited about life. You know? I always have that just getting started feel.

(Lubo at 00:20:53) Yeah. I have that every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:55) Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:20:55) I feel like it's the beginning. Now it's the time. Now it's when it's—yeah. I think it's good. I think it's good. And also, we are about the same age. I'm gonna turn 32 in July.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:09) Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:21:10) So I also look at it from the point of view that I wanna make sure that I don't wait for anything. Right? I keep enjoying the life as I go through it. But it's super interesting as you see that new opportunities are opening up for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:30) I did that a lot in my twenties when I was just programming and designing, like, 24/7. I would say, like, oh, I'm not going to be happy now. I'll be happy when I hit this certain mark. And then as the time kept going on and that mark kept moving farther ahead, I realized I will never be happy. I will die unhappy. I have to figure out how to develop a mindset, or I have to figure out how I can be happy now while also achieving this other thing. And that's when I got into reading personal development books and watching videos and Tony Robbins type stuff. You ever get into any of that?

(Lubo at 00:22:09) Sometimes. Not a whole lot. I think that for some reason, I don't need to seek this external motivation because I got it inside of me. So it helps me to stay the course. I know what I'm doing. I know that it's gonna end up well. And even if you go through a tough time, in the end, if it's not for your health, what can happen? Right? It's easy. Right? As long as you are healthy, everything is gonna be fine. And I think that's something that I take very, very seriously, and that's probably the only thing that would make me real concerned. But when it comes to anything else, basically, yeah, just deal with it. And you go through a tough time, and then it's gonna be better.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:16) Yeah. It's like when my kids cry, I set a timer for 20 minutes and I'm like, this will be over soon. That's it. And then their mind changes. No. But for me, it took a lot of work because I was so workaholic-y and I was like, I'm not gonna be happy. I'm not—and I did that for so long where I'm just gonna obsess about it. That for me to learn how to come out of that and to be happy now, I started reading. And then once I got those lessons of how to think—if you, as humans, we can—if you have a favorite author or something, you can think like them, right, after you've consumed enough of their content. And so for me, I was really happy that that type of stuff existed because it allowed me to say like, oh, this is how happy people think. Right? They find the positive in things. And I did—I was pessimistic. I was negative. I was really introverted. And then I saw like, oh, what I'm doing is something that just kinda happened. It's the way I—I realize I'm in this situation, and now I need to get tools to get out of it.

(Lubo at 00:24:23) Yeah. And it's—I think that the mindset is the essence of everything. And if you are gonna approach everything from the negative point of view, you are kind of against yourself because you will never do good. You will always look at the negative parts of what can happen and it will happen. If you constantly keep thinking about that and you don't look at the positive side, then I'm sorry, but you are hurting yourself and you need to start thinking positively and then good things will happen to you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:03) Yeah. And I think a lot of it too is connected to diet and fitness. I used to be 300 pounds. I used to be very—

(Lubo at 00:25:10) Oh, seriously?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:10) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was, like, this big—

(Lubo at 00:25:12) Where did that go?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:13) When did that go? So when I was, uh, 13, around 13, I got hit by a car, and then I was in a—and then I got really depressed, and then I just started eating a lot. And I was pretty fat through high school. And then I started to lose some weight then, and then I lost the rest of it, like, you know, middle and end of high school.

(Lubo at 00:25:34) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:34) I lost the weight. But then that was a big realization of, like, when you're that big, you kinda lie to yourself. Like, oh, my brain is—like, I'm a smart person. My brain is separate from my body. Right? But it's not. My physical athleticism or my level of physical capability—

(Lubo at 00:25:54) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:55) Is directly connected to how well my brain works.

(Lubo at 00:25:59) And not—yeah. I couldn't agree more. And when I have a tough time, I tend to make very poor decisions when it comes to healthy habits, working out, eating clean, and it kind of all falls apart. Right? When you work 14, 16 hours a day, you can't really keep in mind that you should also eat healthy and then you have no time to squeeze in a workout. And even—I have these periods here and there, and I always go off the track a little bit. But then I think it's important to have some self-awareness, know that it's happening, and see that, okay, now I need to put a lot of effort into figuring this out. But once you actually figure it out, then you go back on the track and, yeah, that's pretty much what happens to me from time to time that if there is an obstacle in the way, it's hard to keep everything in line and follow all the habits.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:25) Keep it perfect.

