Dzenis Softic - CTO of Clickbooth

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(Joel Beasley at 00:02:19) Now get ready for an awesome podcast because today, we are talking to Dzenis, the CTO of Clickbooth, and we discuss creating an ecosystem to promote growth, challenges many companies are facing with the implementation of GDPR, and the reasons why he believes we are still a ways off from self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. They work together and then separate?

(Dzenis at 00:03:00) Yes.

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

(Dzenis at 00:03:01) Yes. Now they are separate, and now is the parent company. Now it has its own subsidiaries from the acquisitions that we did. In last year, we did two acquisitions. We purchased a mobile network and a tracking platform.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:09) Nice.

(Dzenis at 00:03:09) Really. Yep. And that was really exciting for us. That's actually, most of what takes my time lately is just managing all the scale that comes with those platforms because we want to integrate them all in the same platform that we have. And we have this proprietary base platform, something that we coded from the scratch. Really.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:40) What happened with the developers? Did you pull them in? Were they acquisition hires of the companies you acquired?

(Dzenis at 00:03:46) Yes, on some. Yeah. So basically, we pulled them all in, and some of them were short term. So the contract just expired. And those that were on long term, we kept them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:56) Okay. That's pretty cool. So you got some great team members from it.

(Dzenis at 00:03:59) Yes. So we actually have developers in Denver and in Bosnia.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:03) Very cool. And then do you have a physical location, or they work from home?

(Dzenis at 00:04:06) We have an office with lots of people in Denver.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:09) Really? Yes. That's exciting.

(Dzenis at 00:04:11) Yeah. It's mostly account managers, business, but we have some developers there as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:17) And then you're headed to Bosnia tonight?

(Dzenis at 00:04:19) I am headed. My flight is at 8:00 PM tonight, which is in six, seven hours, to visit my office in Bosnia, which is where all our developers are.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:30) That's neat. How long have you been here?

(Dzenis at 00:04:32) Six months now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:33) Six months? So you came from Bosnia here?

(Dzenis at 00:04:35) I came. I moved last year here to Florida.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:38) As a CTO?

(Dzenis at 00:04:39) As a CTO of Clickbooth. And before that, I was working as a CTO of Clickbooth just from Bosnia.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:46) Oh, okay.

(Dzenis at 00:04:47) So you've been with the company for a while?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:48) For a little bit more than three years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:51) And then when we met at your office, like a month or so ago, you told me that you flipped on a podcast in December while you had a commute because you didn't have a commute before and you found a podcast?

(Dzenis at 00:05:01) So in Bosnia, I live in a small town, which is very city-like. So basically, you can walk from one side to the other in maybe half an hour. So even if I drive a car, it takes me maximum ten minutes to get to the office, and so there's no—it just goes on very quickly. Here, my commute is twenty minutes or something like that. So then I said, "Okay, what do I do with this twenty minutes?" And after two weeks, listening to music started to be boring. So then I was looking at podcasts. Let's see how I can improve myself, my knowledge, how can I continue educating in these forty minutes per day that I waste normally? So that's how I found your podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:48) That's exciting.

(Dzenis at 00:05:48) I was looking at all the podcasts for CTOs, for anyone that's interesting in technology, and project management also. And that reminds me—

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:58) What good ones did you find? You can say none.

(Dzenis at 00:06:02) Yeah. I mean, this is definitely one of the best ones.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:05) Yeah. Mostly because of Jake's editing. He does a fantastic job editing.

(Dzenis at 00:06:08) Well, that's actually very true because the sound quality of this podcast is probably the best out of everyone because all the others are usually they call by phone, and then the sound is dropping off or on, and there's definitely no intro music or anything like that. So it looks very much like just someone recorded the phone conversation without any editing. So even that they have good guests, it kind of ruins the whole experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:38) So what is Clickbooth? Like, what do they do?

(Dzenis at 00:06:41) Clickbooth is a performance marketplace. So what does that mean? It allows advertisers to pay for actual sales or leads instead of paying for clicks and impressions. So basically, it helps advertisers so they don't have to think about placement or the conversion rates and then it just allows them to focus on sales. So let's say that you're selling a product and you want to pay this much money for each sale. And then you don't have to care about a lot of the marketing that goes behind it. So all of that burden is now pushed to us also and to the affiliates who provide the traffic because we are the ones that actually optimize that traffic. Let's say, "Okay, traffic from this source should actually go to this advertiser" and try to make the value highest for the advertiser.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:39) And in your space, I believe I saw it on your website that you dominate your space. You guys are the company?

(Dzenis at 00:07:46) We are number one for the second year in a row.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:49) And you're growing?

(Dzenis at 00:07:50) And we're growing. We are investing heavily this year in growth on both the technology side and also on the business side and marketing and sales.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:59) Bosnia, Sarasota, Colorado—Denver, Colorado. And then are you in New York at all? No? No? Maybe some investors are in New York though, right?

(Dzenis at 00:08:09) Yes. So we are owned by venture capitalists who are in New York. So we go there often for meetings.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:15) Oh, very nice people. I'm assuming.

(Dzenis at 00:08:17) Awesome. The best people ever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:19) So what are the struggles that you've faced as a CTO to give value to the other CTOs? Maybe some mistakes that you've made. Like, what's on your mind? What would you tell another CTO that's younger than you to look out for?

(Dzenis at 00:08:31) So I, as a CTO—so I was a developer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:34) And most CTOs, I think, used to be developers.

