Noah Labhart CTO of Veryable

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today, we are talking to Noah, the CTO of Veryable, and we discuss the CTO's role in product growth, representing your brand by plugging yourself in as a thought leader. And we provide the answer to the question everyone is dying to know. Will Elon Musk continue on his path of greatness or will he end up an evil overlord that rules us all? All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Noah at 00:00:32) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:32) This is the Modern CTO podcast. So what's on your mind? Veryable?

(Noah at 00:00:46) Yeah. Yeah. So Veryable. So what is Veryable? We have built a marketplace for on-demand labor for manufacturing. So you could think of us like Uber meets Tinder meets LinkedIn for the blue collar network.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:03) Oh, I like that. Uber, Tinder, LinkedIn.

(Noah at 00:01:06) For sure. So, you know, manufacturing plants have strict budgets and strict capacities, and we're helping them solve their capacity problems by making them more flexible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:18) Yeah. When I was reading about what you do, I just thought to myself, this is absolutely brilliant.

(Noah at 00:01:24) Thanks, man. I'll pass those kudos on to my cofounder. He was the original carrier of the idea, Mike Kinder.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:31) And then how'd you meet Mike?

(Noah at 00:01:33) So a mutual friend of ours, Rylan Barnes, who is a successful tech entrepreneur around here in DFW, longtime friend of mine as well, one of my best friends in college, and we were in each other's weddings and such. And he actually introduced us. He grew up with Mike and went to college with me and knew I was looking to kind of be a technical, you know, cofounder, do the startup thing, give it a shot. But I'd also, you know, done some time in supporting manufacturing, and I actually worked in a manufacturing plant as a college kid too. So, you know, my partner, Mike, had this idea and knew Rylan. We got hooked up, and Mike has spent a lot of time in manufacturing and in consulting from a strategy standpoint for manufacturing plants. And so he pitched the idea to me, and it's like, yeah, that makes too much sense not to do. Let's do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) So then how did you get it started? So you meet Mike, Ryan introduced you guys. You have this awesome concept. And then where do you go from that? You get the money, develop a business, like, how did you go about it?

(Noah at 00:02:42) Sure. Sure. It's a great question. Because I think every startup has a different story there. So we jumped right in and started building a prototype. So I have a, before Veryable or, actually, at the same time, I still have it, I have a development agency called TouchTap. And so what we did was jumped in and started using my resources in TouchTap to build out the prototype. So we formed the company May 2016, and then we built the kind of prototype over the summer, and then decided to go full time with Veryable at that point, after the summer. So it was about September, October time frame. Mike decided to step away from his full time job and me to put sort of TouchTap on autopilot, so to speak. And we started to do a little bit of seed fundraising at that point. Friends and family. Mike sort of spearheaded all that. I contributed where I could while still building the rest of the product. Once we started to get our seed funding, we built a team. The early team was six people and primarily tech people. We started to finish out the product. We launched the product in February 2017, which was mobile apps and a website for the platform and sort of piloted the product through April, which was basically the end of our runway for our funding, and then started fundraising for our next round and closed that round out in May, late May, early June, and expanded the team. So now where we're at, we are, we're in DFW in Texas, and then we also have a team in Houston supporting the Houston market. So growing pretty rapidly. There's about 16 to 18 of us now. 18, actually, on the team total. So rock and roll.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:58) That's awesome. So when did you get your first dollar from someone?

(Noah at 00:05:11) Yeah. But I was on-site that day, which is interesting, totally interesting and totally fun. So our first op is what we call it. So that's what we call our jobs or work opportunities. We call them ops. And our first op was at a small logistics company kind of about 30 minutes from the office. And we went on-site and, you know, made sure the guys were all set up, and we actually helped them do some of their work to kind of, you know, feel through how the process went and sat on-site all day with the manager and helped them work through learning how to use the tool. And he loved it, and it was super simple. And he posted more work after that. So, yeah, February was the first transaction, first dollar.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:55) And before that, you had the supply of humans. Right?