(Lubo at 00:27:26) Yeah. Yeah. I'm a perfectionist in a way, and I strive to have everything perfect, but it's an aspirational goal. It's not something that I will get to ever, because it's—as you mentioned earlier, it's getting—as I progress, it's getting further and further because I know what are the things that can be improved and so on and so on. So if you don't think of it as an aspirational goal, then you will always struggle because you will never reach it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:06) Yeah. It's the cycle of life. Right? You know where you wanna go and you have to discipline yourself, but then you also have to be the one that lets up on that discipline and moderates it, you know, like, how hard you're pushing. And I noticed, like, if I'm pushing too hard at work, instantly, I'm like, oh, I haven't worked out in a week. And then I gotta stop because I gotta get back to that working out because that's when I'm the happiest. That's when I'm operating the best.

(Lubo at 00:28:39) Yeah. And for me, it's multiple things. It's good eating habits, working out, getting enough sleep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:49) Yeah. These are probably the top three. They did some—I was listening, some content somewhere about—they were testing people's DNA and then depriving them of sleep. And then the more—or the less sleep they got, the more their DNA degraded and the more susceptible they were to all sorts of genetic issues and diseases and things like that.

(Lubo at 00:29:13) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:14) Sounds like, gotta get to sleep.

(Lubo at 00:29:15) I 100% agree. And the only—I rarely get sick, but there is—I basically know how to get sick immediately. If someone would need the recipe, how to get sick, I have one. But it helps me to avoid that. Right? And if I keep working out and if I sleep enough and I don't drink a whole lot, it's like I can go through a flu season and nothing will touch me. But if I don't sleep enough and I don't work out, so I don't keep my body in shape, and then I go end up drinking and clubbing for a little bit, it's immediate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:11) Yeah. It just deteriorates your body.

(Lubo at 00:30:13) Like, you—your body is weak, and yeah, it's super vulnerable to, you know, any kind of viruses that are everywhere these days.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:25) So do you, when you work out, do you follow anybody on YouTube or do you have planned workouts? Like, how do you learn the exercises that you wanna do?

(Lubo at 00:30:36) I actually—that's a good question. I hate following certain—for me, when I hit the gym, I do a lot of thinking at work. And when I hit the gym, I don't wanna be thinking what I should be doing. I don't wanna—I don't even wanna be looking up some workouts or anything. So for me, the favorite is to do coach classes. So basically, I show up. I show up on time. There's a trainer. He tells me what to do. I do it. I leave my best there and, yeah, I go a lot to Barry's Bootcamp. That's probably my favorite these days. I like Peloton a lot. Yeah. So I have the treadmill and, yeah, that for me is on-demand whenever I want. I have a trainer at my disposal. There is also other people participating, so it kind of feels nice. And I don't have to think about what to do, and this is what I do for the most of my workouts. And then, yeah, I do a little bit of CrossFit when I feel like it. Because, otherwise, it varies—in Peloton it's a lot of cardio and a little bit of strength. So I try to mix that with a lot of weight lifting and CrossFit to get some strength.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:18) I like that you bring that up, the coach classes, because when somebody has—I guess, the founders or CEOs, everybody's always looking to you. Like, what are we doing? Like, what's the plan? You know, even if you have the best people, and they can delegate and they can operate, but there's still a team looking for you to figure out, like, what's up. And to go into an environment where you've got someone who knows exactly what they're doing and you can just participate—

(Lubo at 00:32:52) Yeah. 100%. And, for example, when we do team buildings, and, for example, we do some activities, and we are set up in teams. Although it's the same people. Right? It's the same people that I work with every day. I so much enjoy a different dynamic. So we pick someone to lead the team and you see how that person suddenly performs, right, when they can command me what to do and not the other way, pretty much. And that I really enjoy. That's so much fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:29) Yeah. And I haven't thought about that. That's an interesting dynamic. When if you do a team building exercise and you have someone else who's leading that you've taken to, you get to watch your team respond to that person. That's pretty cool.

(Lubo at 00:33:41) Yeah. It is awesome. And we do that. We do these bigger team buildings at least once a year, and then we basically put the entire company together in one place. And we do certain of these activities, and it's great. And to be honest, it even now when I'm thinking about it, it even informs some of my decisions who to promote because I saw how they acted in certain leadership positions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:17) Without you. You see how they act without you?

