Tech Brew Ride Home - (Portfolio Profile) Play

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

Find out more about Play at CreateWithPlay.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the TechMeme Right Home, another portfolio profile episode. It's been months since we've done one of these. I feel like at least since the fourth.

We're going to talk to a portfolio company from earlier this year. I think we got in touch in January, Dan, and made the investment around then. We're going to talk about play. We're talking to Dan Lasavita. Hi, Dan. Hey, good to see you. Yeah. So to find out more about play, you can go right now as we're in your ears to create withplay.com.

But as people are hopefully doing that, Dan, give me the elevator pitch. What is play and who's it for? And why is it absolutely amazing? Sure. So Play is a design tool for teams building mobile apps. If you're designing a mobile app, we're building Play for you. I think what makes Play special is it lets you design apps with the power of iOS and Swift UI. So you could design directly on your phone as well as now on your desktop. So Play combines a familiar design canvas, so similar to what you may be using in Figma, with the power of Apple's native iOS elements,

access to device hardware like the camera and accelerometer, advanced interactions and prototyping capabilities that are built on Apple's core animation and Swift UI code that's generated in real time based on your designs. So with the caveats that obviously I'm not a designer, developer, the advantage here is one convenience, because, hey, design for most, mobile on your phone, but is there also an advantage for like you're basically closer to the metal?

You're like designing on the platform as opposed to, you know, a mock-up or a, you know, like this is, this is sort of like doing the designing and the prototyping natively in the system itself. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a great, great way to summarize it. I think when we started out building play, we kind of needed to make a decision. around some of the pain points that we experienced as designers and engineers in our former business that we were building. And so what play isn't, isn't another general purpose design tool, right? And so I think one of the things that a tool like Figma, which is an incredible tool, solve for was how designers work, right? They really dug into the collaboration piece of things.

And we believe that the next frontier of what design software will solve for is what designers make. So to your point, just a moment ago, traditionally design software hasn't really considered the medium I'm designing for or the materials of that medium. It's all an abstraction. So whether I'm designing a website or an invitation to my kids' birthday party, a tool like Figma or a sketch really doesn't know the difference and doesn't care. And that's where a lot of the power lies in. It's vector shapes made to look like the real thing. And they have a place in the workflow. But I think the cornerstone of what we're building is to give product designers and engineers direct access, right, to the medium they're designing for, which is the phone and the actual

materials of that medium. And does that, I mean, that helps almost on a conceptual level too, right? Because again, as opposed to the abstraction of, well, if I create this animation or this UI flow, again, on my desktop, and I'm assuming that it is, you know, it's doing, it's 97% of what would actually, to actually be designing and in real time conceptually thinking about it on the device itself, like, have you guys seen that that sort of changes and sort of like, I would imagine that, like, it would almost eliminate the step of,

okay, I designed it over here, now I'm going to go test it over here. Like you're cutting out steps in the process, right? Yeah, exactly. And we, so when we first launched play, we launched as an iOS app. And that was the decisions, you know, myself and my three co-founders, June, Michael, and Eric, June's, you know, vision for play in the beginning and still is, is like, I don't want to build another general purpose design tool. Let's start with a use case. So building mobile products. And he's like, I think we should just start with the phone. Because if we don't, we're just going to build another

abstraction layer, right? And so when we started iterating in the beginning, I thought it was impossible. When June came to me with the idea, I'm like, yeah, I don't think it's, how are we going to build a design tool on a phone, you know? And we started doing some prototyping. And I was like, wow, this is, this is like magical, like because I can think about what I want to design and then create it and then change it on the actual device as I'm feeling it. Like, oh, that feels, that doesn't feel right or that doesn't look right. And then I have to put my phone down, go back to my desktop, make the change, re-sync it through some usually not-so-great mirror app. It kind of cuts all that out. Like, I think as product teams, we've

like to think we have really tight feedback loops, but anyone honest in the current workflow, I don't think our feedback loops are really tight and short at all. They're very long and kind of cumbersome. So that's the other thing we're trying to look, you know, we're looking to alleviate and make better by giving you that direct access. Two more things just on the product real quick, and then we'll come back to it at the end. But so I'm assuming that this is like super plugged into iOS and Swift UI, like, again, as close to the real thing as possible. So like, again, I'm even thinking as a non-designer, like, well, but don't I need to have a keyboard at some point? But what you're saying is, is that if you're so close to the underlying systems, like, you can work with them like intuitively, like almost as a.

user would in the end as you're designing. So I'm assuming you're super plugged into Swift UI and iOS and all that stuff. Yeah, exactly. And so an example, as a side note too, I would say like we're in public beta with our desktop product now as well. So we're launching our macOS product, which is going to let, because designers want to design on their desktop, which we are in the beginning, right? But we, you know, we got some really good feedback, you know, early on.