(Noah at 00:05:58) Yes. So we started, that's a great question. We started recruiting the supply on the labor side, which we call the operators. We started recruiting that in December. So December, January, and then through early February, we had been recruiting. And by the time we launched to businesses, we had about 300, 400 operators.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:18) Wow. So these people, this is in this industry, this part time. So this is how this industry works then?

(Noah at 00:06:26) It's not actually, which is interesting. Most people think of manufacturing as, okay, I gotta hire a full time person. It's sort of an old hat kind of industry. It has an older mentality about labor. So they're not in the know of, you know, the value of on-demand labor or shared labor pools, and that's something we actually have to educate them when we, you know, approach them and sort of tell them how this can help their bottom line.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) So are you doing content marketing sort of, like, propaganda to put out there so that they see that information?

(Noah at 00:07:00) We are doing some of that. That's something we're actually paying a lot of attention to right now. You know, starting to dabble in, you know, building videos, white papers, landing pages, to get the word out there, to kind of get little snippets of information so people can understand the concept visually and from the words that we're putting out there, the content. So that's something that we hadn't been able to pay a lot of attention to just because we were focusing primarily on product. But now we're kind of in a place where we're at, okay, let's really put some, you know, put some legs behind how we're delivering our message.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:39) Yeah. So you have Mike on the business side of things, you on the product and the business, you know, the product and the business too. Right? He's your cofounder.

(Noah at 00:07:48) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:49) And then do you have that third cofounder that's the marketing person?

(Noah at 00:07:55) So we don't have a marketing person. I have a little bit of, or I'm, I wouldn't call myself a marketing professional, but I have a little bit of exposure to the marketing world, I would say, and a little bit of that artist side that comes with the marketer. So the marketer in the relationship is me. Yeah. So I'm actually taking over that portion of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:21) Yes. You're creative. You create things. I mean, you own a development. I mean, you're a creator at heart, man.

(Noah at 00:08:29) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:29) Yeah. And all marketing is, all you can do in life is try things and test them to see what works and do more of it. And so as long as you have the creativity and you can generate those things, and then you have the ability to follow through and execute on the actual testing and figuring out which one works, then you win.

(Noah at 00:08:48) For sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:48) So are you gonna bring in a product person? I had a call yesterday. It wasn't a podcast call. It was a call from London. Really smart guy. And his team's growing. They do these handmade letters. Right? And they have a, I think they are about the same size as you in people. And his development team is in another country. And what he had done was in the act of scaling to get to his next level with him and his cofounder, he was the product owner, essentially, CTO, which is very, very common. Right? Because we usually are super involved, write it, and then grow it. And then it gets to a point where we're like, we need to bring in a product manager.

(Noah at 00:09:29) For sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:30) So what happened was he brought the product manager onto the team, but what he did was he hired that person in the country where the development team worked. And so it wasn't working out for him, and so we were talking about why. And the reason why is you need that person, for you to feel comfortable and for it to effectively work for you to push a task off of your plate onto someone else so you can scale, because that's what we do as founders. Right? That person, you have to look them in the eyes on a regular basis. You have to be constantly seeing them. So when he put that person, although he hired for the role, he doesn't have the reality of letting go of that responsibility. Therefore, his problem didn't get solved. So he decided he's gonna move that position in-house so he can walk up and talk to that person and look them in the eye and, you know, make sure that they understand and communicate clearly. And that way, he can let go of the product more.

(Noah at 00:10:26) Right. No. That's so totally awesome that he's doing that. I mean, you're totally right. I mean, that position, if it's someone that's not emotionally linked to what's going on in the business, then it's essentially a project manager. You know? You're essentially just laying out a road map and executing on the road map. If you're not there feeling it or feeling the market's responses or feeling the founder's responses or the customer's responses, then, you know, instead of being in the mix of the blood, sweat, and tears, you can't. I agree. I don't think you can manage the product, which is why I think CTOs are great product managers, but it's hard to do it all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:08) They're great product managers until the point where they need to bring in a product manager so that they can focus on the next stage of growth.

