Benny Wong - End-to-End Mobility & Rapid Scaling

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Benny, the CTO at SPIN, and they discuss how SPIN has utilized TopTal to hire engineers during periods of massive growth, the advanced custom scooter that Spin has been developing, and their plans to transition from a scooter sharing company to an end-to-end mobility company. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:28) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Tell me about how you got into technology. What got you started?

(Benny at 00:00:43) So I grew up in Malaysia. Technology adoption is a little bit slower there, right? And the first thing, you know, how technology gets to Malaysia is usually through entertainment and whatnot. So I was introduced to computers through games. My, actually for me, I was first introduced to Commodore 64, which was early even for, you know, my time. Just games on it and whatnot, right? And then my mom was always chasing technology all the time. So we got a computer at a very young age, you know, with modem and, you know. So for me, it's games, basically. Just played a lot of games. I have an elder brother. He's five years older, right? And he was actually into the programming part of things. Not me, though, right? With just first started with MS-DOS. But I was always just, you know, playing games and whatnot.

(Benny at 00:01:33) So I came to America to Purdue University for my college, right? And, you know, I think I've always been really an engineer at heart. Like, I would always fix things, like furniture as well. You know, we built furniture and whatnot even when I was a young kid. And that's how I got into my major, really. All I knew was just playing games at that point in time, right? So I picked computer engineering and did four years of that and, you know, loved programming and whatnot. I did a direct PhD, actually, but after two years, I decided to give that up and then go into the industry.

(Benny at 00:02:09) So my first job was at Motorola doing very, very different things than what I'm doing right now. I worked on the first Droid phone, and I actually started as a firmware engineer for displays for a year, and then I got into operating systems because then I was working with Google on the whole Android ecosystem, right? So I got into operating systems for another year or two. And then I found a gig out here in San Francisco with an incubator sort of with Samsung, where, you know, you sort of have an idea. You pitch it to them, and you build it up for six months, and then, you know, they'll fund you if they like it and whatnot. So I did that for another, you know, three or so years. Then I went to Fitbit. You know, I was the second Android engineer over there. Did a couple years over there.

(Benny at 00:03:05) Prior to this, I was at Envoy. I don't know if you've heard of Envoy. It's like an office OS right now, but when they first started, it was like a sign-in on the iPad app. When you go to an office, you don't really need a receptionist anymore. You can just sign in and, you know, notify the person in your meeting, and then you could do all the NDA.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:22) But that's where I've seen it before. Yeah, probably.

(Benny at 00:03:25) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Founder is Larry Gadea, who was like an early Twitter employee and whatnot. So I did that for a year, and then I left Envoy. I was heading up mobile at Envoy, and then I left Envoy to join Spin in the early stages, basically. Two of the founders were my friends from college. We met at Purdue a long time ago, right? So when they came to me with the idea before they started, I was really excited about it, but I couldn't leave immediately. So I had to stay on at Envoy just to finish up what I was doing, and then I joined them, you know, shortly after. So, you know, I've been there since, and it's been almost four years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:04) Are the founders still involved in the business?

(Benny at 00:04:07) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:08) Tell me about them. What are they like?

(Benny at 00:04:10) Nice people. I mean, we all came from similar backgrounds. They grew up in Singapore. And, yeah, we all met at Purdue. So our background, culture, you know, upbringing is all very similar. Just really nice guys, really. That's part of why, you know, I've been at SPIN for so long as well. It's just because, you know, that's just what we treasure, doing the right thing, and just treating people the right way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:37) Yeah. Culture is everything. So tell me a little bit about what SPIN does.

(Benny at 00:04:42) So SPIN is—where are you at actually? Where are you located?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:46) I am right now, I'm in Florida. Bradenton, Tampa area. Yeah.

(Benny at 00:04:52) Yeah. So we're a scooter, you know, we're a micro-mobility company. We started off renting out dockless scooters. We were actually the first ones to bring it to America. And then we added, you know, electric scooters, just renting scooters to commuters and whatnot, right? So that's what we do as a whole. I guess you could call us a scooter company for now, but, you know, we have bikes and whatnot. So, really, a micro-mobility. We're in Tampa too. I don't know if you—are you close to Tampa?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:18) Yeah. So everybody, you know, like, when you live in a smaller city, you just say the nearest big city everybody knows. Everybody knows Tampa. I'm, I think we're about, like, I don't know, thirty, thirty-five minutes away from Tampa. Like, my parents live there. You know, I'm there all the time. So—

(Benny at 00:05:33) I see. Have you seen one of those scooters around town? The orange ones?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:37) Oh, yeah. Of course. How can you not? They're like bright orange.

