What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from EndyHackers.com, and you're listening to the
Endy Hackers podcast. On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses,
and I try to get a sense of who they are, what shaped them, and how exactly they've
built their successful companies. Now, I'm back after an unexpectedly long hiatus. My apologies
for not communicating perfectly that I was going to take a break, but I wasn't aware that I was
taking one myself until I was about halfway through it, but now I'm back. I'm feeling refreshed.
I've got a lot of great conversations lined up for the rest of the year, so you guys can stop
giving me shit on Twitter. This first episode is with the one and only Stephanie Hurlbert. Now,
if you don't know Stephanie, you're missing out. She's one of the most inspirational and
impressive figures that I know in tech and startups. In this episode, she talks about how
she became a graphics programmer, how she went from an employee to being a contractor to starting
her own successful business. Now, just to give you a sense of how successful it is, she's only
one half of a two person company. Yet right before we started this podcast, Stephanie had
just gotten off the phone from negotiating a seven figure deal to sell her product. And if
that isn't enough, Stephanie is big on work life balance, and she limits herself to working 20
hours a week. So yeah, it's easy to understand why Stephanie is one of my role models. I hope
you guys enjoy listening to this episode and learning from her as much as I did. Without
further ado, Stephanie Hurlbert. Okay, Stephanie, how's it going?
It's good. It's good. I'm excited.
I'm excited too. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
No problem. I'm happy to be here.
So you are, how can I introduce you? You're a lot of things. You're the co founder of a
two person company appropriately named Binomial. You're the maker of basis, which is a popular
image and texture compression product for game developers. In addition to your technical
knowledge, you've built up sort of a broad business skill set, you know a lot about sales
and marketing, how to deal with clients and uncover their needs and deliver real value
that they'll pay for. And I think as half of a two person team selling a successful
product, gonna have to be great at all that stuff. And then on top of all of that, you're
sort of this never ending fount of wisdom about how to build a company while remaining
psychologically and emotionally healthy.
Thank you for the kind words. Yeah, I'm trying. I don't like all the, I feel like when I started
there weren't a lot of, or maybe I just wasn't seeing a lot of examples of people starting
companies and being sane while doing it and being happy and sharing details of how they
did it. So I'm really happy things like indie hackers exist and that I'm able to kind of
tell that story a little more.
Yeah, I think you've been doing a really good job telling that story. And the combination,
like you said, of not only succeeding, but sharing the honest details behind it. And
also not being like a crazy workaholic and miserable all the time is really appealing
to a lot of people. This is a business podcast, but I think before we jump into like all the
business details, it'd be fun to learn at least a little bit about graphics programming
while I've got you here. So what exactly does it mean to be a graphics engineer?
Right. So graphics engineers can do tons of things. Like for instance, one of the first
things I did was building particle systems. So I literally got paid to make pretty fire
and pretty sparkles. That was my job. So it's just basically, it can be anything. You can
get paid to make the lighting look good or to make anything that has to do with visual
quality. And usually low level graphics engineers, which is what I was doing, focus really heavily
on interacting closely with GPUs. So they often know the depths of how the GPU works
and how to optimize for it. And that way they can make the best sparkles, not just average
sparkles.
From the outside looking in, I think all of us can look incredibly complex and intimidating.
And I say this as a programmer myself. So how does one become a graphics engineer? Is
this something that you have to sort of decide to do one day and then resolutely work your
way towards it?
I think it's one of those things where programming is so broad. And I mean, you can take one
set of skills and do a million different things for it. So the core of a lot of low level
graphics engineering in games is just C++. And lots of people learn C++. And even if
you don't know C++, you can probably pick it up if you know C sharp or something somewhat
similar. And so knowing that is helpful. And then beyond that, just reading up on graphics
papers like the ones that come out of SIGGRAPH or GDC and their graphics track really help
you get up to date on the way engines are structured and the way graphics works in relation
to C++.
And I get the feeling that you really like doing this stuff. The way that you talk about
it, making pretty sparkles, getting paid to make pretty sparkles. Sounds exciting. I found
a quote from you online earlier too. Let me read it. It's a pretty fun quote. You said
that graphics programming is a vastly unexplored new medium for art. That's like solving math
puzzles and getting rewarded by doing something never before possible in art. Like a big,
dedicated, mind-blowingly powerful paintbrush. Is that accurate? Did you still stand by that?
It is. When I was in school, I started school studying math. And I got a little disenchanted
with it because I saw future career paths as like I could build bombs or I could work
in finance and help stock traders get more rich. And the math was cool, but I was disillusioned
by all these applications. And I personally am very motivated by the application of art,
of making beautiful art. I think art is really meaningful and really important. And I think
that's a fine application of math and C++ and all these things.
And how does all this tie into basis? What is basis exactly? And why are game developers
buying this product you made? And what does it do for them?
And obesity is an image compressor. So it obviously deals in the realm of graphics programming
because graphics is all about images and getting them to display. So it takes your image and
it makes it take up less space on your machine. And what we've done is we've taken our knowledge
of GPUs from our graphics background to make this compression work with your GPU. Whereas
things like JPEG, as soon as they hit your GPU, they explode. And it's not pretty. It
goes to six to eight times the size and GPUs can barely handle what they have. So it's
important to maintain compression when you hit your GPU.
And basis is made by just you and one other person. You're a co-founder at Binomial, right?
Yeah, Rich Galdrek is his name. And we work on it together.
It's pretty crazy to me because it sounds like such a complex piece of software. It's
so foundational to be able to compress textures and images. And yet the two of you are able
to do something that's completely innovative and that other companies in the gaming space
pay for. Is that common in the gaming industry for two people to have such an impact?
Well, small middleware companies exist. Like for instance, rad game tools, they don't have
very many people and they also sell to game companies and they sell things like compression
sticks. So it's a concept that's not completely unfamiliar. And I think one thing that helps
is that my business partner especially really specialized in image compression. And we didn't
really start the company with this in mind. We were a consulting company at first. We
would help people like, you know, their game was on fire and could not ship. And we would
help them optimize it and make it shippable again. And in the process of doing that, a
company said, you know what? Our game is on fire because our textures are taking up too
much space. Can we pay you to make the images take up less space on disk? And we thought
about it and we said, well, you know, we could or we could. This is a good opportunity to
make this into a product and went from there.
Let's talk about that story. Because I think, you know, today, basis is this incredibly
impressive and impactful piece of software. And it's letting companies do things that
they couldn't do otherwise. How do you go from being Stephanie Hurlburt graphics engineer
to Stephanie Hurlburt co-creator of basis? What's the origin story from getting from
point A to point Z?