(Noah at 00:11:19) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:19) Right. So we were talking about this. I think we've had this conversation a handful of times, so I'm not sure if on air. Right. Because I do all these micro calls with CTOs in between the show calls. So sometimes I forget which ones I talk about on the show, which ones I'm talking about on the phone.

(Noah at 00:11:40) You're a busy man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:40) Oh, man. You have no idea. I'm up 5:30 now. It was 6:30, but I switched it to 5:30 because my team started coming in a little earlier. And I was like, there's no way. They're not getting the jump on me. Right?

(Noah at 00:11:50) Hey. You got a good team then.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:52) I do. I do. So, yeah, it's just that ability to be able to, for the CTO, you have to constantly, and you know this because you live it, you have to constantly be adjusting what you're doing as the growth occurs. Right? Because if you write that code on that first app, you're not writing code when you have 40 people and $10 million.

(Noah at 00:12:14) Right? That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:15) So you're constantly figuring out what works and cloning yourself, finding someone. Okay. The code's written well. It's tested. It's written like this. Let me go find someone to write code exactly like this. So it's done right, and I know it's done right. You build trust with that person. You understand that they're gonna do it. They start performing consistently, and then you can start fading them out. Right? Because they've proven to you that they can consistently perform. And so now you're like, alright, that thing's running. That system's on autopilot and producing the code. And then you go farther up the stack and build a team around them. And then you end up doing the product manager thing where now you're not even talking with those lead developers every day. You now have a product manager that's working with them and you're kind of, you know, bridging that gap and doing that handoff process for a couple months of making sure that that product manager is working. You're like, okay. So now my system's stable. I've got my foundation, my developer, and I got my project manager. And then now I can go focus on the next level of business. And usually, that's, it depends on the situation. But often, if you're going to do marketing, that's cool. But if you have that person, then I guess the next step after product managers would be now to represent your brand more publicly through conferences, speaking engagements, producing content, and developing relationships with other CTOs that you can leverage to grow your business.

(Noah at 00:13:45) Yeah. For sure. I think you're right. I think you start becoming, start trying to plug yourself in as a thought leader and, and, yeah, representing your brand there. That makes total sense. And, you know, like, you touched on the whole team building thing too. That's something that's traditionally, I guess, I wanna say harder for a CTO or a technical type person, but it's a little bit different. If you look at kind of the stereotypes for, you know, tech people, we're introverted. We like to code. We like to sit with our headphones on and create stuff, which is awesome. That's true. I'm totally an introvert. I tend to not come off like an introvert. But, so, like, that team building, that relationship stuff where people trust you and wanna work for you, wanna take on the task that you give them, it's so important as a CTO and as a leader. So to get that next level, it's like, it's the critical glue that maybe we don't talk about as much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:39) Yeah. Well, I totally agree. Anything you do the first time is hard because you don't have lots of experience. And then even the second and third time, it's not, like, autopilot easy. You have to do stuff three, five times, get some real experience doing it. And then you start to feel some comfort, comfort in the process you've developed and you can lean on your experience. So, I mean, the first couple times building a team, it's not gonna be the easiest thing in the world.

(Noah at 00:15:12) Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. No. You learn a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:15) Yeah. You've done many projects. You've been doing this for over a decade, and this project's now, like, really, really taken off.

(Noah at 00:15:25) For sure. Yeah. I mean, there's been lots of different things that I've done over the past decade. You know, I worked in corporate America for many, many years while still developing software on the side, doing contract work things. And so I could see a lot of different types of teams, lots of different types of approaches to problems, you know, from an enterprise standpoint, from a build versus buy type of conversations. And, you know, part of my team was supporting infrastructure as well. It wasn't software. It was like virtualization and supporting manufacturing plants. So I got to see a lot over the past ten years and got to learn a ton, which I'm incredibly grateful for.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:10) Yeah. I saw your experience with, like, SCADA and different sort of physical devices listed in your bio. I was like, oh, that's cool.