(Dzenis at 00:08:37) And the biggest mindset change here is that you need to start thinking about business. So basically, I try to call my role as solving business issues through technology. So while developers, they only worry about code optimizations and stability, which is great, which is awesome. You can't live without those, but there's the other side of it. So as a CTO, you need to be the one to communicate clearly between both sides and basically balance both business and technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:11) That's a great description of the role. Yeah. I like that. I was having dinner with some friends. I know surprisingly, I had a friend this past week. I usually just do work stuff, but had one of my friends from Germany. And her husband was telling me about these little microorganisms called mycelium. And what they do is they exchange information and basically broker nutrients in the soil through the plant. So if a tree needs a certain nutrient, it'll go down in the soil and actually broker the transaction and communicate the information. And the way he was explaining it to me, I was like, "Wow. That's a lot of what a CTO kind of does in technology." We take information and broker between the teams that need it built and the market that needs the solution.

(Dzenis at 00:09:58) Yeah. The business sometimes doesn't understand all the risks that technology does, and they don't really speak the same language.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:04) Yeah. So the CTO is the one that sits in between and makes sure that everyone is on the same page.

(Dzenis at 00:10:06) So I saw that you're writing for Forbes Technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:12) Yeah. So in last year and this year, I started writing for Forbes. I'm publishing some of my articles. The last one was about GDPR. Really?

(Dzenis at 00:10:23) Yes. That seems to be a hot topic lately.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:25) Is it out? Did it get published, or is it in the pending queue?

(Dzenis at 00:10:27) It got published, I think, two weeks ago.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:30) Okay. Tell, give me the overview. What should I be concerned about for GDPR?

(Dzenis at 00:10:34) So GDPR—the biggest thing it changes is that you are not—as a business, you are not the owner of the data. The owner of the data is actually the people. So if you, as a visitor, go to a website and you—of course, you label track your IP address, your user agent, and your first name, last name, all the information that you give to that site—you actually own that data. And having said that, you can also say, "I don't want to give that data to you anymore. I revoke your rights to use my data." So you can control what that business is doing with your data. So that's from one side. The other very interesting side is that this applies—so GDPR is a law in EU, okay? But it applies to everyone wherever they are in the world as long as they have consumers or users from EU. So it applies to all US companies that have traffic visitors from EU, and it applies to any personal information they have. So the trick here is that now personal information is classified as the IP address.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:44) Really?

(Dzenis at 00:11:45) Yes. So it's not just personal, last name, and their Social Security number. Now it's anything, any information that can identify the user. So even if you get a user that comes to your website and you create a unique session ID, because that's unique to that user, that's personal data.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:06) And then the idea is that the owner of the personal data should have the right to delete the personal data?

(Dzenis at 00:12:12) And they should give you consent to use that data.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:15) So the company—my inbox has been flooded. I've had to create Gmail rules. I said, "If it mentions the word GDPR, go into this folder and skip the inbox."

(Dzenis at 00:12:23) Yeah. Everyone is updating their privacy policies about how they use the data, and some of them are actually asking you to resubscribe. So if you want to keep receiving those emails, some of them will actually ask you like, "Hey, click here. Make sure you—you will stop receiving our emails if you don't confirm."

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:41) Now I am not—I know you're not an expert. Like, you don't—

(Dzenis at 00:12:45) I'm not a lawyer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:46) Yeah. You're not a GDPR expert or on the council or whatever it may be. But here's a question that I have about GDPR. So with photography, that used to be a huge thing with rights, right? Like being able to—back in the eighties before we had the explosion of visual technology that we have, everyone has a camera. So the releases have a—you know, photograph taken, things like that. But now there's this reasonable expectation that you'll be photographed if you're in public because of the amount of cameras. And then when you start thinking about things like the IP and their ability to delete the data—well, my question is, how do you handle the scenario of a security camera? Like, if I go and rob a jewelry store and they have my video and I say, "That's my personal data because that's my picture, that's my video, I demand you delete that." How do you handle that?

(Dzenis at 00:13:37) So there is a clause for that. So it's called legitimate interest. And legitimate interest is basically, does the business—does the business interest outweigh the loss of privacy of the user? Oh. So in this case, in this specific example, it would definitely outweigh that. It would be—and you can also use for anti-fraud. So anti-fraud is definitely mentioned in GDPR as a legitimate interest in the company that the company can use to collect your data. But then if you collect the data for that purpose, for the anti-fraud, you can only use it for that purpose.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:16) Really?

(Dzenis at 00:14:17) You can't collect it for because of that and then use it for something else.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:21) And so from an enforceability standpoint, it's impossible because if I collect for anti-fraud and then I'm using it for marketing—

(Dzenis at 00:14:28) No. Yeah. You have to ask for consent for marketing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:31) Yeah. But—yeah, there's—it sounds nice, right? But there's no way to enforce it. How are you going to—is it because whistleblowers, people inside the company are going to tell on the company? They're just relying on that?

(Dzenis at 00:14:44) Good question. Yeah. Good question. So now that on May 25, the GDPR has—how do I call that? It started?

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:51) Oh, started?

(Dzenis at 00:14:52) Yes. Yes. So now we are all waiting on what's going to happen next. Yeah. So someone is going to get punished or someone is going to get in that hot seat. Yeah. And then all the rest of us are going to learn from that, and we all hope we're not going to be the ones.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:09) Yeah. That's so interesting. You know? It'll probably be—

(Dzenis at 00:15:13) Facebook and Google have been already sued.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:17) They have? Yes. Are they getting sued by the government? On Friday, they've been sued?