They're like, hey, amazing, but give me the desktop, please, like, so I can work on both. So that's in public beta where you can now. work on a desktop or your phone. Everything is synced in real time. You can collaborate with your team. So that gives kind of designers the choice to design where they want and how they want. But yeah, to your point, you know, what we're building is not an abstraction layer. We're actually rendering views in, you know, in the actual code, the same code, right? Ui kit and Swift Ui that a real app is going to be rendered in. So even this week or, you know, the other week when iOS 15 comes out, or the iPhone 15, rather, comes out.

Already in play the day after, we have the iPhone 15 as a size that automatically any designs in play will be automatically adapted to that new phone size. And so things like that, which can be cumbersome, you know, and other tools, you kind of get for free when you're working in play. And then real quick, we've mentioned Figma a bunch of times, but obviously you've designed it as a modern design platform as well. So collaborative, remote, all that good stuff. Yeah, real-time collaboration on both desktop and the iOS product across both. So I'm going to remind people, createwithplay.com. You can get involved in the MacOS beta,

and I'm assuming you can go to the App Store to download Play on your phone as well. So, Dan, where'd you come from? You said that the idea was to sort of solve pain points for designers. So I'm assuming you have a design background as well. So myself and my three co-founders, we've been working together for now for over 16 years. So prior business that we were building was a design and technology agency in the city called Firstborn. We sold that to Densu, gosh, that's probably like 12 years ago at this point, I think, a while ago. So we've all been, we all met there.

So Michael Ferdman founded Firstborn. I joined actually as a Flash developer. So any of those listeners who are old enough to remember the Flash days, the Little Flash days. And the funny story. So then June, so I ended up being the CEO Firstborn, June was our chief creative officer and Eric, one of our lead technologists. And we all sort of take on those roles inside of play now as well, right? So business strategy, design, and tech. But, you know, I was a developer at firstborn in the early days, so more of a creative and tech background.

Although one day, you know, June said to me, you know, Dan, I think you'd make a great project manager, you know, and that was his nice way of saying, you're not a great developer. I was going to say, like, that's a pejorative to certain circles, yeah. Yeah, you know, so that was it, which, you know, he can take a lot of credit for the trajectory of my, I guess, my career after that because I kind of stopped, and I wasn't a very good flash developer, you know. And so I loved it. I love the creative side of it, but that kind of gave me enough street credit, if you will, I think, to be an effective, you know, product manager and then got into more strategy, business development. And we kind of built

firstborn, you know, over the years. And while they're building lots of websites and apps and other experiences for our clients. And then, you know, after we sold the business, it became time to do something else, do something entrepreneurial. And, you know, June had this idea kind of knocking around in his head for some time. And so we started to pursue it. Well, this is your opportunity to do more of a one of those founding legends or whatever. Like, do you remember how the idea came about, you know, a lot of times it's people like kicking around 17 different ideas and then you sort of land on one. But like, do you remember? Do you remember? when it was like, okay, that actually is a thing that might work.

Yeah, we were talking one day. We lived, so June and I lived when I lived in the city, June still lives in the same neighborhood. We lived in the same neighborhood, right? So we were walking distance from the office. We'd always walk, you know, to and from the office. And then after we'd left firstborn, we'd just be kind of walking around the neighborhood. And he, you know, I remember one day.

And he kind of, this is June's way of doing things. Like he built out a whole prototype. of this thing almost before. Like he talked to me about this idea he had. He's like, you know, why do we design apps on our desktop? And he's like, it takes so long. He's like, just think about how long this takes. And this is even before, like, we were using sketch.