(Noah at 00:16:18) Oh, yeah. It's totally awesome. We got to work really closely with the engineering team when I worked at Alcon and supported their SCADA machines. It's pronounced SCADA, or maybe SCADA. I'm not sure. We always call it SCADA. But, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:31) I'm good at messing. I'm good at, like, just saying the wrong thing and then being corrected. I love that. I'm good at that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:39) Because everyone has their own way, and I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna go for it. I was butchering because there's all the, like, the scrums, and there's all everyone has an acronym and all that stuff. And, oh, man, I was butchering. There's a couple technical words that I've butchered for a long time. And then I was speaking in front of a group and everyone's like, I see their eyes going and, like, oh, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:04) Am I doing that right now? Am I the one doing that? But you just gotta go for it. You're right. Just go for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:11) If you're gonna get it wrong, just

(Noah at 00:17:13) just get it really wrong.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:15) Get it really wrong. Like, it's SCADA. And what is it really? SCADA. Oh, you know, it's right there too. It's like SCADA.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:22) It's like I don't know how crazy I was being, but it's SCADA. There we go.

(Noah at 00:17:28) Yeah. Totally cool. I really enjoyed my time doing that at Alcon. And I got to also, you know, get an in-depth knowledge of manufacturing, you know, not only just the processes and the engineering, but the budgeting, the quality aspect, the people aspect, the planning, and how, you know, constricted the restraints are and the constraints are. That's where I live. Constraints is a better word. But, you know, that really fueled a lot of my excitement for Veryable and for what we're doing here because I sort of felt it firsthand and saw the survival mentality of every manufacturing plant I supported.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:10) So we had Don Pulaski on, and we had a couple other really interesting CTOs. And this little trend popped up from manufacturing where there's this book or this concept called, like, lean manufacturing principles. Right? Have you heard this?

(Noah at 00:18:31) Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:32) Okay. So it was news to me. And is it lean? Is that how we say it? No. It's lawn. It's lawn. Alright. Lawn. It's SCADA. Alright. SCADA.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:46) SCADA. SCADA. SCADA. Lawn processing manufacturers. Of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:50) Of course. Of course. So we took these lean manufacturing principles, and Don read this book on it, and then he's applying it to programming and, like, his development team, and then he's having success with it. His team's really pumped about it. And then so I connected those people, and now I'm like, now I gotta connect you in that group.

(Noah at 00:19:08) Yeah. I'd love to. I'd love to be connected in that. Yeah. It sounds like he's read some interesting stuff. That would be really interesting to hear how he used that. I mean, I could see how he used it from a process standpoint and development, but it would be interesting to hear his stories there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:22) Yeah. We when he replied back and they started talking in the email chain, we said what we should do is we should have, like, a lean manufacturing, like, group episode, and then we'll have you, Don, and Jake. Do you remember the episode name of the guy who was awesome? He's in Atlanta. Jacob.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:43) Yeah. He's in Atlanta. He does Stord. Right? Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:46) And he does so what they do is they take the third-party warehouses, have extra space, and then they basically sell the space. Have a network that sells the space, but they also do some analytics to improve these warehouses' storage. And it's like the company is called Stord, S-T-O-R-D. And really cool company, and Jacob is a really cool guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:11) So

(Noah at 00:20:11) it's cool. I'd love to meet him. Sounds like we're playing in the same spaces.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:15) Right. And what time is Texas on? You're an hour behind us?

(Noah at 00:20:20) Yeah. Yeah. We're Central time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:22) Yeah. So he's just in Atlanta.

(Noah at 00:20:24) Nice. Cool. Yeah. I'd love to connect with him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:26) Yeah. You know, my family, my dad's side of the family, there's only about 80 of them over there right now, is from Lubbock.

(Noah at 00:20:34) Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Windy Lubbock.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:37) Yeah. Yeah. I like it out there. The weather's good and lots of land.

(Noah at 00:20:46) Yeah. Lots of wide open spaces out by Lubbock.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:49) Yeah. We do the four-wheeling stuff. They have, like, a ranch, and then we go out there and ride the four-wheelers. It's a lot of fun.

(Noah at 00:20:55) Totally. Have you driven by the it's a bit south of Lubbock, but have you driven by all of the wind generators, the wind power generators?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:03) Oh, it is amazing. The field, it's like yeah. It's crazy.