Right. So we started as a consulting company. And actually, I didn't even want to start
a consulting company. I wanted to find it a good job, but I was kind of disillusioned
with life a few years ago. And I felt and I was very burnt out. And I felt like I couldn't
really work a full time coding job. I was just not ready, not healthy enough. And so
I thought, well, with consulting, I could probably do a project here and there and then
rest and heal. And I did that. And I met my co-founder while in the process of just searching
for lots of leads for contracts. And he was in a similar boat. He was like, you know what,
why not? I'll join you. So we did it together. And we did consulting for a few months. And
that was the point where we got contacted about, hey, images are really getting to be
a problem. And we got that from lots of our clients. And we started to understand, if
we built this product, we could sell it. And we could kind of break free of the hourly
income you get from consulting.
So I've also been in a similar situation where I was burned out. And I turned to consulting
to help out. I think I was coming at it from a different place than you were. I had worked
on a couple of startups. And I knew that I was in no shape whatsoever to do another gas
pedal to the floor startup. But I didn't want to get a job. And so I started doing contract
work, which I found very helpful because I was able to go mostly at my own pace. So maybe
it's not that uncommon of a solution for people who are burned out.
Exactly. And it's so tricky because it is stressful. I mean, you know, it's stressful
to do consulting. Like you have to worry. We had one client who didn't pay us for four
months. And we were really counting on that payment. And we had to juggle all kinds of
things and timing didn't match up. It got to be stressful. But I think the key with
consulting is if you have a strong network, which we have a stronger network now than
we did back then, it's more relaxed. You can call someone when you need a contract instead
of panicking.
Yeah, I think you're totally right. I mean, it's a lot more responsibility than being
a full time employee somewhere. But at the same time, there's a little bit more freedom,
you know, we're ultimately you're responsible to yourself and to your clients. And although
you're more likely to get into these stressful situations, you also are more likely to be
able to take a break without having, you know, a boss to tell you that you need to be in
your chair eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, which was just something that I needed at
the time.
Absolutely. It's this weird psychology thing. Like, there's no performance review. There's
no like how productive were you today. And I find that really freeing. I like I like
the fact that I can just take a few days to just rest. And I know that that's good for
the business as well. But I don't have to convince anyone of that.
Yeah, it's so weird. I think almost everybody would agree that having enough time to rest
would be good. But for some reason, in like a normal full time role, there's like a collective
denial of that fact.
I think it's worse and better depending on the industry and the company. But it's true.
It's strange.
So let's talk a little bit about how you became a consultant. Because even doing that is it's
pretty challenging. And I think you've had a hinted at it earlier when you said that
you've got a better network today than you did then. But how did you build that initial
network? And how did you find your first clients?
I swear I was walking blind. Like, I was like, I don't know how to do this. I guess someone
will just give me a consulting contract if I talk to enough people. So I knew some basics.
So before I knew I was going to end my current gig, I knew I was going to leave. So a month
or two before I left, I started just doing networking. I would post on Twitter more.
I would just talk to lots of people. I would make purposeful effort to talk to four new
people a day or something like that and be more social. And I just did a lot of networking.
And I had two months of savings. And because San Francisco was expensive, I just had two
months of savings left. And I had to get some kind of job after that two months. And through
the three months of just networking, I was able to land a gig in that six weeks. And
then I was like, OK, I'm set. I have a gig. I have money coming in. So I will start consulting
and do this.
So what does this networking look like? Are you asking people for jobs? Are you just messaging
people on LinkedIn? Are you talking to friends? And what are you saying to them?
Yeah, it was interesting because when I started, I thought networking was about like, hey,
I'm looking for work. Do you have work? What about you? Just going to everybody. And I
learned quickly that 90% of people can't directly help you, probably even more than that. But
they might know someone or they might be able to help you down the road. So the best thing
is just to make a good impression. And that's really annoying when you need a job in six
weeks. But that's the reality of it. And so the key isn't necessarily asking a lot of
people about work. It's about making a good impression on a lot of people and making sure
to just mention that you're looking for work in that conversation. And it often involves
asking how you can help them and trying to help other people in the process.
That makes so much sense. Because for example, if I get an email from someone and it's straight
out of the gate, like, oh, can you help me do this thing? I'm usually happy to help,
but it's so much more impactful. And I remember that person so much more if they figure out
a way to help me.
Exactly. And again, it is frustrating and exhausting when all you really need is some
income coming in. And that's why you're doing this. But it really is... It feels better
in a humanity sense. And it is the best way to get contracts as well.
So were you worried that you weren't going to find a job in time? I mean, what was your
mental state like at this point?
My mental state was not good. I was worried. That's why when I give advice to people now,
I say, well, I actually am not against what I did. I did have a couple months of buffer.
And I was very good about realizing that I needed a job after that two months. So I kind
of gave myself that window to look and relax. So that's not necessarily a bad thing. But
I do recommend that people have backups because you really don't know when a contract will
come your way. It really just depends. So don't ever risk being homeless, because you
get a contract two weeks later than expected.
Yeah, it's totally not worth that risk. How did you go from landing your first gigs to
eventually meeting Rich and deciding to start a company together?
Right. So we had met actually before I even left my previous gig. And in the two months
I was looking for contracts, he was kind of going back and forth. He was like, I don't
know. Consulting seems a little unstable, back and forth. But we kept in touch and we
just got along really well. It was almost a sense of, I don't care what we do. I just
want to work with this person. I really like this person. I want to collaborate with them.
And so eventually, I think that was really the main impetus for finally, he finally was
like, yeah, let's do this together. And he joined me in the very first gig. But I kind
of did some initial setting up work.
That's awesome. It's like such an advantage of being social and meeting so many people
is that you eventually will find someone that you click with. Whereas if you're in a situation
where you have to work with the very first person that you meet, you're trying to find
a co-founder and you just find one person, then what are the chances that that person
is going to be the perfect partner for you? Pretty slam.
And that's the other reason to approach conversations from a friendly, making a good impression
stance as opposed to, do you have work for me? Right away is because if I had just asked
Rich if he had worked for me, he would have said no, and that would be the end of it.
But instead, we found out that we got along really well and ended up finding a co-founder
that way.
That's such a great story. And I think telling stories like that and reading and listening
to them is so underrated because stories are so unique. They're different every single
time somebody tells one. So there are definitely people, for example, who are listening in
who have been trying to find a co-founder, and they're researching it, and yet they've
never heard anybody who's told a story like yours about how you found your co-founder.