(Benny at 00:05:41) Have you tried riding them before?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:44) I have not ridden yours, but when I was over in—because I have my car with me, alright? Because I'm local here. And I live in the suburbs, you know? So I'm not spending a lot of time in the city. I'll just drive through it. But when I was over in Sweden, I was there for a couple weeks. And, you know, this—they're very useful over there. Like, because, first of all, the towns are just designed differently, and they're actually very good for the scooters. And here's something I wanted to get into, and, like, I'm curious to know because you're in this industry and you eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. Okay. So my biggest frustration is there's like twenty different brands of these, and every time I want to go jump on one, I have to download a different app. Like, who's going to solve that problem?

(Benny at 00:06:37) Yeah. So we actually have this thing called—I don't know if you've—do you use an iPhone?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:43) Yeah.

(Benny at 00:06:43) Cool. So App Clips is like a, you know, something that iOS 14 released not too long ago, right? Basically, the whole idea of that is that, you know, you don't have to download the full app to actually, you know, use a service. So we're actually—you know, we were featured during WWDC, right, working with Apple on this. So I think, you know, these kind of things where we will have a sort of NFC tag, right, on the scooter. And all you've got to do is just really just open your camera and scan it, right? And you can just finish the whole flow without having to download the whole entire app. So I think, yeah, I think—and I think that's one of the pain points, right? And this is why, like, for certain places, I want to say first-mover advantage is real, right? Because, like you said, right, if you have two different apps already on your phone, and now you looked at a new scooter and you have to download it, you have to put in your email, create a password, and put in all your payment information and all that stuff, right? It's a hassle, right? So that's how we're, you know, sort of trying to solve that problem, right, with something like App Clips. And in the future, right, you could also imagine in a world where, you know, you could just do an NFC tag sort of, right, with a payment card of some sort, right? So you could skip all the process. But it's hard because scooter—the scooter business is highly regulated, right? For obvious reasons, I think, because the world sort of has seen what happened in, you know, some of the Asian countries in the beginning when there were dockless bicycles. I don't know if you remember seeing, like, just mountains of bicycles stacked up, you know, because of the whole dockless craze, right? So then cities started adopting, you know, more regulation, like, you know, things like making sure there is a cap per city and not just, like, free-for-all, right? That's one, right? Making sure there are parking regulations and things like that. So for certain places, right, they would require the, you know, some sort of user education and whatnot before they start riding it. So it's sort of a little bit inevitable, right, for now since scooter is a really new thing that users have to go through the whole education flow and, you know, sign some waivers and whatnot. So, but we're getting there. I think, I think as cities are more comfortable with micro-mobility, which I think—I mean, after you've been to Sweden, right, I don't think, you know, it has such a product-market fit that I think, you know, it's going to be hard to imagine a world without micro-mobility, to be honest with you, right? And we didn't even really have to do much, right, to discover this. We just really just, you know, bought some scooters on Amazon. We put it out and test it out, and people just immediately loved it. You know? It was one of those things that it just made sense for cities and whatnot and places like Europe too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:38) Has anyone made an autonomous scooter yet?

(Benny at 00:09:42) There have—I mean, we are involved in a couple of things looking into that, right? That would make a lot of sense, you know? I don't think cities are ready for autonomous scooters yet, but I think the technology is ready for autonomous scooters. Just because, just because, like, you know, it's not like a car where this thing is going at, you know, thirty miles or fifty miles an hour in the city, right? Like, this thing really only needs to get, you know, like, do five miles an hour or whatnot, right? So at that speed, you don't really need the sort of—the latency could be pretty forgiving, right, for it to be safe. So I want to say that autonomous—I think we're sort of trying to get cities okay with that idea. And now that you brought it up, actually, we're working with a couple of cities to launch what we call Spin Valet, which is a three-wheeled scooter, right? And it's teleoperated. You can imagine use cases like, hey, you can actually reserve a scooter, and we'll drive it to you. The main use case that we're trying to solve really is because right now, when a scooter is parked in an alley just five meters away from the busiest street in town, that scooter might not get rented at all throughout the day, right? And for us, like, send someone out to move that scooter onto the main street, you can imagine that it's just super expensive and inefficient, right? So the Spin Valet is basically—and, you know, gives us the ability to teleoperate the scooter, right? Move the scooter, you know, just two meters to the left, right, so that it can be discovered by users. So that's our first use case that we're trying to test right now. And certain cities are getting, you know, comfortable with, like, hey, yeah, you can, you know, why not teleoperate this? Thing's safe and whatnot, right? So then the future of that, as you could imagine, is really just doing it autonomously. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:39) That's exciting. That's exciting. I want to, like, Uber style, like, I want to press the button and the scooter just shows up right to my hotel room. You know? I want it to ride the elevator and come down the hall. I want it to have, like, last-inch delivery. They can actually move inside the hotel. I know, I'm a demanding consumer, my friend.