(Lubo at 00:34:19) Yeah. Yeah. And it helped me to kind of see more into what's the skills of somebody. So, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:28) That's a good one. I haven't heard that. I hear a lot about different tests or analysis or assessments, different things like that. But I've never heard of, yeah, just go put them in a situation with another leader and—yeah. That's actually really interesting.

(Lubo at 00:34:44) And you get to watch from being a member of the team rather than being the person leading the whole thing. And that's inspiring.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:55) So what's an example of this type of activity? Like, if I was a leader and I wanted to replicate this, what type of activity could you put someone through?

(Lubo at 00:35:05) There's, I think, a whole lot of different team building activities that you can do. Usually, when we do something like that, it's part sport activities. But it could be some brain teasers, figuring something out as a group, or doing some challenging exercise in terms of getting through obstacles. Right? Then you need someone to kind of suggest what is gonna be the steps that we'll be taking. And, yeah, there's just many.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:44) Yeah. But those are good. Like, obstacle courses. Right? What's the one when they lock you in the rooms and you have to solve your way out?

(Lubo at 00:35:52) Yeah. Like, the escape rooms. Yeah. That's—I have done many of these with the team, and yeah, this is probably—we do for smaller team—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:04) That's a smaller team.

(Lubo at 00:36:05) Team building. So when we go and it's, like, five, six of us. And that also kinda helps to get the team together because you need to collaborate. And, yeah, we have done—we have actually done one recently and it was fun. Yeah. I enjoyed it. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:22) You need to collaborate outside of your normal roles.

(Lubo at 00:36:25) Yeah. Right? That's cool. And you get to be a little creative, which is good. Are escape rooms popular around here?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:35) Yeah. We actually have one that's pretty custom. They build their own, and then they sell them to people all over the United States.

(Lubo at 00:36:42) Oh, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:43) Yeah. I can't remember the name of it, but it's about ten, fifteen minutes from here.

(Lubo at 00:36:50) Yeah. It's pretty cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:51) I talked to the owner guy. Yeah. He put my information in when I was buying, and then when I was in the escape room, he looked me up because of my domain or whatever. And then he was like—we ended up hanging out with him for two hours.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:07) He's giving me behind the scenes, showing me the Raspberry Pi controllers and how they build their custom escape rooms and all the stuff that they do.

(Lubo at 00:37:14) That's cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:15) Yes. We got to geek out for a while. It was pretty cool.

(Lubo at 00:37:18) Yeah. One of our former colleagues actually has built an escape room in Prague.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:26) Oh, yeah?

(Lubo at 00:37:26) And that's—yeah. Yep. So I also got to see what it looks like behind the scene. It was pretty nice. And he's obsessed with all these little gadgets and the Raspberry Pis and everything. So it was a super exciting gig for him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:42) Is English pretty common in Prague?

(Lubo at 00:37:45) Yeah. It is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:46) I didn't get by without a translator?

(Lubo at 00:37:51) Definitely. Among the younger generation, you have no problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:55) If you go outside of Prague—

(Lubo at 00:37:56) Then you might end up in a little bit of trouble. Yeah. You will always figure it out, but it's probably not going to be every single person that you meet that will be able to speak English. But in Prague? Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:13) So as a founder, one of the things I was really interested in—and so is Jake. Jake, our producer, he was really interested in knowing, what's the most difficult thing that you've learned, the lesson that you've learned as a founder?

(Lubo at 00:38:30) Most difficult, I would probably talk about how culture is important when you are picking the right people for the team. Because in the end, that's been something that I think negatively impacted us on the way throughout the entire journey—that we did not pay enough attention to the culture that we have created. And we brought people on board that were just not a fit with the culture of the company. And it's not that easy to—and then you don't realize it for six months, twelve months. But once you do, you realize that the company is actually directed somewhere where you don't even want to be part of it.

(Lubo at 00:39:39) So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:40) Right. And that's when you realize.

