The Data Stack Show - Shop Talk With Eric and Kostas: Transitioning From Consumer to Builder

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

In this bonus episode, Eric and Kostas talk shop regarding transitioning from consumer to builder.

Welcome to the Data Sack Show Shop Talk. This is a format that we love. Actually, this is our second time doing this, but it's where Kostas and I pick a topic and we just talk about it. So very informal. We already have some guests planned for this informal format and we're excited.

Today, Kostas has a question for me that will start off the conversation, and I don't know what it is. So it's going to be very exciting. Kostas, what's best? Actually, I have two questions. Okay. The first one is, why do we call this a SOC talk? I think I'm missing some semantics because I'm an immigrant or something. What is a sock talk?

Okay, so there's a terminology or a term that we use a lot in the US, and it's called talking shop, right? So if you have a shared interest with someone or you know you work in a similar line of work right so let's say like you know i'm a marketer and i go you know get drinks with my other friend who's like you know a marketer in another company i would say you know it's like whatever i get home and my wife would say how was it what do you guys talk about i would say, you know, it's like, whatever I get home and my wife would say, how was it? What'd you guys talk about?

I would say, we just kind of talked shop, right? Which means like, we just kind of talked about marketing stuff, you know, nerded out on that, whatever. Like we just talk shop. So this is you and I talking shop about data. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. You made me wiser.

Like, I love that. All right. So now let's go back to the serious question. Let you, Eric. You made me wiser. Like, I love that. All right. So now let's go back to the serious question. Let's talk shop. Let's talk shop. Yep. True. All right.

So my question to you, Eric, is about your experience and actually your transition from being primarily like a consumer of data infrastructure to work as part of a company that builds data infrastructure and how your perception of like the way that you think about using the products and the infrastructure has changed, if it has changed, I don't know, like you will tell me. And so I don't know how did it make you become like a better human being at the end, because I'm sure that like it was a transformative experience for sure. David Pérez- Yes.

Yes. I was extracted out of a consumer role, transformed and then loaded into, you know, the role of someone pretender. Oh yeah. That doesn't qualify as a dad joke, by the way. I don't know. Maybe. I'm so sorry.

I had to. That was so bad. That's a great question. I think that the... I would say one thing that I've been thinking a lot about lately is that it can be really easy when you are working on a product to tell yourself a lot of stories about the user that may or may not be true. And I think this is pretty natural, right? Because you, I would say the, maybe a good way to put this is it's hard when you're building a product not to view things through the lens of your product, right?

And I think part of that is simply just because you're focused on that product every day, right? In many ways, it is all consuming as part of your job, right? And I think that's true, like, whether you're on the product team, actually building products and an engineer building the product or a marketer, who's trying to figure out how to communicate about the product. Right. And something I've been thinking about a lot lately for me personally is how to break out of that pattern because, and I'll actually give you an interesting example of like how I've how I've done that

in a minute but when I think about being a consumer of a lot of products you know similar to to rudder stack you know throughout however the past many years you just think mainly about your like the problem you're trying to solve right and in fact like you think about a lot of in many many cases you're thinking about a lot of specific problems that you need to solve right and trying to like as I'm trying to, like, solve a specific problem inside my company, right? Mm-hmm. And so I may not, like, I'm not thinking about the grand vision of, like, whatever this product's mission is, right? I'm thinking about how to, like, make my job easier or deliver this project or whatever. And yeah, so I don't know.

I would say that's been a really big difference. You'd like to think, okay, well, I'm a consumer of these products. And so I can go into this product company and have a really objective view. And when it's all consuming, it's really hard to have an objective view. And so one thing I've tried to do lately is listen to a lot of calls, either with sales prospects or with actual customers. Because we record a lot of the sales and customer success calls. And I've tried to ask, I've tried to like put myself in their shoes and like go through the decision-making process

and see would I make the same decision as them, right? To buy Ruddersack or not to buy Ruddersack or, you know, to do this or to do that. So I don't know. That was what came to mind first, but probably because I've been thinking a lot about it. Yeah. How easy is came to mind first, but probably because I've been thinking a lot about it. Yeah. How easy is it to do that, though?