Or there are people who want to start contracting, but they don't have any friends who are contractors,
and your story was a completely unique take on how to find your first contracting gig.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I feel the same when I read other people's stories. It's a story
not... I feel like what I've read quite a few stories about, like, let's go get VC funding,
we're going to be the next Facebook. But I don't hear a lot of stories of smaller businesses.
So I really... I like carrying it as well.
Yeah, and there's a lot of them. I mean, I think that's kind of the central idea behind
Indie Hackers is you can go to the website, not just the podcast. And I think we've got
something like 250 interviews with founders who've all shared their revenue numbers and
how they grew. And there's just something about the uniqueness and stories. You could
read 100 articles about how to come up with an idea. And they're all going to say more
or less the same things. But if you read 100 stories about how people came up with their
ideas, then everyone's going to be as unique as the person who wrote it. And it's going
to be easier for you to figure out, okay, well, which stories apply to me, which people
are similar to me. So I think there's something to be said for reading stories and also just
reading a lot of them, not just reading one or two.
It's so true. I didn't do this on purpose, but I kind of intuitively did it. The way
I learned a lot about business was I would just ask random people who I admired or business
owners who I'd met for informational interviews, can I pick your brain over coffee? And I've
probably done hundreds of those. And people are usually excited, especially small business
owners. They don't get asked that a lot. And I learned so much and I'm still good friends
with a lot of them. And I think it's the same idea, hearing that same story from lots of
different perspectives.
Yeah, it's totally the other side of the equation is that if you are a business owner, if you've
done something cool, it feels nice to tell somebody about what you've done. It's kind
of fun. I think if that wasn't the case, it'd be really hard to get people like you on the
podcast.
Yeah.
So you guys eventually ended up working on basis. Did you always plan to build a product
and get away from consulting? Or is it something you kind of fell into?
It was one of those things that I realized after doing some consulting, I kind of started
consulting and when it was in the beginning, that kind of had stars in my eyes and I was
like, this is going to be great. Life is awesome. We can take lots of vacations. I'm going to
love this. And then as it went on, we started working with startups and I would see these
startups get so much money and sell what we built for lots of money. And we were still
working an hourly wage and I kind of looked at them and realized it doesn't feel quite
fair. If I build something, I want to profit off it to potentially the point of not needing
to work for years. That sounds nice. And we started thinking that it felt most fair and
like a better plan to do a product.
That's such a good way to look at it. And I think this is also true for someone who's
a full time employee, right? You're getting paid a salary, regardless of what you build
or what you create, you get pretty much the same salary. And then of course, the company
that you're producing that for is able to take it, put it into their product and then
scale the way that they deliver it to customers. And it's kind of abstracted from you as an
employee, especially if you work at a huge company. But when you're a contractor, it's
a little bit more in your face when it's just you and one other person building something
and another company takes that and makes millions of dollars. I imagine that you were very aware
of what was going on.
Oh, yeah, it was very in our face. We were literally the only people who built this product.
And we would see the sales the company was making. I was just like, hey. In a big company,
you kind of justify it by like, I'm part of a big team. I couldn't do this alone. But
when yeah, it's much more in your face contracting.
Do you think that the time that you spent contracting taught you a lot of lessons about
business that you didn't know earlier? Or did you kind of come into this already knowing
how to analyze what customers need and provide value and do sales and marketing, etc?
Every step of the way I learned something. But before this, I had done a little work
at an advertising agency. And I mean, that was my first job out of college. And it was
a small company. So I got to see and I didn't do the sales, I didn't do a lot of the client
management as my official title, but I ended up being in the thick of a lot of it. Because
I was often the only developer on the project, I was often the only person there with the
client. And I kind of got to see kind of potential pitfalls and different aspects of that relationship.
And then when I did consulting, owning a business, I just got to see I got to take that experience.
And then I also learned a lot more along the way as well.
Were you nervous at all that like, you maybe needed to read some books about this? Or were
you just confident that you're going to learn it on the job?
I was not confident. I was not confident. But I was also like, what's the worst that could
happen? And I tried to watch out for major pitfalls. And I realized that a lot of the
time it comes down to people, like if I feel like I trust this client, we'll make it work.
And just not wrapping ourselves into too lengthy of a contract without being more certain of
that working relationship and how that contract plays out in reality, like just scoping it
into phases was helpful, just little things like that to make sure that since I didn't
know what I was doing, I was more careful and didn't over commit.
What about Rich? Did he have experience being a contractor consultant that he brought to
the table? Or were you guys both figuring this out at the same time?
He was similar to me in that he had seen it while working at companies. But he was definitely
he worked full time his whole career for spending decades. He'd done a little bit of trying
to license software, but not quite in the same way that we're doing with this company.
So we're both very much learning.
That's cool. I like the idea that anyone without prior experience or without having to sort
of go to business school can jump in and just learn by doing it. It's hard, but it's not
impossible.
Absolutely. It's definitely not impossible.
Looking back and reflecting on this time when you and Rich were doing all this contract
work and taking on all these gigs, is there anything that you would go back in time and
tell yourself so that you could be maybe a little bit more successful or less stressed
out doing what you were doing?
I was like, can I go back and give myself like a two page list?
You can go back and have like coffee with yourself. You got 20 minutes to give yourself
some lessons.
I definitely tell myself, I think the biggest thing is that you can't count on getting paid
until the day you get that check and you can't count on a deal going through until that deal
is signed.
Having that mentality is everything when you don't necessarily have a strong network or
you're starting out because you so desperately want to just stick with one client at a time
and not think about anything else and stop the endless socializing.
But you shouldn't. You should always have backups. If you are in that mentality of,
I might not get paid or this deal might not go through because they haven't signed it
yet, then it keeps you on your toes and keeps you more safe.
That's such a tough mindset to get into too. Because I imagine when your first deals, you
want to celebrate well before you get the check. You're so excited that this people
are going to pay you.
So to kind of convince yourself that like, oh, this is not a milestone yet. It doesn't
count until the money's in the bank. It's just not the intuitive way to approach that
situation.
I think a big lesson that a lot of people I see should consider as well is to be wise
about structuring the contract. So I mentioned doing it in phases like a discovery phase
and then phase one and phase two, that way you hit milestones instead of one big block.
But also things like getting paid a little bit upfront so that you get in their payment
system and it becomes easier to pay you in the future. Little things like that you don't
realize.
And I always tell people to watch Fuck You Pay Me by Mike Monteiro, because he gives
some good tips around that.
Yeah, I was going to say those are all great tips. And I wonder if there's a book or something
that people can read where tips like these are all compiled in one place.