(Benny at 00:11:59) No, I get you. I'm the same way too. It only makes sense, right? Like, you either just put, you know, just flood the whole city with, you know, so many scooters that you can't miss it, right, which isn't great for any city, actually, right? But then, you know, people are used to on-demand everything right now, right, especially after COVID, right? They expect everything to just show up at their doorstep, some even maybe in their house, right? So, yeah, so that's definitely the next progression of things. And, obviously, it's hard to do it with a two-wheeled scooter, right? You can't really—it can't balance itself. So that's why, you know, three-wheel scooter makes a lot of sense. It also makes a lot of sense in terms of, like, you know, getting certain users, right, that aren't comfortable riding scooters, right, to try something like, you know, like a three-wheel scooter just because you could just stand on it, and it'll be fine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:52) Yeah. Grandma and grandpa, you got the three-wheel scooter. They already—I mean, yeah, you could get into the scooter business, like, as in transportation of the elderly.

(Benny at 00:13:05) Yep. Well, that's one part of it that we're focusing on. Yeah. But hopefully not just the elderly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:13) Oh, man. It's fun. It's fun.

(Benny at 00:13:15) But you've ridden on these things before, right? I mean—

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:18) For sure. A bunch.

(Benny at 00:13:20) You see, the thing is this, right? Like, for me, I mean, I used to live in downtown San Francisco, right? To get a mile away, right, or a mile and a half away, you can't—you know, to walk, it's like, you know, half an hour. I'm really slow at walking, so it takes, like, half an hour or at least, right, to get to a mile away. And taking Uber, you know, the cheapest option, Uber Pool and whatnot, it's like, you've got to wait ten minutes for it to get here, and then you'll probably just spend another fifteen minutes getting to that place, right? But, and it'll cost more than just riding a scooter, right? So it makes a lot of sense for urban areas, really. And the most important thing about it is that it's fun. You know? It's something about just riding an electric scooter out in the open air and, like, just wind just blowing through your hair. It's just very freeing, and it just feels fun, right? On top of all the practical parts of it too. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:14) Yeah. It's kind of like flying, right? You get the rush of the wind. It's fun.

(Benny at 00:14:19) Yeah. Have you—do you ride a motorcycle by any chance, or have you ever tried riding motorcycle?

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:25) So growing up, I rode dirt bikes, like, regularly after school, like motocross type stuff.

(Benny at 00:14:31) Yeah. It's that kind of feeling, actually. Like, I would compare it similarly to that kind of, you know, why people choose to, you know, ride motorcycles as a hobby, really.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:44) Yeah. It's not for the safety. It's because it's fun. It's fun. I live in a retirement town. I think, like, I really do. And, like, I always—I've, you know, my cousins have gotten their motorcycles and such, and my brother-in-law actually owns the, like, large local bike shop, like, motorcycle shop. And so they're, you know, that's their whole life. And I've thought about it a couple times, but, man, I just see these elderly people who shouldn't have licenses so often. I'm just like, nah. I'll stick with my truck.

(Benny at 00:15:19) Yeah. I rode a motorcycle for two years and, yeah, just decided that it was way too scary and random. Right? Yeah. I haven't ridden motorcycles since, like, seven years ago.