Like to stop being so consumed by this, I'll say that like first perspective kind of view that you get because you are part of the product, you are part of the organization, you are part of the vision, mission, whatever. Like it's not that easy to detach yourself and just observe, right? Yeah. Like similar to like how you're trying to do, you know, like observe yourself

and your behavior at the end, right? So how, how easy is that at the end, like to do that and get like in the shoes of like the customer? That's really hard. I mean, it's really hard i mean it's really hard i think also because you you're incentivized to believe this like the you're incentivized to believe whatever version of the story you are telling yourself right like we all have narratives running through our mind right but you're incentivized on multiple levels to believe whatever narrative you're telling yourself, right? And that I think is a very, it's a process that

happens subconsciously, right? And so, and the multiple levels of that, I think it spans a huge spectrum, right? But if you think about sort of like the most personal level is like, well, if these things are true about this product and all of the implications of that, right? Like people buy in and blah, blah, blah, right? Like I will have more happiness in my life because whatever, right? Like work will be easier or the company will be successful or whatever. And it's like parts of my job will be easier. I mean, there's all these sort of, you know, there's long-term positive outcomes, you know, if the like parts of my job will be easier you know there's there's all these sort of you know there's long-term positive outcomes you know if the company is really successful like so subconsciously you have these narratives running that i think you are motivated for

good reason to like want to have positive outcomes and it is really hard to you have to make a conscious decision to tell yourself or like expose yourself to different narratives right that actually may be closer to the truth if that makes sense but that's really hard like you have to make a cut at least for me like i think i have to make a conscious decision to like yeah i think there are like two levels of difficulty there. One is, okay, how you can switch your perspective from your own like to

whoever you have in front of you. Let's say you can't get, like you can't train yourself to do that, right? It's probably not easy.

Maybe it's a little bit easier for salespeople probably because it's part of the job description in a way. But then you have another level of difficulty there, which is identifying like from all these narratives, which one is the right one, right?

Or like the closer to reality, right? Or how they contribute to forming reality because probably reality is not like just one narrative, it's like all All these narratives mix together, right? Or something like that. So how do you do that? I mean, customers can be wrong, right? It doesn't end up... There are some kind of Oracle that always writes whatever they say,

or they know what they need, or they know what they're trying to do. Right? And especially from... they need or they know what they're trying to do. Right. So how, and especially like from the perspective of someone who's like in product marketing right now, where you try to conceptual position like a product in the company to a market, right? Yeah. How do you choose? Like, how do you, I mean, mean okay don't reveal all the secrets of course but but how you can learn to at least short let's say all these different narratives at the end and

like focus to the more important ones yeah well i can tell you how I am trying to do that. There's a concept that I have a mentor who has so many really helpful mental models, but one time he explained to me this concept of ground truth. And it's this military analogy where it's like, okay, well well you have a general that's like really far from the battlefield and they're getting reports and so they have a lot of intelligence but they're like actually troops on the ground on the front lines and there's always a delta between like the summary that the general gets and like what's really happening on the ground right and the and even if the like coordinates on the map are technically the same like the ground truth can

really change the practical reality of something needs to get done right and like one example he used it was great was like well it should only take you this long to get from like point A to point B. Right. But it's raining or whatever. Right. And so like it's muddy or, you know, moving equipment is more difficult or, you know, stuff's breaking. Right. And so it's like, well, yeah, I mean, the ground truth is just very different from like, you know, from what's just on the map. And so one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is like how to go collect ground truth. And that is talking with customers or listening to customers is a really good way to do that, even if they're wrong. But that I would say is actually like,

I don't know, that's tricky. This is going to be like i i might disagree with the statement in the future but since we're talking shop i'm going to make it i think the like from a product marketing perspective even if the customer's wrong hearing the way that they communicate about things can help reveal like the way that they view a problem. And I think from a product marketing perspective, that is really, really important, right? I think even if the customer's wrong about something, you can still like get a lot of insight into the way that they view a problem. Now, there are a ton of product implications for that. Then that's like, that is a very difficult challenge. That's one. I think the other thing is, and this is interesting from the standpoint of the scale of a company,