This is like early days of Figma, right? So this was many, many years ago. And he kind of, you know, he's like, I wonder if we could just use the phone and then tap into kind of like the whole Apple environment. Like, oh, yeah, it sounds interesting. And then we didn't talk about it. And he came back one day and he just, we're walking. And he just hands me as far.

phone. And he's like, check this out. Like, play around with it. And I'm like playing around with it. And I'm like, what is this man? You know, like, and he built this whole like prototype. And he's like, yeah, this is that idea, you know, I was telling you about. And so he kind of like floated the idea by me. And if you ask him, he'll be like, yeah, I knew like you weren't going to think it was real until I made something, you know. And we were walking down this, you know, we were walking in Tribeca on the street. And he and I was like, you know, playing with this thing. And I remember we sat down on a bench. because I was kind of like, all right, hold on a minute. And that was the moment where I was like, I think this could be something.

Like, I think this could be something real. And it was at that point where you decided, like, let's go. And that was the starting point. How many years ago was that? So that was like four years ago. So we started in stealth, you know, for a while. We started with our own capital. June, you know, Michael put in, you know, the lion's share of our starting capital.

You know, then we raised like a precede. and it went on to raise a seed and stuff like that. But yeah, so that was about four years from like inception of the idea to where we are today. One of my favorite questions is, this is sort of jumping ahead, but what is the thing that you know now? And like I said, we're going to come back to where the product is now. But the thing that you know now that you wish you had known when you got started out with this? Like, because, you know, pivoting is one thing. We're trying this product.

We throw the spaghetti against the wall. It falls to the floor, right? But even if you stayed sort of in the same direction of what the original idea was, what is the thing that you originally thought that now, four years later, you're like, boy, that was naive, dumb. Pick, pick the word. Yeah. I feel like there's so many little things, you know, or which. I think this may be a little cliche. I'll maybe mention two things.

This may be a little cliche because I think a lot of people say it, but don't wait to ship things to learn earlier. And I think the thing that was hard for us and still is, to be honest, with a design tool, the floor is so high. It's like you need to be able to do so much in a design tool for a designer to even be able to like consider it for a moment.

Right. A minimum viable product might not work because if it's not, if it doesn't replace the tool that they're already trained on and have used for however many years, then even if it's got some new wow factor, it's not going to enter their workflow because it can't do all the things that they need. Exactly. So that's been and still is a challenge, right, to the stay, because we're trying to balance like, okay, new, oh, we have all these ideas around AI and the role that AI should play and play, maybe. And it's like, but we also want to make it faster, more optimized, more performant. And so it's that, you know, it's obviously that constant, you know, juggle. And, you know, we're still early days. Like, yeah, we've been at for a while, but we're still, these products take a long time to build. And I think, so maybe the other thing, too, is, you know, when you put something out into the world and you get that feedback, like, don't be afraid to act on it. Like, it's okay to have, like, your gut may be right. Like, so we would get feedback from users early about maybe desktop,

can I have a bigger screen. I like this. And sometimes we're like, well, yeah, they just, we need to release these few features because then they'll really get what we're doing. And in hindsight, I'm like, well, we actually ended up, we knew we were going to be building these other features, these other secondary or complementary products like iPad, like desktop.

Maybe we should have started those sooner, you know? Maybe we should have just, you know, accelerated, you know, the sort of vision and the production of those sooner. those are some things that maybe I would have done, you know, again, in hindsight, right, done but when you're so zeroed in on the day to day, it's hard, you know, sometimes you have to force yourself to zoom out to that 30,000-foot view. Well, but to give credit to your team, like, you know, there are other teams that are, like, so stuck to the original philosophical idea, but like you said, you get these initial,

you throw the product out, you get these initial people that are like, this is great, can you also give me the desktop? And you could have philosophically been like, no, that's not our vision. But if what people are telling you is I love this and. It's sort of like that improv thing of yes and. I feel like yes and should be a bigger part of starting anything, but also startups and companies, which is, yes, you have an idea. And again, in the end, 10 years later, you still might be in the direction of your original idea. But yes, anding is like, okay, of the things we threw out there, 70% got traction, which is great.

but it's the 30% that we thought that's not getting attracted. Well, you can still pick a little from column A and a little from column B, but don't ignore the people telling you yes, right? So obviously, people have responded to your vision, but then also you've been responding to them being like, well, let's take what you love about this and put it in all the places that you want it to be. Yeah, exactly. And I think like just being as open as possible as,

not just, it's easy to listen to users' feedback, but I think as founders, sometimes we don't really listen, right? We hear their words, we read the surveys, and it's like, well, what does this mean? And should we act on it? And I think that's the question. I was, you know, for as a team, we always, like, should we act on this and should we act on it now? We had someone tweet something the other day. I thought it was actually really interesting. He's like, he's using, he said something. He's like, I'm using play with chat GPT, and it's like, awesome. And I'm like, huh, okay, it's, like, First of all, I want to talk to that guy. Because we're always saying, like, all right, what role should AI play in?