(Dzenis at 00:15:19) On Friday, May 25. Yes. Not by government, by some activists.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:25) Really? Yes. That makes sense, though.

(Jenice at 00:15:27) Yeah. So basically, they changed their privacy policies, but this activist is saying that it's not good enough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:35) Wow. To imagine an enterprise to turn on that dime so fast.

(Jenice at 00:15:40) The same day. Yeah. They probably had it ready before that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:44) When did—so the GDPR got really big about ninety days ago in my perspective, in the sense that, like, it's coming. Before that, it wasn't in the mass consciousness. How long has this been coming?

(Jenice at 00:15:53) Two years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:53) Two years?

(Jenice at 00:15:54) Yeah. Yeah. So we all had plenty of time to think about it. It's just until late 2018, no one was really paying too much attention to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:04) That's standard though for humans. Right? Wow.

(Jenice at 00:16:06) Absolutely. Wait up to the last moment. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:09) When you apply pressure, things get done.

(Jenice at 00:16:12) That's true. That's true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:13) So you've written on that. You've written on—what was the other topic that you wrote on? Because I found you through—when I met you, I looked up your Forbes. And what was the one you wrote right before GDPR?

(Jenice at 00:16:24) So I can't remember the exact order, but there was one about machine learning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:30) Machine learning?

(Jenice at 00:16:30) Yeah. Machine learning. That's everything around us. So basically, we use machine learning in Clickbooth. We use it for programmatic decisioning on basically matching the users with offers to optimize our traffic.

(Jenice at 00:16:47) So basically, I mentioned that part of our job is to optimize traffic for advertisers to provide the highest value. So with machine learning, we use that. So then I started wondering in what other aspects of our lives can we apply machine learning and what are other companies doing. And one of the basic examples is the Nest thermostat.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:08) Yeah. Nest.

(Jenice at 00:17:09) Smart thermostats. Yeah. So basically, they collect your data on, like, when do you turn your temperature up, when do you turn it down, and then try to get a sense of that data and then predict when you're gonna do that next. So if normally at 8 AM you usually increase your temperature, then it's gonna continue doing that for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:28) Yeah. And I want them to have that data because I want them to know.

(Jenice at 00:17:31) And you give them consent to do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:33) Yeah. Then can they market to me based on my air preferences? We'll see.

(Jenice at 00:17:41) Because they know when you are in the house, when you're working, when you're home relaxing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:46) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:17:47) They have all of that data. You'll probably have to read their privacy policy on what they do use all that data for.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:52) I start seeing like hot cocoa ads when it's cold in my house or tea. So you like UI/UX stuff. You're pretty big in that. Right?

(Jenice at 00:18:03) I like to think so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:05) Yeah. Well, the design of your systems is beautiful. So I love your design team. I love the layout of your office. It was very open, and you were all structured in these sort of like pods, like these five little areas in a desk.

(Jenice at 00:18:21) So all of our offices are actually in that. So we have the huge open space where everyone sits, including the CEO of the company. Everyone is on the same spot. But then we also have these small call rooms that we call—yes—call rooms and conference rooms where people go to meet, take a phone call so that we could keep the noise levels down. And that really helps.

(Jenice at 00:18:43) It's usually those are very busy as everyone uses them all the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:49) Yeah. So it was a big open space, but then on, like, one side were these three to five rooms, like back to back to back. And they were all really cool because they were decorated a little bit differently and they had different purposes. Some had different seating styles, some had whiteboards. It was really interesting. And so when we went into that small meeting room with the doors and everything, it was nice and private, although it was open.

(Jenice at 00:19:13) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:14) I like that style. And then I also met with one of the VPs at Citi yesterday up in Tampa. He's a big employer. They're moving lots of jobs, engineering jobs down into Tampa, Florida. And he told me that their space was like that too.

(Jenice at 00:19:27) Mhmm. Well, the old Clickbooth office was not like that. It had many offices, and I did notice that, for example, people that work together in the same team, they would actually communicate through Messenger. So by having everyone sit closer together, now they're actually talking to each other. And that helps speed up things, helps with misunderstandings.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:52) I would like to see the graph of proximity to Slack messages. Right? Like, you watch the Slack messages go down as you physically put people closer.

(Jenice at 00:20:00) Wouldn't that be a cool app to make? Yeah. There you go. You can make apps for Slack, and that would be an interesting one to see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:06) Right? And you're a serial entrepreneur. You've done many businesses.

(Jenice at 00:20:11) Yes. So actually, my first years of my career were as a business owner.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:19) Yeah. What type of business?

(Jenice at 00:20:20) So I started with outsourcing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:22) Outsourcing.

(Jenice at 00:20:23) I was living in Bosnia. It was right after the war finished.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:27) Okay.

(Jenice at 00:20:27) So salaries were still very low, and Internet was booming.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:32) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:20:32) So basically, the only thing that you could do is learn. So I had a computer. My dad bought me one, and I had Internet access. So then I went online, and many like me doing the same, like, just learning what's trending, etcetera. And then because of all the growth in the Internet era, they were all looking for developers. So that was basically the way out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:57) That's awesome. And so it worked for you.

(Jenice at 00:21:00) It worked for me. It worked for many others in the industry. Now Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, all of those countries have big tech centers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:09) That's amazing. And then also there's this company called Andela who's working a lot with Africa, and they're building, apparently, these centers and teaching people. But I had a couple of their customers on the show, Andela's customers.