and this is actually going to come full circle. This is so great. And it sounds so simple, but testing your assumptions with actual data, if you have it, right. And, you know, from a, like one example is a product has a lot of features, right? So like Rudderstack has multiple different features. And as a consumer of data technology, there's a certain way that I would probably consume those features for a particular use case I have or whatever. And so that influences my assumptions about how those features are consumed. Like in what order, what's the timeline and all those sorts of things, right? Which has a profound impact sorts of things, right? Which has a profound impact on product marketing, right? Because you can't sell every, you can't promote

every feature all at the same time, right? There's, you know, there has to be like hierarchy and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And so one of the narratives we tell ourselves can be something like, oh, well, this is sort of the general product journey that someone takes, right? And I think that's actually been a struggle for me because I was and even still am such a heavy user of this stuff. I take my own narrative and make a lot of assumptions about those sorts of things. Those can be gut checked really quickly though with actual data, right? Like, well, is this, you know, and so anyways, one thing I've been trying to do is identifying assumptions that I'm making where it's like, well, I don't actually know if that's true for all of our users, right? Or even true about like our product. And once you get enough data to help

gut check those, it can give you a much better sense of ground truth, right? Because it's like, well, my anecdote is not, even if I am a heavy user and I like actually do value my own opinion about our product a lot. That anecdote is not ground truth about our customers. And so trying to get that from data can be helpful. Sorry. I feel like I'm like giving you long opining answers. Oh, I mean, okay. Like it's, it's also the nature of the question.

It's also like a hard question to answer in general, to be honest. And I think it's like a question that it's never completely answered anyway. And I think it's like a question that everyone can relate to. It's like, okay. I mean, especially like in startups, because no matter like what you are doing, like if you are just like writing backend calls, like you, you somehow, you will get exposed to the customer, the user and the markets out there. So yeah, it's, it's important.

It's hard. It's had like many different downfalls, I think. And at the end, I mean, there's no recipe for that stuff. I think it's more of like building the right type of like intuition to navigate your field because I'm pretty sure that like, let's say, and I'm sure that, okay, you will succeed in what you're trying to do, right, if after your success, like with Rutherstack, we take like Ake and put him like in another company that's like slightly different, right, like with a slightly different persona in front

of you and all these things, you will have to go through the same process at the end. It's just that you will be able to navigate the process much more efficiently and end up to the results that you need much faster and with less stress and less... how to say that... less... you will not worry that much about the outcome. You will be more confident, right? About like whatever happens. And I think that's like what experience is at the end and like what it means,

like what seniority is at the end. So there are things out there that you just have to go through and you will keep going through the rest of your life. It's just like you can navigate the process in a much better way because you've done that before. Well, that was very flattering and encouraging. And I agree. I think, yeah, there are certain things that I wish I started doing earlier. But I'm going to turn the question on you, everything right like you probably like wrote code you you know did marketing and you were also a founder and so what i'm interested in is did

like what was that experience like of trying to not view everything through the lens of you know the product and sort of whatever related narratives were going on in your subconscious? And was that exacerbated by being a founder? Yeah, I think when you're a founder, it's a little bit different because you have to assume and balance, let's say, the narratives of many different types of stakeholders. You have the customer, obviously, that you care a lot because that's what you're there. Like you're very tempting for someone to buy.

If they don't buy, you fail. So of course you have that, but you have your investors. I mean, okay, let's say the investors deeply care about the problem that you are solving, but I'm pretty sure they care more about other things. And you are part of like a portfolio and yeah, whatever partners you have, right? Then you have your boards. Then you have something like super, super important, which is your employees, right? All these stakeholders, you need to get into their shoes if you want, because you need to keep all of these people happy at the end.