So I think he's designing in play. He's using the Swift UI code that we're generating. And then he's having chat GPT, like, refactor that in different ways. And then bringing it into X code. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Maybe there's something there. Like, you know, so it's, you know, it's not only, it's listening to users as you ask them for feedback, but also just being aware of what people are doing with your tool

because they could, they may be doing things that you didn't even consider. Which leads to an interesting question about, like, you know, I feel like the tooling space, platforms for devs and designers, it's so not up in the air, but so open right now in the sense that, I mean, there are big players with big constituencies and people. One of the things is, you know, as your career goes on, people tend to get locked into workflows and things like this. But I feel like right now, and you, again, you've been doing this for, you know, a couple decades, do you feel like the space that you're in is an unusually fluid space right now? Like, just give me the sense of you guys are entering this market, a market you understand, a market you, you know, came from and are trying to blow up yourselves to a certain degree. But is it sort of so fluid that like you do things just sort of feel up in the air right now?

That's my sense of it from the outside, but I'm curious to hear your take. Yeah, it feels, I mean, I think my perspective, it feels exciting, you know, like fluid and exciting in a good way in that. And not, you know, of course, the role that AI will play in all of our businesses is going to be, you know, it's going to be impactful, right? But I think if you, you know, look at what Adobe's been doing with Firefly. I mean, in terms of what I think is an incredibly amazing, practical and magical use of AI, like when we think about like the future of play and what role AI has,

and I think when I see the best tools, there's an element of practicality. Like, okay, this is useful. And there's an element of like magic. Like, wow. And I think like they're right. now, you know, there's a lot of hype. There's a lot of magic, but not everything has that practical nature to it. And so I think when you look at the space and design tools in general, there's been incredible, you look at a company like Figma, like what an incredible tool in

business, you know, Dylan and the whole team of Bill. I mean, it's, it's incredible. You know, it really is just from, I mean, from a technical standpoint, the tool is incredible. And from a business standpoint, it's, you know, obviously, it's pretty, pretty amazing what they've done. And if you look at, and again, they sort of solve the collaboration piece of things. And then there's, you know, obviously sketch, there's Adobe X-D, who knows where, you know, that goes or doesn't go. But there hasn't truly, I don't think, been this monumental shift in how we design products in the last two decades. you know and if you look at other industries like gaming or maybe you know there there has been I think a lot of a lot of more monumental shifts in terms of how things are produced so I think

one of the things we always ask ourselves is like what is a designer going to be doing in five years how are they going to be what are they going to be designing right is it going to be on the phone is it going to be on something like you know you know vision OS you know is it going to be something entirely different. And then what tool will they be using to design that thing? Are we still just going to be drawing vectors of the things, or is it going to change? Right. That's, you know, almost obviously one of the reasons why I invested is, I think that you're asking the idea, maybe this is the wrong word, so correct me if it's wrong, but what is the mode of design, right? So it's not just because, again, like we're talking about getting designers and developers to put you into their utility belt, right?

But what you're almost conceptually asking with play is like different modes of design. And like it's not necessarily different ways to design, but like how you do it at different steps of the process, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think it's, it's, the other exciting thing I think is seeing younger designers who are also more interested in, you know, dabbling in, let's say, Swift UI. And they're like, they're like, okay, well, I don't want to be an engineer, but they're interested in like how the thing gets made, like how the real thing gets made. And that's, you know, so there's a part of us that's like, well, there's a whole, you know, younger, up-and-coming designer consternation. right? Like the designers of tomorrow, if you will, that are certainly more open to, like they don't have any sort of predispositions or they have less predispositions,

less bad habits in general, right? And so not only that, like this is an interesting thing for me as an investor because like we target that a lot, which is, you know, again, and this is not, listen, you can convert a 45-year-old designer or developer like I'm 45, you know, but I would have had 20 years of, like, this is what I know, this is what I understand. Is that, how do you think about that? If you're dealing with, you know, and a lot of that's coming with AI when I talk to younger devs who are like, well, I'll never not use AI in my coding again, right? Whereas, so like, when you think of that conceptually for the product, obviously you want

everybody. But do you think more of the people that are tabula rasa? maybe the younger people, maybe the people that aren't ossified into the workflow. Does that change how you design the product? And just what's your thinking on, we want to convert the people, we want to wedge our way into their existing workflow versus, well, Tabula Rasa, if we can hook the 23-year-old, they'll design with us for 30 years. Yeah, I think it's a great question. We talk about it often. I think one of the things we've learned, especially in developing the desk.