(Jenice at 00:21:21) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:22) And basically American companies that are using their talent that are coming out. But they said in these countries, they're seeing this as sort of like the revolution of technology and the sentiment is very positive. Everyone's really happy to be working because they're coming online for the first time and they're learning these skills. So when they have that passion and that motivation, it's like never underestimate a country's revival or them coming online because they can become a real power.

(Jenice at 00:21:48) Yes. And so the thing is about the industry specific is you don't have to have lots of infrastructure. So you don't have to build roads. You don't have to invest a lot. You only need optical cable and Internet.

(Jenice at 00:22:00) And that's it. And then give the people the right to use their computers. And even if they don't have that in school, there's so much content online where you can learn and you can grow yourself. So the fact that you don't have that subject in school is definitely not a blocker.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:21) Yeah. And then you see Facebook doing things like creating those autonomous sort of satellites that are hovering that are providing streaming Internet down, and then you got Musk and them doing the constellation. So you're gonna get the 5G coming from the microsatellites?

(Jenice at 00:22:35) Yes. So they're just trying to push faster Internet to those locations. Because I remember when it started in Bosnia, you had dial-up. You had very slow Internet speeds. I can't remember which year, but I actually remember when we received the first 155 megabits cable that ran into our city.

(Jenice at 00:22:57) That's so exciting. And everyone in the IT was talking about, oh, yeah. This Internet provider, they have this new optical cable. It's gonna be much faster than the old, which we had with the satellite connection. So that was a big step for me as a young person.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:12) So what you were talking about, how when you don't have anything to do, what you do is learn. That is very true. I was having that conversation yesterday because I've been seeing the private markets lose a lot of money on startups. So the most popular startups everybody talks about, they're usually doing the most interesting things.

(Jenice at 00:23:30) Unicorns?

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:30) Yeah. But when you're in the business and you see all these small projects getting funded that don't make sense, like, if you go, I forget the name of the website. Crunchbase. I'm a paid subscriber on Crunchbase, so I get these aggregate reports of who got funding for what. And I look through them, and I'm like, who's doing this?

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:49) Like, who is spending their money on these projects that you can just tell aren't gonna go anywhere from the beginning? And I'm curious to see what's going to happen if a market correction happens. I think a market correction is gonna happen because we usually operate in seven-year cycles, and we haven't had a big one in, like, ten years. Right?

(Jenice at 00:24:06) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:06) With the market. And so historically, we have one. And so I'm interested when the next one's going to be, and here's why. I believe the next market correction is going to breed the most amazing market that I'm going to see in my lifetime because these technologies, Arduino boards, Raspberry Pis are so cheap. Everybody can access them with Amazon, the distribution's there. So when the market does crash and there's not a lot of money and everybody's gonna be sitting around learning, the amount of creativity that's going to come from you being poor, so you're just sitting around hacking an Arduino board for hundreds of hours a week is—and then the large companies with the capital to pick it up and bring it and distribute it to the market. And we've never had distribution the way we found it. Like, right now, my wife literally—she ordered vitamins, Amazon clicked it, and it was at the house in, like, six hours.

(Jenice at 00:24:55) Yeah. Same day. Yeah. And once you get addicted to that, you can't go back.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:01) Right. So I believe that this next market correction is going—and I don't know if it's in two months, two years, whenever it is, but historically, it will always happen. So I believe that when it does happen, the creativity that's going to come out of that in AR, VR, all the different robotics, you see the dogs running from Boston Dynamics, it's just going to be beautiful.

(Jenice at 00:25:21) Well, that's what happens every time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:23) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:25:23) Every time when there's a problem, people get creative how to fix that, how to work around that. And that's just in human nature. That's how it works.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:30) Yeah. But this time, I'm aware of it, and I'm in the market in my thirties. So, like, I'm going to be able to benefit from it because I've seen it happen. Like, it happened when I'm, like, 10. It happens when I'm, like, 17, 18.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:42) And I'm very excited for it to happen because on the right—it's gonna be not great. Right? And it's only not great because of our own decisions as a collection of people, but it's gonna be not great for many people who don't manage finances correctly. But for the people who do and understand how to execute on opportunity and bring value to the market, it's gonna be very exciting. And so I'm actually a little bit looking forward to a market correction.

(Jenice at 00:26:07) It's a little bit scary. Yeah. But, I mean, companies that have—that actually provide value are gonna be fine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:14) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:26:15) So the only ones that are not gonna be fine are those that are hoping to provide value in the future, but still don't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:23) Right.

(Jenice at 00:26:23) So those are the most vulnerable ones.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:25) Yeah. You're gonna get a lot of great talent out of that.

(Jenice at 00:26:28) That's an interesting perspective. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:31) Right.

(Jenice at 00:26:31) When they go down, then we hire their people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:33) Yeah. So you get better talent at a less price because of the recessed nature of the market. And then that allows you to grow and build up a stronger organization.

(Jenice at 00:26:45) That's a positive way of thinking about the bad-case scenario of market correction.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:49) Right. I try to find the positive in everything. I slam my finger in the door and I'm like, maybe the doctor who fixes me is going to end up being my best friend.

(Jenice at 00:26:57) There you go. Just don't slam your door because of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:01) Yeah. That's psychotic, but—

(Jenice at 00:27:04) A little bit. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:06) I just try to find the positives. That doesn't mean I won't, like, scream. I'm not excited about it. But after I get over the human emotional part, I try to sit back and find the best. So are you writing an article right now for Forbes? Like, what's the next one coming out?

(Jenice at 00:27:21) Not right now. No?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:21) Not right now. No?