(Lubo at 00:39:42) Yeah. And so I think having the culture pieces figured out and making sure that every single hire that you make matches that, I think it's very crucial. And for us, it's been one of the difficult things to kind of figure out and get through because once you have—and it's probably like, when you are building a company, you can expect that everything is going to go super smoothly. And in the end, that's what entrepreneurship is about, right? That you get through obstacles. The real world is—I think that the culture for us is—and I don't want to sound silly because everybody talks about culture, and I rarely do. But the kind of relationship that I have with pretty much all of the people on the team is super important for me. And I don't want anybody on the team to feel like they are not valued or they are not 100% part of the team, because then what's the point? Right? And in the end, that's kind of the purpose of what we are building.

(Lubo at 00:41:18) We are not a huge company. We will never grow into thousands and thousands of people. It's not small. It's not super—

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:29) Like, 200-plus people across, like, five countries. Right? It's not super tight—

(Lubo at 00:41:37) In terms of like, that you would have a small team. It'd be like a family. But to be honest, I feel like it's a little bit bigger family. And I think that someone could say that about a thousand-people company. I can't imagine that. But the reason I can't imagine that is also because I have not run such a company. So, but in the end, that for me is more important—that we keep the team very compact and that we, rather than growing in terms of the number of people, we keep growing in terms of doing better things. Yeah. And that's kind of the future that I envision for the company. Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:42:21) I don't mind growing a little bit in terms of the size of the team, but I would like to grow a lot in terms of what are the projects that we can engage on, what are the projects that we run on our own, and so on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:35) Because you can only focus on so many things at once. Right? Yeah. And usually—usually one. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:42) Right? And so, if you were focused on number of people—like, oh, I've got 200 people this year. I want 300 people next year. I want 400 people—that takes away from you saying we're doing amazing work in this area, on this project this year. We want to do something—

(Lubo at 00:42:56) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:56) We want to do something—

(Lubo at 00:42:57) Yeah. Yeah. And when I say that you can only focus on one thing, I always take way more on my plate than I can actually handle. And I deal with it somehow, but I know that that's probably the best way to do things if you focus on one thing and then you give it everything. Unless you are like Elon Musk and you can run four companies at a time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:30) Right? But what is he focusing on? Yeah. But you also see his health. That's one thing I've paid a lot of attention to.

(Lubo at 00:43:38) Like, is he like that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:39) Well, yeah. If you look at his pictures, if you Google search his pictures, he's constantly gaining a ton of weight and—he always looks a lot of times like he's not slept well. But then other times, he looks really happy and healthy. And so I'm like, oh, he's just—this is just his—

(Lubo at 00:43:52) Well, I have to say that over the past decade, he got way better low gain than what he looked like before. I think the same goes for Jeff Bezos.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:07) Right? Yeah. I guess billions of dollars make you better looking.

(Lubo at 00:44:11) Yeah. You got guns. Right. You got everything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:15) That picture of Bezos looking jacked, I was like, Jesus Christ.

(Lubo at 00:44:18) That's bad. Yeah. I know. I know.

(Lubo at 00:44:22) No. I think it's good because, you know, they realize that it's like—that's the way to do it. Right? You need to look healthy and in shape so you represent the strength of the company. Yeah. If you look bad, then you look tired and—

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:37) Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's not—

(Lubo at 00:44:40) Probably not going to give a whole lot of good impressions. I mean, it works for some people, but yeah. Seems like Warren Buffett doesn't care about having habits a whole lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:53) No. He's just enjoying life. He'll—I wonder if he'll end up replacing all of his organs and becoming bionic or if he's too old and doesn't want to—you know, he doesn't invest much in technology. But yeah. So I am curious a little bit more about the—do you want more coffee, though?

(Lubo at 00:45:14) So far, so good. Yeah?

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:15) Yeah. Are you sure?

(Lubo at 00:45:16) I still got some.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:18) All right. All right. All I have to do is yell. We'll get more coffee. So, like, people that are listening, they hear about the culture and they hear about you and how culture is really important. But what type of person would thrive within your company?

(Lubo at 00:45:34) Yeah. I think that in the end it comes with the vision of what we want to do as a company. And we have an internal definition of the vision that I don't talk a whole lot about publicly. Sure. But basically, our goal is to work on top shit products and making sure that we do top shit. Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:46:02) And I will probably not go and pitch that to a client. "We can do top shit for you." Yeah. They might not get it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:11) But I like it. It's definitely like our generation.