I would actually love to know because then I would refer it to people. I feel like these
are all just little tips that consultants tell you from what they've learned. So I would
encourage people to watch things like that talk and consider this. But also just try
to find someone you know who's done consulting and ask them. They've probably learned quite
a bit.
So here you're in Rich-R. You're successfully consulting and building these products for
other companies that are profiting off them way more than you are. What was the turning
point? And how did you guys evolve from being in that situation to going on to make basis?
Right. So we were highly aware of the fact that people develop products for ages and
then all of a sudden can't sell them. And we didn't want to fall into that trap. So
when we had those customers that were saying, wow, this would be really helpful, we knew
that we had a strong lead. We knew that someone would appreciate this product, but we still
felt very passionately about the fact that just because someone tells us, oh, this would
be nice, doesn't mean they pay us enough money to make a living. So we basically we prototyped
for maybe three or four months in between contracts, not that long. And we just networked
the heck out of it. Like we would speak at conferences like, yeah, we're doing this even
though it was just a prototype. And we would talk to everybody. So now my networking conversations,
which I was still doing constantly, they were no longer, oh, by the way, we're looking for
consulting work. Instead, it was, oh, by the way, we're making this product. And we just
totally shifted. And by the end of that three or four months, we got interest from Netflix
who wanted to license it. And we were very honest about the fact that it wasn't done
yet. It was just a prototype. And they were willing to do a sort of agreement where they
gave us money to finish it without taking part of our company, just like a services
agreement.
Wow, that's huge. Netflix as your first customer?
Yeah, that was our first customer.
That's nuts. Were you guys planning on someone like a really big fish kind of biting the bait
that you guys are putting out there? Were you planning to eventually have some sort
of sales cycle where you were trying to sell the product directly to individual companies?
So we definitely were considering at that point, I did not know anything about sales,
directly to big companies. I had a little bit of a grasp with how you do it at smaller
companies. But no, what happened was an engineer at Netflix read Rich's blog, where he was
consistently blogging about this prototype and said, wow, we could use this. And that
engineer made that recommendation to the company that we need to set up some sort of agreement
to get this in our pipeline. And I didn't even realize that that's a completely valid
enterprise sales strategy is to get an engineer excited who then refers you to the right people.
But that's what happened.
Yeah, it's kind of like a bottom up approach to hoping your product bubbles up through
the company enterprise sales seems like such a complex frustrating process. But let's step
back a bit before we get into that. And let's talk about how you even came up with the idea
for basis, because I think a lot of people are in the situation where they're working
a full time job, but they want to go on their own, or they are consulting and they want
to make a product, but they're not sure what they want to work on. How did you guys decide
that basis that texture and image compression was the the ideal product for you to work
on?
Right. So we were thinking of a lot of different ideas. And it came about as someone approached
us to build this, like the exact product under a consulting agreement, like, we will pay
you an hourly wage, please build this for us. Like it was like a consulting gig. And
we realized, wait, like, this doesn't need to be a consulting gig, we can make this into
a product. So it was it was almost not like we thought of this idea, and we're going to
make it work was a potential customer directly asking us for this.
Um, that's really cool.
Yeah. And so and I mean, the reason why they asked is because they knew Rich had experience
in this field, and he had built similar things in the past, you know, all the normal reasons
you get asked for doing consulting gigs.
I think the fact that you guys are constantly in touch, it sounds like you never stopped
networking, you're also taking out taking on new clients, which is also blogging, and
you guys are speaking at conferences, it seems like you guys are putting like a lot of information
out there. And like, as a result, you know, you're getting the idea for a new product
and you're getting companies like Netflix, you know, wanting to buy the product once
you've started to build it, it's, it's pretty inspiring to see like, what can come your
way when you start putting more things out there?
Yeah, just lots of networking and lots of being very, very visible. The interesting
thing too, was when we started this company, I kind of had a self destructive mindset of
like, I'm no longer going to censor myself online.
Before that, I had been like very like all I did online was post graphics papers, like
that's what I did. And after that, I started being more honest about my opinions and talking
to people. And that drew in a lot of business actually, it's just being genuine. And I would
also do a lot of initiatives to help others like I started a list of engineers who are
willing to answer questions from newbies. And things like that brought in a significant
amount of business, you know, it's just fascinating how it goes back to what we're saying where
if you just ask people for work, it's not the best thing. And I was essentially doing
that with my public presence before by just posting graphics papers. It's good to be a
little bit genuine.
Yeah, and it's so unique to just to be able to go online and be candid. I've had this
exact conversation with a number of other guests on the podcast before who were kind
of like you, they'll just say whatever they're thinking, whatever they're feeling. They don't
necessarily care if other people are going to judge them. They'll share their revenue
numbers, they'll share times where things are hard or when they fucked up. And it stands
out because most other people are afraid to share that kind of stuff, or they don't really
see the point, they'd rather just robotically keep banging on the direct goal rather than
doing something indirect that might help them stand out.
It's interesting, because I've through trial and error, I it's not like I don't censor
myself at all. But I just censor myself in ways that are more comfortable to me. Like,
for instance, I have this rule where I never, no matter how mad I am, I never call people
out directly. Because well, now I have like over 30,000 followers, I know how bad it feels
to get like, you know, swamped by angry people. Like I and I also, even if I call out, like
a negative thing, I try to end on a positive note or just have general positive energy
while also being honest and recognizing issues. It's like a tricky balance. But I think it's
important to have that balance.
See, this is a whole nother story that you could tell Stephanie's journey to getting
good at Twitter. If you wrote that in a book, I would read it, you know, and step one would
be something like be positive. So if everybody else read that, maybe Twitter would be a little
bit happier of a place.
Well, it's tricky because like, at first, I was like, just be yourself, like, write
whatever you want. And I didn't even realize that I was kind of mindful of these things.
And then I would watch people follow my advice and do it. And like all their tweets would
be like angry political rants, which is which is which is fine. Like actually, I think angry
political rants have a time and place. But when your whole Twitter is like that, a company
looks at that to see, oh, what does this person do? And that's all they see. And they don't
get a whole picture of who you are. So making a good first, it's just like meeting a stranger,
you know, if you walked up to a stranger and started yelling at them right away. That's
not it's not an awesome introduction. So just just being mindful of the fact that it is
a first impression, too.
Okay, so let's hop back in to your story again, to this point where you are starting to sell
basis. And Netflix is your first customer. Where do you what do you even go from there?