(Jenice at 00:27:23) There will be one that's gonna probably come out next month. Next month? But I still need to decide on which one. Because I usually try to publish new articles, like, every two or three months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:34) Okay.

(Jenice at 00:27:35) So the time is gonna come, and I need to think about the new subject that's gonna be interesting to the readers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:41) Yeah. My first one I submitted, I don't know if it was—so I was new. I'm on the council now. So I submitted my first article. And then after I started analyzing all the other articles that are out, I realized that my topic isn't relevant to current events.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:55) Mhmm. And that's what you got to do. Right. So my first one is like, okay. I went through the process. I understand that it's coming out soon. I don't know the date, but it's coming out in the next couple of weeks. But it's about, you know, three things to look for in the transition from technologist to leader. And so I just go over three items to focus on that'll help you in that transition because that's a lot of the questions I get from my audience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:19) But then I realized all the ones that get really popular in LinkedIn and stuff are like what you did.

(Jenice at 00:28:24) You did GDPR?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:25) You did a really good GDPR.

(Jenice at 00:28:26) Good timing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:27) Good timing.

(Jenice at 00:28:28) Yeah. Timing is very important for any of the work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:32) Yes. So now my next one is going to be watching the market and then seeing what the article that needs to be written is.

(Jenice at 00:28:40) Mhmm. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's good. Is there an app for that? Is there an app for that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:44) It's called the Jenice app. I open it up and I just do research.

(Jenice at 00:28:48) There you go. Like, what should I write about right now?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:51) What should I write about right now? So you have UI/UX experience, but the team for UI/UX, are they under you? Do you work with them? Or do you have a head of UI/UX? How does that work at your organization?

(Jenice at 00:29:06) So basically, I mean, everything related to technology software development is under me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:12) Mhmm.

(Jenice at 00:29:12) So when we create—when we decide to do something new, is it a new feature or a new product or something, I usually start with writing the business requirements. Why are we doing that? What's this supposed to do? Then writing out user stories. How's the user gonna interact with this?

(Jenice at 00:29:31) What's going to happen? And then basically coming up with a list of things that need to change or creating the new app. Then based on that, I create the UX. So then I create wireframes for this new feature or new product. And then that I give to the team in Bosnia where then they can check the UX if it's perfect, make some advice, comments, and then create the design based on that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:59) What's the primary language in Bosnia?

(Jenice at 00:30:02) That's a good question. There are three languages, and there's Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. All of them are 95% the same.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:12) 95% the same? How close are you to Serbia?

(Jenice at 00:30:15) It's maybe three or four hours drive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:18) Oh, really? We've got some friends in Serbia.

(Jenice at 00:30:20) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:21) Adrian Duro from Epix Entertainment. He's over there.

(Jenice at 00:30:24) There you go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:24) Yeah. They do a lot of the video games. You should reach out to him. I'll send you an email connecting you because he's a really cool guy.

(Jenice at 00:30:31) Yeah. One of my first companies that I owned was actually in Belgrade, Serbia. Belgrade, Serbia. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:36) That's amazing.

(Jenice at 00:30:36) Yeah. Because of the talent. Because at that time—

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:39) That's what he says too. He says the talent's very affordable.

(Jenice at 00:30:42) Yeah. At that time, Belgrade was, is still a big city, and there was just more talent in Belgrade than in Bosnia. Now Bosnia is also getting lots of talent, so now it's not a problem. But fifteen, ten, twenty years ago, it was.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:58) So you're the CTO. There is an amazing CEO. Right? I see her around town a lot. And then what is the—do you have a CFO?

(Jenice at 00:31:10) Yes, we do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:12) So what is your—one of the big questions I get a lot from CTOs is we don't talk on the show enough about how the relationship looks like, how much you communicate with the CEOs and CFOs. Is it daily? Is it quarterly? Like, what's your relationship like as far as—we get a lot about the frequency of communication, how you do your planning, just what does it look like from a high level?

(Jenice at 00:31:35) So this also goes along with our open space. So we basically sit all at the same pod. So we communicate daily.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:44) Alright.

(Jenice at 00:31:44) But we also have regular weekly meetings. So on these weekly meetings, we discuss priorities. We discuss timelines and roadmaps. So I suggest that at least weekly, definitely. And if there's a big project that's happening right now, then even daily. But it also depends on the CEO. If the CEO wants to get involved that much, it just depends.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:11) And where does she spend most of her time?

(Jenice at 00:32:14) You mean geographically?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:16) Geographically, sure. She's in the office mostly?

(Jenice at 00:32:18) She's mostly in the office. She, of course, travels between the offices, and she's coming to visit Bosnia in one or two months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:25) That's great for morale, things like that, building relationship with the studio too.

(Jenice at 00:32:28) Yes. So developers like seeing someone from the US, especially Aaron as a CEO to translate the vision and to translate all of that culture from Clickbooth as it has in its headquarters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:45) Yeah. And your English is fantastic. Like, it's perfect.

(Jenice at 00:32:49) Thank you. I've been watching YouTube videos, improving my accent, and I know there's a long way to go. But that's one of the podcasts I also listen in my car while commuting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:59) Really? There's a podcast. What is the podcast?

(Jenice at 00:33:01) Well, actually, technically, it's not a podcast. It's a YouTube video that I just download.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:06) Oh, cool.

(Jenice at 00:33:07) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:08) Same concept.

(Jenice at 00:33:09) Same concept. I just don't look at the video while driving. I just listen only. For the record.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:16) I actually ended up—I was doing that quite a bit, so I ended up paying the monthly fee so that my lock screen could close because it was too frustrating.