(Lubo at 00:46:16) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:17) And it—

(Lubo at 00:46:17) It really resonates with the team. Yeah. And in the end, for me, I want to see top shit everywhere. Not just in terms of the work that we produce, but in everything that we do as a company. So when we do events, I want these events to be top shit. When we do merchandising, for example, for STRV—right?—that's why we put—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:46) Best hoodie ever.

(Lubo at 00:46:47) That's why we put so much passion and time into it, because in the end, anyone can create just a simple t-shirt with a logo, and we have one too. Yeah. But if you want to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:05) But you can't buy it. Like, you can't buy it. That's right. You have to go work—

(Lubo at 00:47:07) You have to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:08) You have to work at it.

(Lubo at 00:47:08) Work at it. But if this—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:09) Or become a customer.

(Lubo at 00:47:11) Yeah. If you become a customer. Yeah. Or a really good friend of ours too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:15) Or a good friend. Okay.

(Lubo at 00:47:16) Yeah. That works too. But we put a lot of time into these things that, you know, kind of represent that we want to be doing really good things. And then to your question, what kind of people would thrive in the company? It's the people that want to do great work, that want to learn, that want to go above and beyond to make things happen.

(Lubo at 00:47:45) And I think in tech, this is a relatively common thing. You just have to—to be honest, I have not throughout my career, fortunately enough, seen a whole lot of lazy engineers. I mean, there are some and we have had some, not for a long time. They got filtered out pretty quickly. But I think it's quite common that people see the importance of constantly learning new things and getting better. And this is the kind of mindset that fits extremely well with the company. And then I think it helps us to proceed and get to more interesting projects, come up with cool new ideas, and then implement them. So I think that's the number one kind of definition of the person. But what I would also mention is that the people that have high ego are going to always fail with STRV.

(Lubo at 00:49:15) The team will somehow just not accept them. And if you feel you are more than anyone else on the team, that's not going to work. And I don't—yeah. I have a certain position with the company, but do I feel like I'm more than anybody else? Do I feel like someone could do my job, maybe even better? Is someone—yeah, I'm open to it. If someone comes and proves that you will do a better job than me as a CEO of the company, I'm more than happy to switch. I'll watch. Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:49:58) If someone can do more for the company, then I'm going to be happy to be part of it. And I think having no ego, or at least very low ego, is pretty much a requirement because, yeah, even when I talk to pretty much anybody on the team, I want to treat them well. I want to—I don't want them to feel like I'm anything more than them. Yeah. I have a certain position in the hierarchy, but doesn't mean that I'm a different kind of person otherwise. Right? And so for me, this is probably the second highest priority when it comes to selecting people. And when I was talking about the most difficult kind of things, that was also part of it—that, you know, we have unfortunately had people that had high ego.

(Lubo at 00:51:11) And yeah, in the end, the team rejected them. So yeah. It worked out. It just took a little while.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:18) Well, it's like—it's incentive alignment. Like, if everyone on the team is focusing on doing top shit, they're focusing on doing a really good job, and their goal is to make this piece of art that's amazing that they couldn't do alone, that they could do with other great people. If you have a great person who's phenomenal and world-class and they don't have ego, and you could put a bunch of those people together, the product you're going to get is going to be ten times better than anything else. Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:51:47) 100%. And I don't want the, let's say, a member of the sales team who brings in the project to be the one that gets the entire credit for it. I don't want the engineer to feel that they are getting the entire credit. It's about the collaboration of the entire team to make this work. And in the end, I think that's how we create kind of the setup and the products that we create, and that's why the companies want to work with us. It's not that—in the end, what we do is a commodity, right? Because you have probably thousands of other firms that offer the same kind of service.

(Lubo at 00:52:37) Right? They also do design and engineering. They also build custom software.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:41) It's not all the same.

(Lubo at 00:52:42) But it's not—

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:43) It's definitely not the same.

(Lubo at 00:52:44) It's not all the same, and you have to really position yourself as, this is—if you end up partnering up with us, this is what you're going to get. Yeah. And I think you have to also keep doing this for a certain period of time, and then you start realizing that you are actually meeting very interesting people. It's not like random people reaching out to you that they would like to build a website. It's like legit entrepreneurs that have built successful businesses before and that are reaching out to you because they heard great things and they heard from other people that work with you that you can do a really good job and that they say that you are the only company that they should consider.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:40) That's the best lead.