You have to deliver to all of them. When you're a founder, you don't have all the deliver to your customer. We keep saying that the customer is like, well, we do all this stuff, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah, sure. But there are more than that. And anyone who has tried their own life to hire, they understand what it means to be a company, even if you have the customer problem solved. When you're a founder, I think it's like a little bit more complicated early on, and you can start getting like a delegate and making like, because when you start getting, let's say executives in the team, like the executives will focus like on one aspect, right? Like when you get like your VP of Fence, yeah, like the VP of Fence is doing like

to care primarily about hiring good engineers and maintaining like a good culture in engineering so they can produce the work that you need, right? Yeah. They will keep saying that all they care about is the customer, but that it's like, let's say byproduct of making sure that they're taking care of like the engineering culture and all these things. But at the beginning, at least, as a founder, you have these, let's say,

extra difficulty of having, especially if you're a first-time founder, to get into the shoes of all these different stakeholders who have a very, very different understanding of the world, different risk profiles, different problems, different different, like understanding of the world, different like risk profiles, different problems, different everything. Right. So I think that's what like makes the founder role so, so interesting. Yeah. It's exactly because like, you're not selling to, like you're selling to

everyone, including yourself because you have to convince yourself to keep going. Totally. Totally. No, I mean, yeah, I can totally see that. And I think, yeah, the number of like subplots, if we extend the narrative analogy, the number of subplots that you have to manage is significant. And the consequences are really high on almost all of them.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I didn't answer your question, though. I just changed a little bit the scope of the question. But let me give an answer also. I don't think that, again, you ever answer this question. It's not like you ever come up with a playbook that you can just hand it to someone and that someone personally just follow the handbook and that's it. Yeah. It doesn't work like that. That's why it is important to...

that's when you really understand how important relationships are. And when you manage people, how important your role as a manager is. Because a big part of being a manager is to help people to create the intuition that you already have and you can navigate these problems. By understanding at the same time that they have to go through it. There's no shortcuts, right? They have to do it. They have to go out there and still act comfortable because they don't understand why the customer is doing what he's doing. So yeah, it's like some of these things that like at the end, it's all about experience. Yep. Like doing it again and again and again and again until it changes you in like some fundamental way that you just do things differently.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll return to, I just thought of maybe a better way to explain something I mentioned earlier. But one other thing that's interesting, you know how I talked about the customers thinking about a specific problem that they need to solve, right? And I mean, I think that would apply both to a customer with a small, say like a small scope problem with a shorter timeline or something, but also to a company that has a vision of like, okay, well, by the end of the next, you know, three quarters, I need to build and deliver some sort of internal use case of this data infrastructure, right? So it's like a nine to 12 month timeline. And so the product, you know, that I'm working on is part of that. Right. So small scope for timeline, large scope, longer timeline. One thing that is so interesting and fun, but also very challenging that I thought a lot about, you know, sort of transitioning from a, you know, data infrastructure consumer to producer?

I don't know. I mean, you've been loaded already, so you don't have to worry. There's no reverse CTL here. Transformed. This isn't reverse CTL. Even if you think about a larger scope, long timeline project, generally those still are kind of self-contained with some sort of deliverable, right? But when you think about building a product company,

and then specifically for me, thinking about the way to communicate about that product, you have to balance the near-term need to drive clarity on problem solving that is of immediate concern to the customer with building towards where the market is going, which inherently requires a lot of... It requires you to look forward, right? I mean, and there's... That in and of itself is a very complex thing, right? How do you build towards the future? There's part market trends and some sort of data, anecdotes from what you're saying from your own customers, you know a lot of times of the founder or you know the sort of like visionary people on the team who are making you know decisions based on intuition about where things are going right because the future is

unknown and that i would say is a very it's that is like such an interesting dynamic, right. To sort of switch over from like a sort of self-contained, you know, or like scope confined usage of a product to trying to think about like, okay, well we're solving problems now, but the company will have to continue to solve problems in the future. And the market's changing, the technology's changing, you know, all that sort of stuff. That's another thing that's been really interesting. Yeah. I think we have to stop doing the soap talking, right? Is this the right way to say that?

Because Brooks has sicked the right way to say that because brooks has signal us that i have a feeling that we'll be discussing more about that yeah what a good question i'm you know me i'm always good with questions i'm that's right but i guess part of Inquisition or something, I think like. Yeah. Yeah. An interrogator. Yeah. Hmm. I think that's what I'm going to do after I retire. Like I'll be. Yeah.

Yeah. Be an interrogator. Yeah. That would be nice. That would be interesting. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Eric. Yes.

You're welcome. Retirement plan delivered to you on the Data Stack Show. Shop talk. Costas, great question. Thank you for joining us. We will do many, many more of these and we will catch you on the next one.