(Jenice at 00:33:23) Yes. Yeah. I pay for the Google Play Music, which gives me YouTube Red, which allows me to download and watch YouTube without ads.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:33) So they're connected?

(Jenice at 00:33:35) Currently, they are.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:36) Okay. And then do you have a Google Home or an Alexa? Probably a Google Home since you pay for the Google service.

(Jenice at 00:33:44) Not in the car, but yeah. Although, I was thinking about it. How cool would that be to actually have Google Home or Alexa in the car?

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:53) They have the Alexa in the car now. Yeah? Yeah. They do.

(Jenice at 00:33:56) That would be great because sometimes I see myself, I use my phone to say, "Hey, Google. Write a note," and then say something, and then it opens up Google Keep and puts a note for me. Because sometimes I get great ideas while driving the car, and I don't really have time to stop and write it down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:15) Right. And you want to live.

(Jenice at 00:34:16) Right? Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:17) Well, pretty soon we'll have the autonomous vehicles, so that'll be exciting.

(Jenice at 00:34:21) I'm looking forward to that day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:22) My wife and I talk about it frequently. We have our eight-month-old daughter. And so, you know, I say that on the show a lot, but here's—I don't have it. But we have our eight-month-old daughter, and we commonly discuss whether or not we will even buy her a vehicle or if it'll just be a subscription service that we pay for.

(Jenice at 00:34:42) How old is she?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:44) Just under a year.

(Jenice at 00:34:45) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:46) So we've got, you know, what, sixteen, fifteen years, I think it is, until they drive.

(Jenice at 00:34:52) Yeah. By 16, they can drive. Get to learn something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:55) In sixteen years, will we have the autonomous vehicles?

(Jenice at 00:34:59) You should definitely be able to buy them. Now I'm not sure if all of the vehicles on the road will be self-driving.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:09) Right.

(Jenice at 00:35:10) Probably not. But you'll definitely have the option to have them. And it also depends on what kind of autonomy are you looking for. Is it just enter the address and then it drives to the destination?

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:22) That's good enough for me.

(Jenice at 00:35:24) That, I mean, Elon Musk says it's going to be possible. I'm kind of a skeptic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:29) Really? Yeah. I think it'll be possible.

(Jenice at 00:35:33) Well, eventually, yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:34) Yeah. So where is the skepticism lie if I said that that is going to be possible in ten years? Do you say yes or no?

(Jenice at 00:35:43) In ten years, we're definitely going to get very close to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:46) Okay.

(Jenice at 00:35:46) So I'm not sure that it's going to be able to get you to a specific location, but maybe just close to it. Because I don't know. For example, will it be able—if you're in a gated community, will it know how to access your car to open the gates? Because there's that, for example. Will it know where to stop? So for it—you need to stop your car before on a specific location, position before the gates so that gates will open. So I don't think that the system will be able to recognize that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:21) Really?

(Jenice at 00:36:22) Not soon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) Not soon. I'm going to take the opposite approach just for fun. Because have you driven the Teslas with the—

(Jenice at 00:36:30) Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:31) And you don't—have you seen the vision system?

(Jenice at 00:36:33) That's so different because then you're in an almost controlled environment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:37) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:36:38) You're on the highway. There are no intersections, and the car just basically lets you drive within the lanes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:45) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:36:46) So that's the easiest adaptation of that. Now the problem is when you go off the highway, when you need to make intersections, and what if the traffic light doesn't work? What then? What if there's snow and you can't see the clear markings on the road? So there's all these edge case scenarios that I'm worried about. So, normally, in perfect case scenario, it's going to work, but in these edge cases, it's a problem. And, luckily, there is a lot of investment in that area, so we're definitely speeding towards that goal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:20) Now do you think that in the next ten years, will AI, like, a simulated consciousness that's good enough to replicate a human?

(Jenice at 00:37:29) Absolutely not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:30) No? You don't think ten years?

(Jenice at 00:37:33) So by AI, it means artificial intelligence. So basically it means the same intelligence that we are, but artificial. So that also means self-conscious. So that's not going to happen anytime soon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:49) No? No. Because the technology that we currently possess with the way that processors work, with the way that code is being written, I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:00) In your lifetime?

(Jenice at 00:38:01) In my lifetime.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:02) Oh my goodness. You were 80, I would believe that.

(Jenice at 00:38:07) So you're safe from the Terminator scenario.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:09) Okay. See, I believe that we're—I don't know. I don't know what to think. I just see the technology. I guess I'm more—I just see it happening faster. Like, I really do.

(Jenice at 00:38:21) It really depends. So this is the artificial intelligence. Now you'll get closer to it. Meaning the car will be able to drive, but the car is not smarter than you. It's never going to get smarter than you. It's just going to be able to recognize all the markings on the road, all the traffic lights, and get you to your destination. That is possible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:41) Have you seen the Google making a phone call? Yes. What did you think of that?

(Jenice at 00:38:47) It sounds awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:49) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:38:50) I'm looking forward to actually see that when it's actually ready.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:54) Versus a demo.

(Jenice at 00:38:55) Yeah. Because demo is a controlled environment, especially with that. They just added that "um" for comma, and I was like, I think they just replaced with commas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:08) So that was really good for them to show as a marketing technique.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:12) Right.