(Noah at 00:21:07) Oh, I love them. I love driving by those. Every time I see, like, an 18-wheeler, you know, pulling one of those, one of the propeller, you know, wings or whatever. That's probably not the right word. But they're so huge, and I always point it out to my wife. And she's like, yeah. Yeah. I know. I know you're interested in that. You really like those.

(Noah at 00:21:25) She gets tired of me talking about them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:27) Yeah. The propeller. We'll call them yeah. They're propellers. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:30) They propel. We'll just we'll just say we'll just pretend it's propellers. Yeah. They're SCADA-driven propellers built with lean manufacturing principles. Totally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:41) Totally. Totally. There's we're having this guest on the show who, really cool. They build these drones and they will actually fly the drones and they go inspect. They'll, like, inspect those devices.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:57) Right? So, like, you have a wind farm, and instead of somebody going around and physically, like, climbing up on the wind farm and stuff, they'll have these drones go, and they'll inspect the industrial equipment at, like, a large scale. It's very smart. What an efficiency. Right?

(Noah at 00:22:12) Oh, no doubt. Yeah. That's really that's a very intelligent, intelligent move there. It'd be fun to work on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:18) Right. Because now when you detect the when you notice, like, oh, there's a crack in the propeller or whatever, right, then you send a person out there versus having a person go climb up on every single one.

(Noah at 00:22:29) For sure. For sure. That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:32) Yeah. I was like, that's actually I'm a little bit upset about that. Like, what a smart idea. Like, all the technology was just there. Like, all you had to do is go buy a drone and, like, set up shop and be like, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:44) Instead of sending 40 people out to go climb these things up all day, we're just gonna send the drone. Like, everyone just opens up their pockets and is like, please take our money. Right? Like

(Noah at 00:22:55) Totally. But there's so many ideas where I'm like that. I'm like, yeah. That was a really smart idea. Why didn't I think of that? What was I doing while that idea was being generated?

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:04) Right? Like, we had one yesterday we came up with in real time. So have you seen the brain scan readers that you can buy for, like, $300 and you can make a like, if you think up, the character in the video game jumps up. If you think run, the character runs. Have you seen those?

(Noah at 00:23:21) No. I haven't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:22) Okay. So, like, they've been around for a couple of years. There's probably about four or five companies that make them, and you could buy them for $300. They send you a software development kit and the device. You put it on your head, and you think up, and it goes and then you can control this little character on the screen or a ball, and then you can they that's like a hello world sample app for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:40) You know?

(Noah at 00:23:41) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:41) So you can build games and do all sorts of unique stuff with it. And I thought to myself, oh, we need to buy one of those and then buy a drone that, you know, that comes with software that's made for developers. Right? Buy a drone, buy one of those, and then hook them together so I can fly the drone around the office with my mind.

(Noah at 00:23:58) There you go. Perfect. While you're podcasting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:01) While you're podcasting. Yeah. So what I'm doing is here here we go, Jake. We're gonna make it a little bit better. You ready for this, Noah?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:07) You guys pumped up? Alright. Here's the business. Alright. Here's what it does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:11) I start thinking of the angle of the shot that I want of me, like, while we're talking, and the drone goes and gets, like, positions itself from that and, like, transitions. There you go.

(Noah at 00:24:22) Done. Done. Take my money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:24) Yeah. Done. Well, you know, you ever see, like, an Anchorman or one of the movies where they show you behind the scenes of what it's like at a media company, like, when they're in the back room and they have, like, the 40 shots up on the screen, you have the person calling out, like, which shot and stuff like that.

(Noah at 00:24:40) For sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:40) And then you have another person who's, like, actually transitioning the shot. Eventually well, right now, we could just hook it up with, like, an Alexa. Right? That way, you don't have to have the person actually hit the button. You can get whatever shot you want.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:52) But you could take it a step farther, hook it up with your mind. Now you don't have to say words.