(Benny at 00:15:31) So, yeah. Too scary. Yeah. Especially on the freeways in America too where everyone's, like, going at 70, 70, 80 miles an hour. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:39) Yeah. Welcome to America, man. It's crazy. I'm curious. Uh, so I got to talk with, um, I think I say his name, like, Ismail at Toptal. Uh, I always butcher names. I apologize. But he was a super bright guy. Right? And he mentioned that you guys had done some work together. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

(Benny at 00:16:00) Yeah. So the whole micromobility craze really happened. It was hypergrowth for, you know, the past few years. Right? The adoption was just insane. Like, I remember our first year. The first year, at the end of the year, it was, like, maybe 20 people on the team. Right? We had launched, like, 30 to 40 cities in America. That means, like, you know, more than one every two weeks. I don't actually remember how we did that. We were just flying all over the place and just launching scooters. And that's because the demand was just there. Like, people were just, you know, hungry for it, and it's pure product market fit. People loved it. Right? So as such, there's gonna be a lot of competition because of that. Right? Like, Lime and Bird were there. Right? So the need to scale up was just, you know, super high. And as you know, as a CTO yourself, engineers and hiring for engineers is, like, one of the toughest things. Right? And it takes time because you want to make sure that you hire the right people, especially in the beginning. Right? So that's how we got connected to Toptal, just because, like, there's way too many things that I needed to do. Right? And at that point in time, it was just me and another engineer. It was just two of us in the company, right, for the longest time. So we needed to hire contractors. I think, you know, that was the quickest way for us to sort of get people to work on the features that we needed to. Right? That's how Toptal came in. Toptal didn't actually reach out to me. Like, I just knew of Toptal. This was in, like, 2017 and before, right, where Toptal was just known to be one of the most reputable platforms, right, for software contractors. Right? The way I got introduced to it was my friend was a contractor on there and was telling me that he was making good money on it and yada yada. Right? And I knew of him as being, like, a really good engineer. Right? So when I had that resource crunch, right, I just contacted Toptal. And that's how it all started. Right? But it evolved way beyond that too, because with contractors, you know, we still do an interview and whatnot. Right? But I feel like a lot of times, you just have very specific tasks for people to do. Right? So it's really performance-based. Right? You know, we don't have to go through the whole slew of interviews to make sure that we're actually hiring the right person or whatnot. Right? So it gives us that insurance that, you know, we don't have to fully commit. You know? They even have, like, a return policy to, like, if we don't like the contractor, then they would refund, like, the first week of work or whatever. Right? So it just made it very easy for us to try something like that. Right? So, yeah, that's how we started with Toptal, and they've really helped us. Even now, we're still working with them. We've been working with them for four years now. You know? Because there's always need for, you know, certain projects and spikes of features and whatnot. Right? So that's how we use Toptal. But more on that, right now, we actually hired a couple—more than a couple—a few people from Toptal. Basically converted the contractors to full-time employees.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:11) Yeah. They have an option for that, don't they? At least when I was using them, there was some sort of option you could do to actually hire them out of Toptal.

(Benny at 00:19:19) Yeah. And it's really, that's honestly my preferred way to hire in general at a startup. Right? Like, if I had it my way, you know, it'd be amazing if we could just, instead of, like, a four or five hour interview where I ask, like, you know, coding questions and theories and whatnot. Right? I would rather have someone come in, you know, and really jam on a problem we have at work. Start off with contracts so it's not really a commitment from both parts, right, just to feel each other out and see how, you know, we work together and whatnot. Right? And then a month later, we could decide whether we want to go through with it or not. Right? I think it's a really good way of hiring, I think. And I hope the future will move towards something like that. Right? I mean, because not everyone interviews very well as well. Right? So to really perform in a span of four hours, like, it's sort of unfair in a way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:20) I fully agree. I especially noticed, you know, certain—not all developers are the same. Uh, I noticed when I was hiring people that are, like, really brilliant at algorithms, their social skills were less than people who were, like, full stack developers.

(Benny at 00:20:37) Yeah. I agree. Just the truth.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:39) Like, I'm sorry. And I don't think that they're—I think it's, um, and I've thought about this a lot actually, Benny. Uh, it's how much time we spend in our head because, for example, when I first started this show, uh, I was still writing code every day. Right? But I noticed that if I was writing code in the morning and then doing the show in the afternoon, I was, like, less socially, you know, quick on my feet. Right? But so then I created this rule where, like, I don't code the days that I have to do shows or I do the show and then I do some coding. And I noticed that, like, interacting with my team too. Like, if I'm starting off my morning with solving, like, really, really difficult engineering problems and being deep in code and being inside of my own head, uh, then it's harder for me to communicate outside of my own head, like, set the tone for the day. So I'll have, like, different days where I focus on different things. But I have no doubt in my mind that people who are building algorithms, I mean, they're doing incredible—the mental models that they're building inside of their RAM, like, their brain RAM, uh, for lack of a better term, are so complex. Uh, so they're spending a lot of time inside of their own head, and then that's just less experience they're having with social interactions.