top product is because we used to use tools like Figma also right like at you know at play for certain things and so there are certain things that as designers you just they're they're innate now whether it's hot keys as something is tactical right as shortcut keys hot keys or how you may approach designing something on you know on a canvas like we we talked a lot about employee like should we have like an infinite sort of canvas feel to that and I'm like guys I I think it's like 100%. I was like, because that's how we're, everything is an infinite whiteboard right now, right, on my screen, no matter what it is.

And I was like, so if we, I was like, even if we have a better idea of what we think that could be, like the question is, is it worth it going against the grain, even if we think it's a better idea, but instead of leaning into some of what people are already used to. But I think the, what we do see is like younger designers or it's not just interesting. age thing, but it is an age thing, but also psychographically, just more curious people. Like early adopters of tools just are generally more curious human beings, right? And so they, they seek out better ways to do things. And I think that's one of the things that any, any product is, I was just going to say that. This is a lesson for any startup, which

is like either you're doing the better mousetrap. So everybody, product X, everybody's familiar with product X and you've created product Y and it's obviously an iteration beyond and it's better. It's superior. That's almost an easier trajectory because it's just like we did product X, we made it better. It's a different thing and it could be, I don't know, friggin' social networks. You know, the social networks almost have cohorts where it's like, you know, I was the Facebook cohort. I was the, I was the, but it's like if you're doing something that is the, the, the, but it's like, if you're doing something that is the,

a completely new way to do things, like then that's when later on in the product, that's when you have to hire the people that are the marketing people, right? That are like, okay, we have to come up with the narrative to explain to people why you should use this versus if it's a certain type of product that's that new. All you've got to do is introduce it to people that are willing to accept the new. Yeah, exactly. And the easiest thing for all of us, right, is to do what we know. Right? So I think so balancing, we have so many ideas.

You know, the team comes up with so many brilliant ideas and like, like, we're going to have the layers panel work this way, you know, or we're going to have, and I'm like, do we need to reinvent that? And then sometimes they're like, yeah, because it's better. Like just be quiet. Let us ship this, you know? And a lot of times they're right. And other times we'll talk about things. We're like, yeah, it's probably not worth changing that thing because it's so built in

to how designers work. And it's that, you know, just because it's more innovative doesn't mean that it's going to solve a big enough problem where people are going to want to change the way that they work. So that's a, like you said, for any product, I think it's the, just realizing that people will usually default to what they know and default to what is easier. Even if something is one percent harder and 100 percent better, they may not, that exchange rate for them may not actually be worth it, which doesn't sound logical, but we don't make, you know, our decisions logically, you know, logically. No, otherwise, all of this stuff would be,

easier. So I'm going to say again, if you want to find out more about play, go to create withplay.com. But also, if someone is hearing about this story and what y'all are up to and they want to get involved, I think you might be hiring at the moment. Just throw out some things if people are interested in learning more and I can put you in touch with them or tell us where they can get in touch with you. Yeah. So any you can go to as you mentioned create with play com.com. You can install our macOS and new iOS app through test flight. We're in public beta. We'll be releasing GA very soon. That's how you can check out the product. We'd love to have people check it out and give us feedback. We are always on the hunt for, you know, engineers, iOS,

macOS engineers. But right now, one of the roles that I'm looking to fill is our first product marketer, so a product marketing director. I think ideally with somebody, somebody that has some experience or at least interest in the design tooling space, but yeah, somebody with product marketing experience that is

excited about what we're building. We'd love to talk with them. Creating the narrative, as we just said. Well, wonderful. Dan, thanks for coming on and telling the story. Again, Createwithplay.com, but just check out play and like literally a new

way of designing, designing on your phone because you're designing for the phone. Right Home Fund is excited to be invested and keep going. Thanks, right. Thanks for having me.