(Noah at 00:24:56) There you go. Boom. Done. Done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:00) And then, like, out of nowhere, you have to use the bathroom and, like, the camera just starts going everywhere because it can't read your brainwaves, and it just goes nuts. Oh, man. I love technology. So here's a good here's a good one for you. I'm in a fun mood today. I'm like, I'm really excited. We were working on, like, money stuff this morning as a team, and we're gonna do this thing where we go around to, like, New York or another big city, maybe like Austin or Dallas or something. We've made friends from the show in all these cities. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna go around and we're gonna put together, like, do, like, a panel at an incubator. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:37) So we're gonna put, like, three CTOs or, like, two CTOs and a marketing person or an investor, like and then go to an incubator and give a talk and be, like, a panel and let people, like, ask questions and stuff like that. And we're gonna do a little Modern CTO tour going to our different cities.

(Noah at 00:25:53) Sweet. Oh, that's gonna be totally cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:55) Yeah. So when we come to your city, you're in Dallas. That's where you said you drive an hour. Right?

(Noah at 00:26:01) Yeah. Yeah. It's DFW. I call it DFW home, and it's enormous. But, yeah, I drive in about an hour, but my office is in Dallas.

(Noah at 00:26:10) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:10) That's for all the non-Texas people. That's Dallas-Fort Worth. Right? Just very large area in a very large state. So

(Noah at 00:26:19) That's right. That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:19) Yeah. So we'll come to, like, whatever the hot spot is around there. Is there a good tech community there?

(Noah at 00:26:25) Yeah. I mean, there is. It's, you know, it's not, you know, Silicon Valley or whatnot, but it's a growing, passionate startup community. And I'm actually pretty connected in with one of the influencers in that community. So, yeah, we could get you hooked up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:40) Let's do it. Yeah. So we'll get you. You'll be one of the panel guests, and we'll get the influencer that's local. Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:47) And we'll put it together and we'll come out and it'll be awesome. I was actually talking about this last night with my wife. The 18-year-olds, the 16-year-olds, the 18-year-olds, the 21-year-olds that are wanting to do these companies. Like, we've done the work, Noah. We have put in the time. We have acquired the experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:09) And so I was thinking, I was like, oh, you know what? We're only in our 30s. Right? Or at least I am. So I was thinking about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:16) I was like, what value do we have to bring to them? And I'm like, we have a ton of value because if I were 18, I would go listen to someone speak who has 10, 15 years more experience than me at this because I wanna get better.

(Noah at 00:27:29) Totally. That's where we are in the experience chain right now. You know what? And you're right. You're talking about the 18, 20, 21-year-olds.

(Noah at 00:27:37) If you're talking about Dallas too, SMU is right around here, and they have a really great, like, you know, coding boot camp. They have a lot of entrepreneurial kind of ventures that go on, some startup, like, hackathon things that they do. So that might also be cool to link in with them. But you're right. I mean, totally.

(Noah at 00:27:54) I would do that too. I would eat that up. You know? Someone asked me once what would be my advice to my younger self, and I'd be like, start now. Don't wait.

(Noah at 00:28:05) Just start start doing the things now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:08) Aw. Well, that's the last question of this. Now you listen to the show. That's how come you know it. He's like, I'm prepared for that CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:16) Joel's not gonna get me with this Elon Musk time machine.

(Noah at 00:28:21) Oh, I didn't oh, I totally cut that question off. I'm sorry, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:24) You can ask it. I'll

(Noah at 00:28:25) phrase it more elegantly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:26) Oh, no. I'm a better host than that. I'm gonna get you with something else, my friend. Sweet.

(Noah at 00:28:31) I'm ready.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:31) Does Musk we're taking bets now. Does Musk make it? As his goal of making us an interplanetary species, does Musk succeed?

(Noah at 00:28:42) Good question. Because nobody knows the answers to that, so this is all speculative. I think I don't know if he succeeds or not. I think that he gets closer than anybody else does. I don't know if he succeeds or not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:58) I think he is so set on succeeding that if he were, like, 80-something if he felt like he was on his, like, last days and he hadn't made it yet, that he would send himself in the rocket just to say that he did it.