(Lubo at 00:53:42) Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you get a referral like that, then yeah. It's basically a done deal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:48) Yeah. It's like, let's just figure out the logistics. Yeah. And here's how we do it.

(Lubo at 00:53:53) But you only realize that after you actually invest a lot into making that happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:00) Oh. It takes a long time. Like, a lot of patience, which I guess is, in hindsight, why you always hear people give the speeches—like, you really have to love what you do because you're going to have to do it for a while.

(Lubo at 00:54:13) Yeah. Yeah. You have to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:14) You have to do it for a while.

(Lubo at 00:54:15) There is, like, there's a couple of kind of, you know, stories here and there about some quick wins. But even those, you don't hear the full background story. So you don't know that—for example, a couple of my friends from the Czech Republic, I'm not sure if you have heard of the game Beat Saber, the VR game.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:43) Oh, I saw a picture of you playing it, though.

(Lubo at 00:54:45) Yeah. Yeah. So it's basically, it was two guys doing indie games together for years. They have done a lot of games. Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:55:04) And in the end, then with Beat Saber, it was a huge hit for them. It really picked up traction, and I think that even they matched it with up-and-coming piece of technology that's really popular. They recently got bought by Facebook. So it was a huge—and Beat Saber as a game was out for probably, I don't know, two, three years. I don't know exactly, but not a long time. But that does not mean that there was no ten-plus years of experience prior to that where they have been just building app, building app, building apps. And some of them were relatively successful, some of them not, and but nothing to compare with the huge success of Beat Saber. And I think this is what it's about. Right?

(Lubo at 00:56:00) You get to hear about the success they had and only mentioning the short period of time since they launched it, but you don't hear about them trying to figure out what's the right idea that is gonna really nail it. And I think in the end, Angry Birds is a very similar example. I think that the company that produced Angry Birds, Rovio, they have done tens of different games until they hit Angry Birds. And you have to just keep hustling, and at some point, you will get there. You never know when.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:46) I know. That's why, you know, for me, I made a commitment to myself probably seven or eight years into it. And I said, I have to be willing to die trying at this. I have to be willing to say I'm going to keep shooting and keep going after it and keep getting back up until I die. And that's the mentality I have.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:09) And because that's the only way I'd respect myself ending up on my deathbed. Like, no matter what happens,

(Lubo at 00:57:15) as long as

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:16) I keep going, as long as I get up and try again, then that is my success. My success is never stop trying no matter how much success I achieve. Just keep doing it again and again and again so that when I sit there and I'm dying and I'm looking back on my life, I'm like, okay, I did it.

(Lubo at 00:57:35) Well, it's a

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:35) hell of a journey. I can control that. I can control it. I can't control a dollar amount of success, but I can control me never giving up.

(Lubo at 00:57:43) That you can control 100%. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:46) So you have a podcast.

(Lubo at 00:57:50) That's right. Safe for Brave.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:52) Yeah. I love it. I love the name.

(Lubo at 00:57:54) I mean, it fits with my culture a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:58) Yeah.

(Lubo at 00:57:58) Going outside of your comfort zone. And to be honest, for me, with the Safe for Brave podcast, I talk with different people from not just tech, but pretty much everything that interests me. I do it mostly for myself. So I get to hang out with a lot of interesting people, but I try to focus on the life stories and what make people to get to a place where they are.

(Lubo at 00:58:34) And going outside of comfort zone is something that for me personally is super appealing because I know that in certain situations, I just chicken out and I don't go outside of a comfort zone. But in other situations, I seek that. I wanna do it. I wanna do crazy stuff. I wanna do Heliskiing in Alaska and start another launch there and then, fortunately enough, get out of it.

(Lubo at 00:59:12) But yeah, that's pretty much what I focus on in the podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:17) Yeah. And we'll put links to your Instagram account because you've got some really cool pictures on there. Thank you so much.