Right. So they kind of gave us the financial backing we needed to finish it. And as we
worked on that, we kept we kept networking and we kept finishing it. And we we entered
kind of a flow phase where we were starting to get more visibility and more credibility
because we had this big name customer. But people were still hesitant. Nobody wants to
be first. Everybody wants to be second. People don't like taking risks. So we we had we entered
into this tricky phase where it was still hard to get customers. But over time, as some
time passed, people saw okay, they are for real and more customers started coming in.
So what do you do in that situation where you're not really seeing much demand? Were
you guys trying a bunch of different strategies? Or were you sticking to one particular approach?
Yeah, so we were continuing to do our networking things. And we were we at the time we were
also involved in a lot of kind of, I don't want to say charity because it wasn't official
charity, but like just giving back to the community. Like we we started hosting all
kinds of free programming classes in our communities and like helping newbies learn how to code
and and just doing all kinds of like nice initiatives that were made us feel good. But
they were also good for spreading the word about what we were doing in our business is
kind of, you know, win win. And we also attending conferences was surprisingly helpful and gave
us some credibility too. And then around that time, we started talking with a standards
body called the Chronos group to see if we could kind of help with image compression
standards in the industry, which also gave us some more credibility. So just like lots
of different networking type things.
That sounds like so much because it's at the same time that you guys are doing all this
work and helping other people, you're presumably still working on your prototype and trying
to get it, you know, in good shape for Netflix. And then at the same time, are you still taking
on consulting gigs on the side?
No, not really very like after the Netflix deal, we would still occasionally do consulting.
But it wasn't it wasn't as like as frequent. We would occasionally take a gig when when
a friend who we had known really needed some help or when a previous client would need
it. But not as not as often. And it sounds like a lot, but it wasn't like I think that's
the thing is our product, it's technically complicated, but it's a small scope. It only
does one thing, it makes your image take up less space. Like it's not like a game that
has all kinds of different components. It's like a very tiny portion of what goes into
a game. But we do that one thing really well. So I think the limited scope of the product
really helps it be manageable.
Let's talk about that more. Because that's, I know very little about the games industry.
And I kind of brought this up a little bit earlier. But what's the landscape of the games
industry? How many other companies are out there doing what you're doing and solving
one very narrow problem very well with a small team? Is that common?
Right. So in the game industry, the common story for I want to start my own company is
I want to start my own entire games company, like an indie game kind of thing, which is
a difficult challenge. Like I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm just saying it's, it's
difficult. Because it's a B2C business. And there are a lot of indie games out there.
It's a very saturated market. And it takes work to build an entire game. There's a lot
of features that go into it. So that's the typical route. In terms of middleware, there's
kind of a little handful in the game industry. It's interesting because it makes it difficult
to sell. It also is nice too, because you're not, you don't have a lot of competitors.
So it's like pros and cons.
Is it the case that most of these bigger gaming companies are just building all this stuff
and house and nobody's really sharing. And so that's why there's not very much middleware.
Yeah. So with games, games are one of those spaces where it needs to be highly optimized.
And also works on all kinds of platforms, including like new consoles that aren't even
properly tested yet. So game companies are very aware of like needing control of those
lower layers of code. And they're very suspicious of just like a library that they stick in
because that library probably isn't compatible with the newest console that has totally different
hardware. So they've gotten in a habit of building a lot of things in house for that
reason.
Yeah, that's fascinating. So how are you guys confident that basis would be something that
not only the person who contracted you to build it would need, but that any gaming company
or software company like Netflix would be able to make use of?
Right. So having some experience in the game industry really does help. Because we can
go to these gaming companies and be like, look, we know what you're going through genuinely.
I felt the pain. I understand. And it kind of it gives a little more credibility than
if we just went in from a completely different industry. And I think people from different
industries can sell in the game industry. You just have to be very empathetic and really
understand why they're resistant to buying middleware and kind of understand that space.
It's so consistent how much the earlier phases of your career helped you out and the later
phases. And I think it's important to see that because if somebody listening to this
said, OK, I'm going to be Stephanie Harbert. I'm going to do exactly what she's doing right
now. And they went out and tried to copy you or do something similar. They might have a
rough time of it because they'd be skipping out on all the learning that you did, all
the connections that you forged, and all the experiences that you had. So I just think
it's super important to kind of realize why sometimes people like you might look like
some sort of overnight success and what goes into the actual preparation to get to the
point where you can have such a successful company.
Exactly. And that's part of why I try to be open. And I also try to periodically like
shout out, please don't just quit your job and start a product. And when I give advice,
I try to give advice that's like, you know, you might not know exactly what you're going
to be building or who you're going to be building for, but make sure that each step of the way
you keep yourself safe and keep yourself open minded to the next opportunity that you could
do and talk to customers as soon as possible. You know, don't just go off building something
assuming it would sell all these things.
That's a big one that's so unintuitive for a lot of people, including me. I have to remind
myself constantly, oh yeah, I should talk to people. Probably the things that I'm guessing
they want are wrong in some major way.
Yeah. Well, it's not just that, but it's like, you know, you might build a product that people
will need, but will people pay you enough money so that you can actually live off it?
You know, and I was very cognizant of that. And from the beginning, we decided we were
going to be B2B. We could have picked all kinds of different business models, but we
picked B2B and then high sales per customer so that we could stay a two-person team and
only need a very small number of deals relative to other companies to make a living.
You tweeted recently that an investor offered you guys something like millions of dollars
to hire a salesperson and give their investment firm control over part of your company. Or
the idea was that you'll make money faster and you'll get money in the bank right now.
And you ended up turning that deal down. What are the financials and what's the strategy
behind staying a two-person team? And how does that help you guys?
Right. It's so funny because in the beginning, when we were consulting, I would've been totally
open to investment money. I didn't know. I was like, I just wanted money. And I was like,
you know, whatever, wherever the wind blows, if I get an investment offer, we'll go with
that. And nobody wanted, nobody was interested. You know, they were like, you guys are a consulting
company and you want to stay a two-person team? Like, what's wrong with you? And now
that we've gotten some customers, people are realizing that this business model can work.
And now they're interested. But I turned it down because with our level of deals, like,
you know, I was just, I was in a seven-figure negotiation just earlier this week. Like,
we... Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's the level of one big deal for us. That's crazy. So,
why would I take investment money and give someone control over my company and have them
telling me what to do over one deal? Like, that doesn't make any sense to me.
Yeah, you're totally right. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The fact that you're
doing seven-figure deals is ridiculous. I'm in the wrong business. I mean, seriously,
there are plenty of companies that have hundreds of employees who never get to that point.