(Benny at 00:21:58) Yeah. And, you know, these positions and these experts are required too. Right? And that's why there's just different roles. Right? Even for engineers, there's just different roles in engineering. Right? But I agree. I mean, honestly, now that you mentioned it, I've actually never thought about this before. But now that you bring it up, every time I code, I'm just not talking to anyone at all, actually. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm just so drained, you know, especially when you're staring at a problem for a while. You know? Yeah. That's a good observation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:34) So tell me a little bit about you guys getting acquired by Ford. Did you get to meet Ken Washington?

(Benny at 00:22:42) Ken Washington. No. We didn't—I didn't meet Ken Washington. The acquisition was a great thing. I think even back then, we were considering other options. Right? Um, and acquisition being one or, you know, obviously, raising more money and whatnot. But, you know, at that point in time, we felt that consolidation is gonna happen as you've seen with, like, you know, investments from Uber and Lime and, you know, other companies as well. Right? So we knew the consolidation will need to happen because it's just, you know, this business is growing so fast. Right? And there's so many players that it's just—it's gonna be a matter of time where, you know, companies would just start falling, you know, left and right. Right? So we took the acquisition because it was a strategic one, right, especially with Ford, a car manufacturing company that is, you know, getting into autonomous vehicles and, you know, ride sharing in the future as well. Right? So it just made a lot of sense to us to really be, you know, the first part of mobility, which, you know, we think is the most important part of micromobility. Right? And that synergy with someone like Ford just made a lot of sense to us. So that was good. Ford was very, very supportive for everything, you know, that we wanted to do with our company, and we've been operating, you know, independently since the beginning. So a lot of trust from them, a lot of synergies, and just help from them throughout this process as well. It's been, what, two plus years, almost three. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:24) Yeah. I got to interview Ken when the whole COVID thing happened, and they decided to, uh, you know, they were manufacturing the medical devices, uh, you know, for the government. And so I got to talk to him during that whole thing. And right before I was walking out the door, like, I wasn't thinking about it, I was wearing a shirt that said Jeep on it. And my wife is like, uh, you're going to interview the Ford guy today. Right? I was like, yeah. She's like, you gotta change your shirt, honey. And I was like, what? And I—because I had that shirt for so long. It was, like, one of my favorite shirts. I just like the design of it. And so I wasn't even thinking about it twice, and I was like, thank you so much. Thank you for helping me out with that one. You should check out his episode, though, and then send him a message. Man, that guy is such a nice guy. He's super intelligent, great leader. I really enjoyed talking with him.

(Benny at 00:25:15) Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing about Ford. Right? So I actually moved from Chicago a little more than ten years ago. Right? And Ford, you know, being a Midwest company, there's just a lot of amazing people in the Midwest, I think. Right? Just very down to earth, very nice people in the Midwest, and Ford really just lives through that. You know, during the acquisition, we would be meeting with, you know, the highest ranks of Ford. Right? Bill Ford even. And they were all just really nice people. I don't think I've ever met executives in a company that are all just so warm and nice. And that's one of the reasons why we went with them as well, because, like, that whole culture, right, just really matched with what our company was like. And that's what we believe in. Right? Just being nice people in general. But, yeah, it was surprising for sure. Right? Because I'm meeting these people that are running, like, a billion dollar company. Right? And during dinner, we would just talk about just random things, you know, like, talk about football and whatnot. Right? So it was surprising to me, actually. I was expecting, you know, sort of a different type of relationship, but they really made us feel like we're part of their family. So that was amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:23) Yeah. Sometimes we focus as a people, like, as a group of humans. We'll focus on the exception and amplify it. Right? So, like, if there's a businessman or a businesswoman or somebody who's doing something nefarious, right, or wrong, and they have a lot of money and power and that gets amplified, then all that negativity gets associated with money and power when in reality, it's just, like, who that person was inside. Right? And then we're all a little bit gun shy to anybody that has money and power because of that amplification of the exception when in reality—because that's how I grew up. I mean, I grew up, you know, fairly without money. Right? And so I had this thing where I thought, you know, I saw it in some movies. I was like, rich people are bad people. And then everything was to the contrary as I grew professionally. I'm like, these are the nicest, sweetest people. And then I came to this conclusion that, like, the only way to get money in life that's legal, the only legal way to get money in life is by being useful to other people. So the people that have the most money are, like, often, right, because there's always exceptions to everything, but they're often the people who are most useful to other people. So now when I see, like, a Lamborghini going down the road, I'm like, I wonder what that person—like, what value did that person bring to the world? You know, what did they invent, or what are they—what do they understand that I don't yet understand about how to be useful to other people?