(Lubo at 00:59:23) Appreciate that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:23) And the adventure. So I also have some people that I am going to recommend you to have on the podcast. I know we looked through some other ones and gave you some people before, but then when I saw your Brave podcast and learned more about you, I was like, yeah. You definitely have to have Ben from BIMobject. He started out as an architect, like an actual architect, like buildings.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:49) Then saw a problem with waste and architecture, created a startup called BIMobject. They have a couple hundred people. They're publicly traded. They're in San Francisco, Sweden, and Japan, a couple other countries. But he does that. He's one of the cofounders of that, but he also races Porsches and high performance cars. You know, and that's a physically demanding activity because you're strapped in there. It's a lot of physical work.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:16) And I went over to Sweden and hung out with him for a couple days. Just a super cool guy. You would love to have dinner with this guy. You'd love to hang out with him. And then another guy, Rich Palmer from Gravie, he has a cool backstory. We have an episode of him, but he's in Boston. But he was a high end financial services person, like Wall Street type, high stress. But then he had, I think, a brain aneurysm or some big health scare and he was like, dude, life's short. So he moved to Boston and started a health care startup, technology startup. And they've got good design. They're building a cool product over in Boston. So I think those two people would be really good stories for people.

(Lubo at 01:01:00) I would love to have them on the podcast too. So if you can make the intro, I'll make sure that I take good care of it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:09) Yeah. Yeah. I also see you guys do some work for Microsoft and some pretty big brands.

(Lubo at 01:01:13) That too.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:13) Yeah. Yeah. So we can hook you up with Kevin Scott, different people that have been on the show. And I don't know. I really like that you—most of the podcasts we do are remote. But when we talked to you, you were like, yeah, man, I'll fly out.

(Lubo at 01:01:28) I'm coming down.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:28) I'll come down. You took a ride on down here, and we got the podcast. And I thought that was so cool. And so however we can help you, whatever we can do.

(Lubo at 01:01:37) Yeah. For me, doing the in person experience makes such a big difference. Yeah. And I happen to have a couple of meetings in Miami.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:51) Oh, nice.

(Lubo at 01:01:53) Works out. Yeah. Works out for me.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:55) Are you flying or you driving down there?

(Lubo at 01:01:56) I'm driving.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:57) Yeah. Yeah. It's not a bad drive.

(Lubo at 01:01:59) There is only, I think, only a couple of flights a day from Tampa to Miami.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:04) Yeah. It's not easy because people—

(Lubo at 01:02:06) And so from here, it's about three hour drive, three and a half hours.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:09) Yeah.

(Lubo at 01:02:10) Easy. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:13) Is there anything else that we didn't get to that you wanna—I don't even know how long we've been talking. I don't know. Oh, this is actually a good question I had that I wanted to know. What is your media diet like? What type of media do you consume?

(Lubo at 01:02:30) I, for the most part, stay away from media and politics, but there is some bits and pieces. I listen to podcast a lot. And that's my source of information. I receive a couple of newsletters that I read through pretty much on a daily basis. I'm subscribed to the New York Times breaking news newsletter and the daily recap. We have actually just partnered up with The Future Party, which is basically a company that puts together a nice curated newsletter with really cool content. And I don't get to spend a whole lot of time reading, but their newsletter is something—they have really good stuff there.

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:45) What's it called?

(Lubo at 01:03:46) It's called The Future Party.

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:48) The Future Party?

(Lubo at 01:03:49) Yeah. And so I've been receiving that newsletter for the past three, four weeks now. Every single one is just bomb.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:03) It sounds fun. Yeah.

(Lubo at 01:04:03) It's fun, and their tone of voice in the end is something that really resonates with me, and I think it resonates with STRV and even with the way how we have our tone of voice set up. So that for me is also a good source of information. And that's probably it. And then the rest is whatever comes up on social media. Random stuff. Random stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:44) Yeah. I like podcasts a lot. I like crafting and building the content too. Like, I found that the more time I spend building stuff, the less time I spend consuming stuff.

(Lubo at 01:05:00) But I think it's very natural. And if I record a podcast every day, then for me, it's a huge exchange of information. So that kind of fulfills me, and I am not—I don't go and need to look for more.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:23) Right.

(Lubo at 01:05:23) And so for me talking, actually talking to people is social networking.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:34) That's hilarious. Right? It's like the original—

(Lubo at 01:05:36) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:37) I found that too. Surrounding yourself with really bright people that are all surrounded by bright people and everyone's doing great work. When you get to be constant—your customers, you get to interact—they're smart people. You get to interact with—

(Lubo at 01:05:54) Right. Yeah. Yeah. They're super smart people.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:56) Yeah. And so you get to talk with them all the time.