So that's amazing. And earlier you were saying that you didn't really have any sales experience
before when you were doing contract work. You kind of had to learn on the job once you
started your product. So, what changed? And what kinds of things have you learned that
allowed you to become a version of Stephanie who's negotiating for millions of dollars?
Well, I think it's not that you go into a sale and you're like, my product is seven
figures. Buy it. I'm so cool. Like, you don't go in with that. You start small and you say,
all right. So, for like in the game industry, for instance, you say, oh, for one game, what
makes sense? Like, how much money am I going to save them? Look at value. Do not look at
how many hours it took you to build it or how big your team is. Look at the value that
you provide. Say, okay, well, I'm saving this company this much money. So, I should name
this price probably makes sense. And the thing about that is you should pick one of two strategies.
You should either name a price that's so low that it's not a big deal for an engineer to
just approve it and buy it. Or you should name a price that's high enough to make yourself
look really valuable. You don't want in the middle where it's high enough that you need
to get a few approvals, but it's almost a low number. And they're like, is this even
worth it? We could probably build this ourselves if it's only worth this much. So, it's that
weird psychology. And then you build up to the seven figure deal by basically like you
start with one game and they agree that that makes sense. And then you say, well, you're
making this many games and it just adds up. Was there ever a time where you had sort of
a sales disaster where you could look back now and be like, I totally messed that up.
Yeah. Fortunately, there were a few times early in the business where we purposely gave
lower prices, but I don't think I would call that a disaster because we were smart and
we would limit the feature set. So, we might have messed up in pricing, but we could all
we set it up so that if we expanded the feature set or we expanded the scope of how they could
use it. Like for instance, you can only use it on, I'm making up an example, but like
you can only use it on like the chairs in your game. Of course, that's not a real example,
but like just limit the scope in some way. We gave some cheap deals out in the beginning
for that, but I think the biggest disasters just came from negotiating and learning different
negotiating methods and figuring out how to negotiate price in a good way and failing
a little bit early on in that.
What exactly do these negotiations look like? Because I'm imagining you guys going in against
these hardened negotiators whose entire job is to approve these big deals or reject them.
And they're using every tactic in the book and you're coming back at them with your own
tactics and counter offers. But I'm sure I'm overdramatizing this. So what does the real
process actually look like?
Again, a lot of our negotiation has happened in the game industry, but we're starting to
branch out and negotiate with other companies as well. The game industry is beautiful because
they don't, again, good and bad that they don't do a lot of middleware deals like this.
So it's not like they have a hardened team just for middleware deals. It's like things
that come along every now and then, not as normal. But either way, the negotiation styles
are kind of similar in that most negotiations are surprisingly collaborative and that's
one thing I didn't realize.
And the more you come to the table with different options, people get kind of resistant when
you just name a price and then stare at them. It's better to just be like, hey, you can
choose this or you can choose that or you can choose that. And you know what? We're
open to other options too and just make it a collaborative process. And every now and
then you will get the aggressive type of negotiator. And to be honest, we've walked away from all
of those deals so far, just because I've seen that as a little bit of a red flag. Like if
we're going to be this aggressive in the negotiation, how are you going to be like to work at?
We might revisit them, but yeah.
Also as a contractor, you get a lot of experience dealing with clients, some who are troublesome,
some who aren't. Do you think that your experience doing all that contract work before basis
sort of colored your approach to the sales process and changed how you looked at working
with different types of clients?
Yeah, it's definitely part of that. It's like I would expect someone to get upset at the
phase where they're game shipping and they're all stressed out and everything's on fire.
If you're getting upset at the phase of just negotiating a deal and starting the relationship,
that's a red flag. You know what I mean?
That's like a cultural or a personality thing and not just a situational thing.
Yeah, like save that, you know? Make a good impression. But in the movies, negotiations
are always like fist on the table, take it or leave it. And that's not been my experience
in the real world.
So what is your day to day like today? Like for example, after this call or maybe tomorrow,
what's on your agenda and what's at the top of your mind with binomial?
Okay, well I can look at my calendar. I never keep things in my head. So like today I had
a negotiation for price for the product and we talked about what price would make sense
and what package and what licensing structure we could do for their deal. And then after
that I got lunch with my lawyer and I had spent all last night like cramming for that
price negotiation. So I was preparing for the worst. I was like googling revenue numbers
and like trying to make equations for it. So after this I'm just going to relax I think.
And then tomorrow I'm doing a math side project that has nothing to do with the business just
because I feel like doing some work that like doing a project not part of the business kind
of makes me happy. And then on Saturday I'm just grabbing lunch with a bunch of friends
and I don't know.
So that sounds like a pretty good life.
Yeah, it's just I try I try very hard not to work more than 20 hours a week. And a lot
of the other time is spent like like I spent a lot of time in the shower and walking around
and talking to my dog this week preparing for that meeting earlier today. So that's it's
not like work at my computer but it is thinking about it.
I think from the outside looking in the job of a founder especially at like a successful
company that's actually selling their product to customers seems like it's going to be the
stressful non-stop 24-7 work fest. And yet here you are talking to your dog and working
20 hours a week. How are you in that position? What kind of decisions did you have to make
to create a business that lets you do that?
I feel like it's at the core of the business model. Like it was kind of sad. I talk about
how I try not to work a lot a lot frequently and like I was approached by a business person
and he wanted to go out to coffee and he was like I want to do this. Like how can I work
like this? And I looked at his business and I asked him questions and I honestly didn't
have a good answer for him. Like he just had the way his business was set up required him
to be in so many meetings and manage so many people and there was always something on fire.
So I think it comes down to like structure. It's not like you have to set things up right.
And for me that's why I do very big business to business deals. And a lot of my time is
just waiting on companies to get back to me because for these big deals they take a long
time. And I've been trying to do smaller deals too to kind of fill in the financial gaps
while we wait. But keeping it to a limited number of deals and keeping the product scope
really small and keeping us a two person team all those things really help.
What are some decisions you think you could have made somewhat differently that would
have led to your business taking up much more of your time?
I realized that I've had to have kind of a thick skin because early in the business everybody
told me I was stupid and it wasn't going to work. And one of the biggest pieces of advice
people gave me was they were like you need to hire a sales team. Yeah you're crazy like
these big companies you can't navigate enterprise sales you need help you know. And if I had
done that I would have been a mess right now because we went through phases where finances
weren't looking so great. Only two people we could we could squeeze by get a contract
make it work. But with a sales team to support oh boy you know that's one example.