(Benny at 00:27:48) Yeah. That's a really good way of looking at it. And you're right. I think the stigma of rich people just all being, you know, a certain way and whatnot—it's understandable, I guess. Right? The stigma. But you're right. I think, you know, when you really think about it and dig into, like, hey, what's a more productive way of looking at this is really, hey, what can you learn from this person? You know? It must be a reason. I mean, honestly, like, all human beings are just born, you know, to have good intentions. I completely believe that. Right? So I think learning, you know, instead of judging someone for, you know, the wealth and whatnot, really digging in and trying to figure out, like, why, you know, certain people are the way they are. I think, you know, it'd be a lot more fruitful, right, experience for yourself and for the other person as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:34) Do you have kids?

(Benny at 00:28:35) I have kids. Yeah. I have a daughter a year and four months now. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:40) Nice. Nice, dude. Yeah. Yeah. I have a daughter. She's almost four, and then I have a son who is just a little bit over two. It is crazy. Yeah. Two is like four. Two is not like—it's not like one plus one because you only have the one. Right?

(Benny at 00:28:58) Yeah. Yep. Yeah. For now. I mean—

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:01) Yeah. So when we had the second one, it's like having three. I mean, it's pretty hard. But it's really, really cool to see the difference in what it's like to have a son versus what it's like to have a daughter. And personally, if I had a third kid, I would want it to be a daughter because the girls are a lot easier than the boys.

(Benny at 00:29:22) Yeah. So I told my wife that if we get to pick, right, and if we have to pick two kids, I would rather have two girls than two boys. Obviously, the perfect match would be a girl and a boy. Right? But I've always been a fan of, you know, just having girls more than boys just because of my personal biases around me. Right? Like, I know, like, my guy friends—they talk to their parents, you know, maybe once a week, right, or maybe even once a month or sometimes even once, you know, a year. Right? Versus, like, my female friends around me, you know. They're, you know, always calling their parents and, you know, talking about just all sorts of different things. And even myself, you know, I talk to my parents on texts a lot. Right? But we probably call each other, like, maybe once every month. And I was thinking for myself, like, when I'm old, I would love for my kids to, you know, call me every day, actually. Why not? You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:14) Yeah. That's what my wife, she talks to her dad, text him, I think almost every morning. Right? And then we see him on the weekends.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:21) But she's in this group chat with her mom and her two or three sisters. Oh, my gosh. That thing goes off twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. She broke her Apple Watch, and I was like, that was a prayer answered from God. Finally, those messages stopped coming through on her watch while we're sitting there with each other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:41) But yeah, man. The girls, at least in my life, they talk a lot more. I think I'm on the same ratio with you where I talk to my dad once a month.

(Benny at 00:30:53) Yeah. But it's fun. My daughter happened in the midst of the acquisition. So that was incredibly hard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:03) That's tough.

(Benny at 00:31:04) For me, more so for my wife, obviously. Right? Because I had to just work a lot during that time. So that was tough. But, hey.

(Benny at 00:31:13) You know, it's definitely rewarding, I want to say. Never understood that before I was a parent, I guess. When people say, yeah, it's rewarding to have a kid, and I'm just looking at my friend's kid at that point in time. I'm like, oh, man, this person is just crying all the time. How can this be rewarding at all? But yeah, I think it's a different challenge. Not like, definitely not like coding or technology. It's very different, but it's much needed. I think it's definitely grounded me a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:47) Yeah. And by the way, it gets, I wish somebody would have told me this too because I was in your position two years ago or so. It gets easier. It only gets easier as they're able to talk more. Oh my gosh. Dude, you wait two years before you get to hear your kid say that they love you. You know? Like, I love you, daddy. That is the greatest feeling in the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:10) What you're in right now, those first nine months, oh my gosh. My wife and I's relationship was so tested. It was so difficult. You're running on no sleep. You have this instinct and urge to go work and provide because you just have this new little person in your life. So you want to go out there and, but she needs you at home because usually back in the day when we were raising kids, it was the village would raise the kids. Right? The women would be all around with each other. But now everyone's so isolated in their own homes. It's so much harder now. But yeah, it's super difficult, but it only, in my experience, it only got easier.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:50) And especially as the kid can start to learn to talk and you can have a conversation with them versus them being this gelatinous blob you're kind of holding and looking at.