(Jenice at 00:39:13) But even when it's ready, it's still—that thing that's talking to you, it still goes by script. So when you go look deep down at the code, it just has a bunch of decision making. "Should I reply with this, or should I say this?" It doesn't really understand what it's really talking about in the same sense that we are. It just says some words.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:38) Well, I've had some conversations with people that just say words. So I guess it's like, what grade of artificial intelligence are we talking about?

(Jenice at 00:39:47) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:47) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:39:48) Yeah. Definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:49) Because if you go read YouTube comments, I'm like, I know some AIs that are smarter than these people. Oh, but okay. So you've had a lot of success in business and then communicating that into what you've been able to do with Clickbooth. And then your advice to yourself ten years ago. Right? Because you know where you were ten years ago. What advice would you give to yourself ten years ago?

(Jenice at 00:40:17) That was interesting. I always ask myself, like, if I can travel back in time, what would I do differently?

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:22) Right.

(Jenice at 00:40:22) And that's the way to learn—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:24) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:40:24) To learn on your mistakes because we all make some mistakes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:27) Mhmm.

(Jenice at 00:40:29) Understanding business is really crucial. So also one of the big ones is growth. So I know that business is always concerned about growth. And as tech people, we sometimes are fine with the system being just stable. But then we also need to remember that we can grow. We can use the resources that—let's say that we have a main product, and this main product works awesomely. We developed all the features, and now that product is stable. It provides revenue, and there's not much really to do on that specific product. So that's probably one of the mistakes I did. I was happy with the product as it is, and I didn't grow it because the product itself couldn't grow. But what I could do is create an ecosystem around it. So I could create multiple products that go with it and then use the resources that I have to build an entire ecosystem around. And I see other companies doing that. Amazon, Google, Apple, they all do that. They all create these ecosystems to hold you into them, and that's definitely something that I was not doing ten years ago.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:44) Right. Well, that's logical too because it's like you have two options. Well, you probably have three options. The first option would be to complicate your existing products so it's unusable. I see that option a lot. Second option would be to build something nearby useful to the product because you have a similar customer base and you can be relevant in the same space.

(Jenice at 00:42:03) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:04) Right? And then the third option is I'm human and I forget. I don't remember what the third option was. That's just me being a human. But I really like the awareness of I could complicate this—

(Jenice at 00:42:17) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:17) Or I could build something. Oh, the third option would be do nothing.

(Jenice at 00:42:21) Well, the danger of that is it's a very real danger because we get comfortable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:27) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:42:27) We get really comfortable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:28) We do.

(Jenice at 00:42:29) And we love that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:30) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:42:31) So if you have a product that makes money and you work only four hours a day, then you say, okay, maybe that's good enough. Well, it actually—to keep you sharp, I think it's not good enough. You need to keep investing. You need to keep—well, not work twelve hours. I mean, invest your time within the normal reasonable limits of life quality, but still never stop thinking, never stop creating something new, never stop innovating.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:00) We have to because we've got this process that runs in our brain called a pruning process. So we have synapses that fire in our brain and they create these synapse chains and they go deeper and build stronger. And what will happen is if we stop firing a certain section of those synapses, a pruning process comes through and actually will remove them to make space for something new. It's life. So if you don't use it, you lose it.

(Jenice at 00:43:27) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:27) And that's one of the things that this morning, I was driving to the gym and I thought to myself, I imagined a hard drive pie. Right? Like, the capacity of a hard drive. I imagined at one point in my life, I was 99.9% full of just programming knowledge. So I didn't have any skill knowledge of human interaction, didn't have any knowledge of psychology or soft skills, or I didn't have any knowledge of business. I was 99% full, 100% full of just programming knowledge, and I was very good at it. And then as I realized that I was limited in my growth being completely full because of it, I couldn't progress and I had achieved mastery of the programming. So I started slowly expanding it and taking chunks of that pie away and learning about how business works and how people work and how business and people go together. So you have to know more about that. And gradually, I started to watch my programming knowledge shrink. Right? It's going from 100 to 50%.

(Jenice at 00:44:30) Yeah. But it's just a percentage shrink. Hopefully, you didn't forget too many things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:34) Correct. Well, then it became important for me to understand how the memories can work together. So I need to retain the higher level concepts of the programming and make better use, be more efficient with that 50% of programming space than I was with 100%, knowing maybe multiple frameworks, right, or knowing multiple languages that were completely in different ecosystems. Like, why know complete PHP and complete Ruby when all the tools live in their own worlds? Just know Ruby, drop PHP, and replace that whole concept with knowledge of how people in business work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:08) And that's what was going through my head this morning.

(Jenice at 00:45:10) Yeah. And as someone in the CTO role, you need to have that big vision of not just one side, but you need to understand, as you said, both people and business and psychology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:22) So you have leaders. You have how many engineers do you work with?

(Jenice at 00:45:26) We have currently over 20.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:28) Okay. So you have over 20. And then your job is leading them. And then next year, do you think you're going to be at 25 or 30? Or are you actively growing in engineering?

(Jenice at 00:45:39) Currently, we're slowly growing. We're always looking for the talent. We are, on both high level talent, meaning someone that has lots of experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:47) Mhmm.

(Jenice at 00:45:48) But we also have lots of success in hiring interns and then training them and then keeping them on. Right. So every few months, we would hire a group of interns, four or five of them, and then train them for a few months and then offer the full-time role to the best of them. And that was really good because we can train them from the beginning. They don't have experience, but they usually come from colleges, very smart, and lots of knowledge, but just lacking experience. We provide that. We push them into direction that benefits us and them in their career, and it works great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:27) And then how do you identify who's ready to lead? So you have these 20 people. I'm assuming they kind of group and pull into these teams where you have leaders for effective communication. So I'm assuming you've worked with them for a while. You sound like you're a great leader, so I'm assuming you have a very sticky team.