Yeah premature scaling kills a lot of companies and I think it's very easy to just misproject
you know what's going to happen in the future. It's very easy to take advice from people
who are knowledgeable without really understanding that they're coming from a different place
than you are. And maybe they just have a different tolerance for risk. Maybe they're optimizing
for building an all or nothing company and you'd rather just have a high chance of success.
Yeah. And what's interesting is now that we're a little more you know we're doing OK. I talk
to businesses and now the advice I get is don't hire salespeople too early because a
lot of a lot of business people have told me that they hired the salespeople and the
salespeople don't sell as well as the founders of the company in the early stages of the
business. Like the founders are kind of more genuine and know the product well and just
all kinds of reasons not just financial stability. So now I'm kind of seeing it from a different
light and yeah premature growth is not is not good but also making sure again you have
a business model that can actually support you. Like if I was selling this product for
five dollars a pop. Yeah I'd be going crazy. It's about being smart and I think in that
mind being open minded and realizing like being open minded to making a different kind
of product is important too. Like maybe your original idea is not going to work as a business.
Think of something else you know get a potential customer. Have you guys had to make any big
changes and basis and something that you originally thought you're going to do you ended up not
doing or vice versa. Definitely. And that's why I recommend that people get those early
customers. So we got we got this early customer and we thought like OK we have an idea of
what this should be. And they were just like nope. We want like so we were thinking like
the consoles and would really want it because console a lot of people who develop for game
consoles want it to be very optimized. So we were thinking oh yeah we should do that.
We should do those formats. And our first customer was like nope we need this for mobile
devices. We were like oh that's a completely different feature set. And so that's happened
several times where we change our feature set depending on the customer that we have
and really listen to our customers as opposed to just our idea of how it should be.
Is there any advice that you've gotten that you think is great advice but for some reason
you just don't follow it and you wish that you could follow it better but you have it.
Right. This is so bad but we've been lazy on things like you know we're doing better
now but early in the business especially we were so lazy on getting like accounting set
up properly and you know we weren't breaking any laws or anything but we could probably
have set it up so that we saved more money on taxes. We just we should have done that
but we just paid more money on taxes. So it's like annoying things like that. One thing
we haven't skipped on is our lawyers are just amazing and our legal team has been awesome
and so where we have failed in accounting we made up for it in legal I guess.
Yeah attorneys are very impressive people. I hadn't spent very much time dealing with
them until I was navigating the Andy hackers acquisition by Stripe and there was a lot
of lawyers involved and they're on top of their stuff and very helpful.
And in our business it's all about IP like if someone can steal our algorithm we're not
in a good place anymore. So having that lawyer is central to our business.
Yeah I was gonna ask you guys as far as I'm aware you guys have pretty much stopped development
on your product right. What we do is we we develop it you know maybe a few months out
of a year you know we kind of set aside time for development and we try to be very thoughtful
about what we do because it's one of those products where it's good right now it covers
all relevant devices it does it really well. We want to make sure that we don't screw up
that core feature set and the thing about an image compressors it's so easy to screw
up and any change you make you have to look through thousands of images because there's
no automated metric that tests image quality correctly. So like you want to change a little
optimization enjoy going through 4000 images to make sure you didn't mess anything up like
we have to be very careful.
Yeah that's fascinating. It sounds like someone should build a business to try to automate
that process.
People have been trying for decades. It's it's a the human visual system is a very complex.
Our brains are complex. So so it's kind of interesting. So we we are actively developing
but I think it's a testament to how much we value stability that we don't like develop
every week. It would probably be a really bad product if we did because we wouldn't
have time for thorough testing.
I think a lot of people who are in similar situations where they are selling a product
or kind of have this it's like invisible like fire behind them that's saying you got to
code more and you got to develop faster or someone's gonna catch up and they're gonna
copy you. What is what is preventing you guys from having that? Is it the IP agreements
with the attorneys or is it something else?
Well, it's just you know, our product does its job and it does it really well. And it's
one it's one of those very fragile things where it's like a little like I'm trying to
think of a cool fragile analogy. But if you're not if you're careful if you're not if you're
not very careful you could completely knock it over and and then no more product. So it's
like it's very important to be wise about it. And I think image compression forces us
to kind of back away from that mentality of we should always be coding. And I think the
other thing is I was just taught very I learned a lesson from that first customer of like
actually we didn't need the features that you had planned to making sure that when we
do build we're building and we're actually gonna make money from that development work
we're doing and being focusing more on product strategy and customers and sales.
Right. So instead of spending all your time worrying about code, you're sort of playing
startup chess and spending most of your time thinking about the next move that you're going
to make and then very little time actually moving your pieces on the board. So let's
talk about the people listening in for a minute. And I usually like to talk about people who
have not yet gotten to the part where they've started their business. But let's talk about
people who have and are maybe running into some of these psychological feelings of imposter
syndrome where they're listening to you talk about your deep complex technical knowledge
and they're thinking, I don't have any of that, nor do I have the time to develop those
skills and build something super unique and complex. What would you say to somebody who's
who's thinking these types of thoughts?
I would say if someone is giving you money for what you're doing your goodness. That
is that is the definition of starting a business. I struggled with that a lot as well in the
first year is like, oh my god, like, is this are we business? Can I even I even felt weird
about calling myself a business owner or an entrepreneur? I was like, what if this blows
up and and I don't feel like a real entrepreneur. And I realized that, you know what, if someone
is giving me money for what I'm building, that's the definition of an entrepreneur.
It sounds silly, but that was like a roadblock I had to get past. And I would say the same.
So I would say talk to customers and think about what you can build. And remember that
a lot of businesses are built off really simple solutions that people just appreciate that
you built that and they don't want to make it themselves. You don't need to make some
complex image algorithm. In fact, I think looking back on it, I wish I wish in some
ways we picked a simpler problem to solve because I know all kinds of people who did
and they've run very successful businesses. So just keep that in mind.
It's so true. I mean, we've done like 300 interviews on Andy hackers.com. And like every
third or fourth interview, I'm just like, what? How does it like there's one guy who
just his entire business is reviewing website builders. And he makes something like $45,000
a month. It's crazy. Let's say something disastrous happened to your product. I want to see what
you would do in the situation. Let's say basis just for some reason, all the code is deleted.
And you don't have source control. So you can't recover it. How would you start the
process of starting a new business from scratch?
It probably wouldn't happen in that way. Who knows like, you know, because we can always
revert changes, but you know, things blew up. You know, I need to start fresh. The beautiful
thing is I actually feel like sales is significantly harder and more valuable than development.