(Noah at 00:29:13) You're probably right. I mean, that's I think that's the that's what's gonna happen. Yeah. It's gonna take a long time to get to if that's possible, it's gonna take a long time to get to that place.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:25) Here's why I think it will. I'll just play the other side because that's I'll just do that. Right? A hundred and ten years ago, we didn't even really have electricity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:33) Right? Like, houses did not have electricity. It was just now coming about. Or that's, like, 130 years ago. Then about, you know, I'd say 80 years ago, we started getting, like, the AC and the movie theater, stuff like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:45) Right? And then because if you go up north, it was amazing. The first time I went to Buffalo, I was like, no one has AC. How do you live your life? Because I live in Florida and, like, AC is every single day we're touching the controls.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:56) Right?

(Noah at 00:29:57) Absolutely. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:58) And they don't even have it. And it's crazy. Like, it blows the houses don't they're not built with them. They don't have them. So it was just my it was it took a second for me to comprehend the situation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:09) Right? So we do so much and so fast. And then there's, like, that famous picture of, like, the Times Square, like, 1919 and 1920 or 1918, 1919, where one picture, it's all horses and the other picture, it's all cars in one year. Right? And then we kind of, like, it is not a steady progression up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:27) It's the exponential hockey curve. Right? Because we didn't have a smartphone until a decade ago. And now if you go have you seen the Instagram videos of the robots, like, nimbly running around with human-like agility?

(Noah at 00:30:44) I have seen some of that stuff. I think the most recent thing I saw was the old Saudi Arabia robot citizenship thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:53) Yeah. Right.

(Noah at 00:30:54) I don't know if I've seen the agility thing. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:57) You can tell it's creepy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:57) Oh, they've got these robots that are like animal looking, like dogs and stuff, and they run with the agility of an animal. Like, it's crazy, man.

(Noah at 00:31:07) Yeah, that's totally crazy and freaky.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:10) Yeah, they have like the videos. You walk up, you push them over, and they auto-balance and get back up. You totally put them on their back and they do this little maneuver and they get back up and they don't skip a beat. And then here's what really got me, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:23) So I started—I try to pay attention to this emerging technology as part of, like, well, they're really cool talking points, right?

(Noah at 00:31:31) For sure, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:32) So it's like material for the show, which is great, right? So I'm paying attention to this. I'm like, cool, cool, cool. Well, you know, only Boston Dynamics, you know, billion-dollar-plus Google Alphabet or something sell-off, that they're the only ones with that technology, right? Like, even if you had the motors and stuff put together, the intellectual property of those devices would be so difficult to recreate. You're only gonna have—well, all that stuff, the open source community got ahold of it. And when you get 7 billion people working towards one thing, it's kind of crazy, right? Or even a thousand. So now what happened is last week I'm like, oh, you know, same old, same old, same old. Boom, catches my eye, open it up. I see a 16, 18-year-old guy who just at home, YouTube video, very poor quality style, you know, YouTube video, just off a cell phone. He had purchased all the motors, couple hundred dollars, put it together. The software is all like open source, apparently, and he's showing his version of the same Boston Dynamics thing that they made. And that's when I was like, uh-oh.

(Noah at 00:32:39) That just got real.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:40) Real quick. Got real. The fact that, like, if I had two or three months of spare time with no income required—if I was 16 again, let's put it like that—and I bought those motors and I got those open source projects and put them together and started and built that. Like, dude, a poor government could do that, right? Like, they could just build an army of them and put little lasers on their face. I'm not trying to scare anyone or anything like that. I'm just, when the technology becomes so available and open, it's really interesting to see what will happen next.

(Noah at 00:33:15) No doubt. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, totally interesting because it either amplifies—I feel like it either amplifies the good, and it, well, not either or, it amplifies the good and can amplify some bad, some evil as well. So, like you said, you get the small government that wants to take over the world and they build a bunch of robots and then we're all hosed.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:34) Right. Luckily, some of them can't even get rockets off the ground, so we're okay for a couple years maybe. So are you—what are your thoughts other than you speaking at our little Modern CTO thing that we're gonna be doing and doing a Q&A thing? Other than that, which you've already committed to.