(Jenice at 00:46:45) Yes. Yeah. Yes. Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:46) So how did you identify those leaders, and how did you raise them up into their leadership positions at your company?

(Jenice at 00:46:53) So I believe that leaders identify themselves. Okay. So they will just step up. They are the ones that always show up, always step up, always have ideas. We don't have to make someone, "Hey, you are a team leader to lead." They can lead without that. And then the only thing you need to know is to recognize that. So you would recognize that someone has desire to lead, and then you can give him a little bit more responsibility and see how that person reacts to that, and then give him more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:27) Very cool. Then how do you resource and coach them through the challenges of being an early leader versus becoming an experienced leader? Just meet with them regularly, talk with them, ask them what their challenges are?

(Jenice at 00:47:39) Not regularly, but on day to day basis, we go through, especially in the beginning, we go through these issues, and we see—I usually try to go with the coaching position. So, "How would you do it? Why would you do that?" And try to push them in the direction without actually telling them that they need to go in that direction. I just like them to realize in the same way that I realize it, that that direction is the best for both them and the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:08) So do you suggest books to them or anything like that?

(Jenice at 00:48:12) Not really. No. I don't really suggest books, although that would be a good idea. Yeah. But some of them don't really like to read, and I don't really want to check in on them, like, "Have you read that?" It's mostly about the mindset.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:26) Okay.

(Jenice at 00:48:27) So being a leader is about—the biggest thing about this is the mindset—and just working with them on day to day basis helps grow that part of their mindset.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:37) Very cool. What time are you leaving today for Bosnia?

(Jenice at 00:48:42) So let's see. Leaving in three hours.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:45) Three hours. Have you packed?

(Jenice at 00:48:47) 90%.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:48) 90%. So the toothbrush and stuff isn't in the case yet.

(Jenice at 00:48:50) Yeah. Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:51) But the clothes are.

(Jenice at 00:48:53) Clothes are. Yeah. Bags are there. I just need to put the cosmetics and get my laptop in. That goes in the last—the electronics.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:03) Well, laptop, does it even go in, or do you take it with you? What's the flight like? How long is that?

(Jenice at 00:49:08) There are two flights. One is ten hours. The other is two hours.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:11) I'd like to send you love right now for what you're about to go through.

(Jenice at 00:49:17) On the ten hour flight, usually, there's Internet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:20) Yeah.

(Jenice at 00:49:20) So that's going to help with some of that. And my laptop is in my backpack, also together with my tablet and my phone and my noise canceling pods. Yeah. The extra battery pods?

(Jenice at 00:49:32) There's power supply below the seats.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:35) Very cool.

(Jenice at 00:49:36) So they have Wi-Fi. Very good planes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:40) You have a good layover? Like, do you have a stop between the two flights for a while?

(Jenice at 00:49:44) Yeah. But only for 90 minutes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:47) So you're going to be on a plane for 20 hours straight.

(Jenice at 00:49:51) Yeah. And so, hopefully, our plane is not—the first one is not going to be late. Otherwise, we're going to get late to the second one. Right. But usually, as long as it's more than 60 minutes, I can make it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:03) That's exciting. Yeah. How many people are you traveling with?

(Jenice at 00:50:05) Four. Just my family. Two kids and a wife.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:09) What are—how old are your kids?

(Jenice at 00:50:11) Eight and ten.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:13) Were they boys, girls?

(Jenice at 00:50:15) Older one is a boy, and the other one is a girl.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:18) Nice. You got a nice mix. At least they're not infants. That'd be very difficult with small children.

(Jenice at 00:50:23) So the first time we traveled with them, this is probably third—yeah, this is the third year that we have been traveling altogether. But I was very worried about traveling with smaller kids, but it actually went awesome. Yeah. Because they love the screen in the front of their seats. They can watch all the movies they desire. They have juice that comes regularly. They have snacks. They have food. So other than being in a small seat, which is actually bigger to them than it is for us, it's actually awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:56) That's so great. We just did a trip up to the mountains, like, a weekend or two ago, and it was our first—well, my first trip with the baby. And we drove up through the night. It was, like, eight or ten hours. And she slept the entire—she woke up, like, ten minutes before we got to the cabin. It was wonderful.

(Jenice at 00:51:13) That was awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:14) Yeah. On the way back, we did it during the day, and she made it into the last hour and then woke up. So I was very pleased with how traveling the first time with my eight-month-old was.

(Jenice at 00:51:25) Mhmm. Mhmm. And when we drive in car for a few hours, so lately, I started listening to podcasts for kids.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:33) Podcasts for kids?

(Jenice at 00:51:33) Yeah. It was awesome. It was really just podcast about, for example, how does space work? What's gravity? How does that work?

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:44) What's the name of that podcast? Do you remember?

(Jenice at 00:51:46) I can give you a link.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:48) Yeah. Next time it comes pops into your head, you know, screenshot it to me or something because that is really cool.

(Jenice at 00:51:55) Yeah. It's very interesting for them, for kids, and it's somewhat interesting for us adults. So it makes—it usually keeps them quiet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:04) That's awesome. Thank you so much for coming and hanging out. This has been awesome to have an in-person podcast.

(Jenice at 00:52:11) This is awesome, and I love your podcast, and I really appreciate the chance to be here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:21) 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.