So what I would do is I would look at it and I would realize, look, we have this customer
base of customers who really like us and really trust us, which is a huge part of like what
gets people to buy products. And I would ask them like, Hey, this blew up for whatever
reason. I'd make sure to tell a not embarrassing story about it and say, Hey, like what would
you buy? What would you be interested in? Since we already have that trust built up,
I would probably say, okay, let's let's sign a pre-order for it. Or let's let's sign a
services agreement and we will be happy to build this for you. You know, and I think
that trust is actually the hardest part.
I'm looking up a tweet that reminds me so much of what you just said. Here it is. It's
from Rand Fishkin. He says, the best way to sell something don't sell anything. Earn the
awareness, respect and trust of those who might buy. And that's kind of exactly what
you're saying. You're saying that you've already got this trust that you've established with
your clients that building these trusting relationships is the hardest part of what
you've done. Then that's the part that you want to keep. You don't want to throw that
away. You want to throw everything else away, but keep that hard part. And I think this
feeds into what we were talking about earlier with how you've sort of stair stepped your
way to where you are now. If you're listening in and you're wondering, how can I take the
skills that I have and sort of parlay those into a future business, maybe the most valuable
thing that you have isn't your exact skill set. Maybe it's the relationships that you've
developed with a particular set of people over time. Maybe that's your boss. Maybe it's
your coworkers or some friends or some clients. And maybe you have to develop a new set of
skills in order to cater to whatever it is that they need. Well, that's not the worst
thing in the world. And it's good to be flexible so that you can actually take advantage of
your advantages. Exactly, exactly. And I think I think the thing with me is that I don't
I don't know if everybody is like this. But for me, I enjoy lots of things. I really like
lots of things. And I think the biggest thing I want out of a business is I want to have
free time and enjoy my life. But I also want to enjoy what I do. But I enjoy so many things
that it's not that big of a deal. It's not like if I'm not doing image compression, I
hate my development work. So it's just keeping that in mind and realizing that, hey, I could
enjoy developing a lot of projects. So what do people need?
I'm on your blog right now. And you've got an old blog post that says it's called deriving
stochastic processes from fractional calculus equations. And then you start off by saying,
this is a topic I'm very excited about. I could tell that you really enjoy doing what
you're doing. Most people's eyes would cross reading that. I love math. Yeah, I could tell.
So how important do you think it is for a founder to love what they're doing in order
to have a better chance at success?
It's fascinating because I feel like there's so many parts to doing a business. So I know
business owners who really aren't that excited about their product. It's like a job. It's
not that they hate their life, but it's just a simple product that does a simple thing
and they sell it and pass that. But what they love is they love their relationships with
their customers and that brings them a lot of joy and they love just building upon that
and having that freedom and building those relationships. I think there's so many parts
of running a business that it's okay if you're not, it's not like you're a full-time developer.
It's okay if you're not very excited about what you're doing. And again, for me, I try
not to think like that in general because to be honest, I like a lot of stuff. I like
art. I like music. I like everything. So I get really upset if I try to focus too much
on what's my one passion. Then I start to just, oh no, maybe. And the reality is a lot
of things can bring me joy.
Okay. Well, challenge question. What's bringing you joy 10 years from now? Where are you
and what do you hope to be doing with your business and with your life?
I have a list of 10-year goals. Do you want me to read it? Okay. I'm excited. Let me bring
it up.
Yeah. Let's go for it.
I have this list that I look at every week. So my 10-year goals are keeping successful
in my business is one of the goals. So that might mean that I find a good exit and have
enough money.
Or it might mean that I start another business because I still need that money. Whatever
it is, have money from being an entrepreneur and keep being successful in that way. I want
to be able to travel to beautiful places. I feel so cheesy reading this, but this is
honestly my 10-year goal.
No, that's good.
Yeah. And I want to be able to just occasionally, but I want to have a home base and I want
to try out a few places to live and find one to stay in. Because for me, I've been moving
around every 6 to 12 months for the past decade. This is not good. And I did not do it intentionally,
but it's just always worked out that way. So try to find a place to actually stay.
I want to focus more on organizing work and local politics and giving back in a bigger
way. I'm very focused on math and coding and fun hobbies right now. And I give back in
terms of the tech and startup community, but I want to be mindful that that's a bubble
and try to break out of that bubble a little bit. And then I want to cultivate more hobbies
that are just for joy and not necessarily to do with money or work. And the business
can let me do that. And then just like having close friendships and all of that and family
and everything. That was kind of a little speech, but I think about those things a lot.
That's a really solid list. And I think especially at the end, having close relationships with
friends and family, that's what makes it all worth it. Because if you succeed at your business,
you don't have anybody to share that with that it's kind of just...
It's a revelation because I basically was like, so many years ago, I was working retail
and I was broke and I was like, some weeks I would only eat bread and it was not a good
time in my life. And so I had this vision of like, I want a successful career. That's
what I want. And in the process of constantly putting that as my number one priority, I
moved around all the time and I lost my close friendships. Because it's hard to keep in
touch with people when you're moving around every six months. You know what I mean? And
that's one of the biggest regrets I have is that I just wish I didn't do that. And I've
got to rebuild that.
No, I know exactly what you're talking about. I think when you're trying to do something
exceptional, especially that's work related, and you prioritize that above other things,
it's very hard for people who aren't directly related to that to play any role in it. It's
very hard for your friends or your family to really relate to what you're up to if work
is your number one thing. And the opposite is also true. It becomes harder for you to
relate to them. So it's easy to lose those connections. And I've been in San Francisco
working my ass off for years. And there's so many relationships that I have let suffer
as a result. You know, my friends aren't listening to this podcast. My mom is, hi mom. But it's
just a tough balance to strike.
Yeah, absolutely. I can really, I understand.
Well, I would love to end on a more positive note, but that's part of why I value work-life
balance now is because I've seen what it's like when you don't have that. And I'm not
going to, I'm not going to give that up. It's not worth it. You've got to enjoy your life.
There's a more positive note.
Got to enjoy your life. Well, thanks a ton, Stephanie, for coming on the show and ending
on a more positive note. I really enjoyed this conversation. Can you tell listeners where
they can go to learn more about what you're working on personally and what you're up to
at Binomial as well?
Sure. So my company is Binomial. I'm sure you can find it on the podcast. Binomial.info
is the website. And then you can find me on Twitter at just S E H U R L B U R T. That's
my Twitter username.
You should definitely follow Stephanie on Twitter. I don't know how she does it. Her
and Patio11 have like this magic Twitter juice that they drink, but they're constantly tweeting
amazing stuff.
All right. Well, thank you so much.
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