(Lubo at 01:05:59) And you get to spend probably 50% of the time talking about the business and the other 50% about some interesting stuff that is happening out there.

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:09) Because that interesting stuff that's happening out there drives the business. Like, always. Everything's connected. The entire economy is connected with the entire social world. Everything's driving everything.

(Lubo at 01:06:20) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:21) Yeah. That's right. It's the people who can pay attention to that in the right way that see new opportunities and then can bring value to others. And then that's growing the business. So as we start to wrap up, I'm a fan of Elon Musk. But if—let's—I'm gonna give you a hypothetical question. Alright? Let's say—

(Lubo at 01:06:45) It's gonna be tough?

(Joel Beasley at 01:06:47) Pretty easy. I think you'll like it. So let's say you're driving to Miami, and pulls up next to you is this brand new Tesla, the funky looking Tesla.

(Lubo at 01:06:59) Cybertruck.

(Joel Beasley at 01:07:00) Cybertruck. Yeah. And there is a hot tub in the back of the Cybertruck. Right? There's a bunch of robots in the cyber hot tub. And then rolls down the window, and it's Elon Musk in there. Right? He's like, what up? And you go and you get in the cyber truck, passenger side. But that seat, the seat of the passenger side Cybertruck, is a time machine. And you go back to yourself right when you were studying in the UK or in that part of the world, and you get to give yourself one piece of advice. What would it be?

(Lubo at 01:07:33) It was kind of a mysterious question right from the beginning. I was like, okay, there is Cybertruck, there is Elon Musk. What is it gonna be about?

(Joel Beasley at 01:07:41) Now I see. Now I see where you're going.

(Lubo at 01:07:47) In the end, I think I would probably trust myself a lot more, and I would just make the decisions based on my gut feeling more because it has always paid off for me. And with my family, they saw that if I have something tough to figure out, for me, I go and I lie in the bed for some time, and then I got it. I figure it out. If I can be still for a little, that helped me a lot to figure stuff out, and I have been using it for a long time. And in the end, the piece of advice will be to not be afraid to basically make the decisions based on gut feeling because in the end, it really paid off, and I think it creates a good culture. And if you believe in it, it will happen.

(Joel Beasley at 01:08:59) Yeah. Then you don't regret it either. Right?

(Lubo at 01:09:01) And if it goes bad, then just change the direction and you fix it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:08) Yeah. Because you make a decision, then you could just make another one.

(Lubo at 01:09:11) Yeah. Exactly. But yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:13) You just have to feel good about the decision.

(Lubo at 01:09:15) And I don't wanna say that it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad decision, but if you feel good about it, it will lead you to a better future.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:25) Yeah. And then I've just found—I know it's trite or people say it a lot, but just making decisions and understanding how you feel about them when you're making them and paying attention to them, you can begin to develop your own internal compass.

(Lubo at 01:09:49) Exactly. Yeah. Then, to be honest, there's not a whole lot of things that I would do differently now if I would be starting over again. Well, I'd probably not start because I can see that it's freaking difficult.

(Joel Beasley at 01:10:02) It's so difficult. It's that beautiful human part of, oh, we could do that. It's not easy. And then you go and then you end up doing that and you go so far that—and then you look back. You're like, woah. Look how far I've come. That's why I like your business model because you can spin out stuff from labs. When you have a design agency, you can build stuff and test stuff with your profit and then spin stuff out that catches on.

(Lubo at 01:10:27) Yeah. Yeah. That's what we do, actually. We run some products on our own. And I told you that three of my cofounders are actually working on a spin off.

(Joel Beasley at 01:10:36) Yeah. We were looking them up, and we were looking at David, Martin, and Pavel. And we were like, well, he was a CTO there, and it says he's still there, but he's also working. And I was like, he's probably from the labs. He's probably running—

(Lubo at 01:10:49) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:10:49) So he's kinda CTO, but he's running the spin offs.

(Lubo at 01:10:53) Yep. Yeah. Yeah. He's involved with a lot of the spin offs that we have done over the years.

(Joel Beasley at 01:10:59) I love what you guys get to do. This is awesome. Are you happy?

(Lubo at 01:11:05) Dude, we did it. Super happy. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:11:07) Yes. Boom. Thank you so much. Yeah. It's great.