(Noah at 00:33:53) Which, did I sign something together?

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:55) Yeah, you signed up for the SCADA topic, so you'll be answering all the questions on that. You're coming in. What are your thoughts on you doing conference speaking? Like, you getting out there and talking about how you solve the problem from a technology perspective to technology people. What are your thoughts on that?

(Noah at 00:34:15) I would—I mean, I'd love to do that. I've started to explore that a little bit, you know, and kind of lay out sort of a plan to kind of be a part of that. I haven't, you know, taken action yet. I kind of, you know, we're in a place where we're pushing pretty hard here at Veryable to grow this business to the, basically, the next level. And then, you know, when we get to that point, there might be some more time to focus on that and maybe, you know, go do some speaking and stuff like that. But I'm totally interested. I'd love to mentor younger developers. I really enjoy it. I love to sort of share my knowledge, and I really get excited when people get excited about, you know, something either that I'm talking about or something that they're learning. So I'm totally interested in stuff like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:06) The emails you'll get from all the students thanking you for your information and advice—you'll get these emails. I'm not kidding you, man. You go talk, right, to these kids, maybe these CS students, maybe at the college, or get the incubators involved in local influencer balls. I'm telling you, it will happen. It does happen. Absolutely. You're gonna get emails from these people. They'll be like, I heard you talk, and I took a piece of your advice, and it really worked, and it's changed everything, and you're the best. Like, that happens.

(Noah at 00:35:38) For sure. No, that's totally what it's all about, too. That's what makes it totally worth it, just to help the next generation. You know, I don't know if you have anybody on your list that you remember, like, when you were coming up and learning in school or anybody where you're like, yeah, that person really helped me a lot. I've got a handful of professors that I recall that I would even put on my resume today. I still keep in loose contact with them that really helped change the way I think about the space and really kind of, maybe not took a chance on me, but took a moment to be like, hey, do this, and this will help you, the thing you're doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:17) No, that's like—we're meant to do life together. We're built like a Bluetooth emergency system where we all have to be really close in order for the information to travel, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:29) So that's what popped into my head. I can't help it. And so those people, like, no one gets anywhere by themselves. You could not do Veryable without your amazing team. We could not produce the show without our team. And that's just how life goes. We're built to need each other, right?

(Noah at 00:36:46) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:46) Yeah. So those people, of course, they're numerous. They're the people who I have all the gratitude in the world for, for helping me out and getting me to where—get me up each stage, because it's like this constant video game where you have to be constantly leveling up, right?

(Noah at 00:37:05) Yeah. Oh, no doubt. No doubt. Definitely, you know, it's the communal community aspect. And from my place of faith, I believe that's how our creator made it, was for us to need each other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:19) So Jake has a question, and we'll wrap it up instead of the time machine question. Jake wants to know, will Elon Musk ultimately end up good, or will something happen and he become an evil ruler/overlord?

(Noah at 00:37:39) This is an interesting question. Predictive of Elon Musk being an evil overlord. That's tricky because I think it could—oh, man, it could go multiple ways there. I would say I want to believe—I'm a believe the best in people kind of guy, which gets me in trouble sometimes, but I want to believe the best. So I believe that he's gonna stay good. But at the same time, I could totally see him being an evil overlord as well. So I'm gonna believe the best in him, though. Come on, come on, Musk. You can do it. Stay good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:19) I'm gonna cheer him on, too, just out of my own selfish survival instincts.

(Noah at 00:38:26) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:26) Let's all believe he's good, right? Let's just all get together and just focus on him being very, very, very good.

(Noah at 00:38:35) Yeah, that's right. Everybody stay on his good side.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:38) Awesome. Okay. So, dude, thank you. Thank you so much.

(Noah at 00:38:46) No, thank you for inviting me. This is totally fun. I was totally honored to be a part of it and totally was flabbergasted to get your email. So thanks for reaching out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:01) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this, get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.