(Benny at 00:33:00) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:00) You know? It's amazing. It gets a lot better.

(Benny at 00:33:04) It sort of worked out too during COVID. Right? Because you can't really go out. So you had to spend a lot of time with your kid, which is a great thing. Right? I think if it wasn't because of COVID, I probably wouldn't have been able to spend so much time indoors with my kids. So that was sort of a blessing in disguise in a way. Not the best way, definitely, but it sort of just happened that way. How did COVID affect you and your company, actually? I'm curious.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:33) Yeah. So we were building leadership development training, but the sales cycles were really long. They were like eight months long. It was good money. It's recurring money. It's a cool product. But that dried up the sales pipeline because everyone put their budgets on hold. Right? We all did. And so we were getting a lot of people asking us to do advertising on the podcast, and we had been turning them down. But then we started saying okay, because we needed the money. Right? And we're selective about who we picked and everything, but we built a product around it where we don't put mid-roll ads or anything. People pay for production time and when they'll get booked because we book up like six months in advance. So we generated that, and man, it took off.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:19) We ended up doubling revenue. So we had to, we lost half of our team members, but then we ended up hiring other people back. So we had a net positive growth.

(Benny at 00:34:28) Oh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:29) And doubled our revenue over COVID. Yeah.

(Benny at 00:34:31) Are most of your clients tech companies usually?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:34) Yeah.

(Benny at 00:34:35) I see. Well, that made a lot of sense. Right? I think tech companies really grew quite a bit during this pandemic. And you guys were always remote too, right, distributed as well. So that worked out well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:49) Well, no, not really. But there was about eight of us here in this office where I'm at now. Since COVID, I'm the only person that comes in. It's ten minutes from my house. I just kept the lease, and I still come in. But yeah, we ended up having to let some people go that were associated with the other business model and then expanded the podcast advertising business model. And we made a bunch of hires all over the United States. So we're fully remote as of COVID. But my whole career before this was essentially remote.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:28) I mean, I was building remote teams. I was never forced by any business decision, and I never really built to build teams on-prem. It was always an option. So if there was good talent locally that I met or that I knew, I would hire them, and we'd work in the office together. But I've always had the majority of my teams be distributed.

(Benny at 00:35:49) That's good. I think, yeah. I mean, for me, actually, it's the complete opposite. I mean, my experience has always been on-prem and whatnot. Right? Even so, Spin is by default sort of a distributed company just because we need to deploy in x amount of cities. I think we're around 100 markets right now in the world. So by default, I think we'll have operations people in all those places. Right?

(Benny at 00:36:16) And we would hire engineers depending on where the need is, really. Right? But I think the headquarters, just because we started in SF, there's a lot of inertia to hire here, and that's what happened for the longest time, really, until COVID hit. And then we were forced into, you know, a completely remote and distributed culture. Right? So that has helped. I think going forward, Spin actually is now a remote-first company. That's, we decided on that earlier this year. Right?

(Benny at 00:36:54) So it's because we had at least nine months of experience running a distributed company. Right? And you know, there are pluses and minuses for sure. Right? But I think having a remote-first company is definitely a way to go in the future. Just to get the best talent, really. Right? And not be constrained by location. Right? Especially for engineering. All you need is a laptop and a connection, and you could really just do whatever you need to. Right? So that has been a learning experience. It's not easy.

(Benny at 00:37:26) We're still learning, I want to say, just because when you start a company, you know, being in a location, you sort of have an idea or preconception of how relationships are formed and what the culture was like. Before you used to just turn around and tap on someone's shoulder. You used to just go to a happy hour after work, things like that. Right? So I think changing from that mentality to just a completely remote mentality, you know, it's definitely challenging. And we're getting better at it, but I still don't think we're completely there yet.

(Benny at 00:38:00) Right? It's tough. I still haven't found any apps or any, I've tried a bunch too, right, to really maintain that sort of same culture that we have before. We started, when the pandemic first started, we did happy hours with the teams and whatnot. Right? But after a while, people start dropping off. Right? At first, it was like everyone will join, and then after a while, you get two, three people joining and whatnot. And then you try different things, like cooking classes and whatnot. So I want to say there's a lot of opportunity there because I do think that remote working is probably a way to go, at least more of a hybrid way in the future. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what comes out in the next few years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:45) Tell me a little bit about this super cool high-tech custom scooter you guys are building. Does it have, I'm going to take some, did you take some of the cold air thrusters from Elon Musk concept and put it on there? Tell me about this.

(Benny at 00:39:01) Yeah. So we've been working on our custom scooter for about two years now, actually. Reason why we started on this journey to build our own custom scooter is because, I mean, two years ago, 2018, no one really knew what a sharing scooter is. All the scooter companies basically just bought consumer-grade scooters and put an IoT box on it with a GPS tracker and just put it on the streets. Right? These things are not going to last on the street for months at a time. Right? And if they don't, and if these things just keep breaking, obviously, that doesn't work for a business model as well. Right? So we identified, and being operators like spinners, we identified a lot of things that we needed to change about a scooter.

(Benny at 00:39:52) And back then, these manufacturers, Ninebot is the one that we work with, just wasn't changing fast enough. Right? Just because their business model is not sharing scooters. Right? They sell consumer scooters. Right? So we were learning a lot, and we're realizing that we had to go back and forth with these manufacturers to make these changes, but then they're not really set up to iterate that quickly. Right? That's why we started off on this journey to really creating the best sharing scooter that we can make based on our own experience and what we know. Right? So yeah, so we started off two years ago. It's basically fixing the main issues. Right?

(Benny at 00:40:41) Concentrating on rider safety, operational efficiency, and repairability, things like that. Right? Sustainability and also the ride quality as well. What's special about it? It's really built around safety. Right? We have three braking systems on the scooter. We have brakes on the front tire, brakes on the back tire, and then also a stomp brake in case you really need that extra power as well. It looks really cool. It's going to be released very soon. Right? So you'll get to see it soon. But it has a very unique look. Very distinctive design.

(Benny at 00:41:20) So yeah, it's pretty cool. And you know, we built this really just with safety in mind and what we think is right in mind. Right? And the whole thing about this platform that we built is basically the idea of needing to iterate really quickly because I feel like I don't think anyone still has the answer of what a perfect scooter is. Right? I think if it wasn't with COVID, I think we would have sort of figured it out. Right? But I think a lot of people locked down, not still not enough people using scooters and whatnot. I think once it opens, we'll learn a lot from users of what is the best scooter. And the whole idea of this custom platform that we built is so that we could really just iterate quickly and come up with the best hardware for users.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:06) Yeah. That's exciting. When's it going to come out?

(Benny at 00:42:09) It's going to come out sometime in June or July. So pretty soon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:15) My team said that we're not allowed to say the name of it. Like, we don't know what it is. But I went in my prep meeting, I was like, alright, cancel all my meetings for the next week. I want to just guess potential names for the scooter, see if I could guess it. And I was like, no, that's not a good use of my time. I'm really excited to hear when it comes out. Have your PR team shoot me a message because I want to see it. I want to know what the name is. I'm excited about this happening.

(Benny at 00:42:46) Yeah. It's, I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I really do think that it's the best scooter I've ever ridden so far.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:58) It levitates, doesn't it?

(Benny at 00:42:59) Maybe. I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:01) Maybe. Don't get me excited. There we go.

(Benny at 00:43:06) But yeah, boy, is hardware tough. You know, my background is software predominantly. Right? So this is sort of the first time I'm really doing hardware from scratch. And yes, just stick with software is all I have to say.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:23) Oh, that's exciting. You're like the Elon Musk of scooters because he started with software. Right? And then he moved into hardware. He talks openly about how difficult hardware is.

(Benny at 00:43:32) Yeah. It's really difficult. But yeah, it's a lot of pain, but it's definitely rewarding once you see the output of it. And it's hard to describe too. I don't know. How do you really describe what's a better scooter? Right? It's hard to describe without riding it, and I still can't really figure out a way to really describe why it's the best scooter I've ever ridden. It's just that when you jump on it, it just feels super safe. It feels very responsive. It's just, yeah, it just, I don't know. It just feels great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:00) I love it. Yeah. Well, send me that information when it comes out, and I'll talk about it on the show and share it around and stuff because I think it's really cool what you guys are doing.

(Benny at 00:44:09) Awesome. Yeah. Would appreciate it. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:11) Dude, Benny. Man, we did it. We made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Benny at 00:44:16) Pretty good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:18) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.