Dan Burcaw on Entrepreneurship, Using AI to Stop Customer Churn, and Deploying Code onto Nuclear Submarines
In this episode, Frank and Andy speak with Dan Burcaw on Entrepreneurship, Using AI to Stop Customer Churn, and Deploying Code onto Nuclear Submarines.
Show Notes
Transcript
The following transcript is AI generated.
00:00:00 BAILeY
Hello and welcome to data driven.
00:00:02 BAILeY
The podcast where we explore the emerging fields of data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
00:00:09 BAILeY
In this episode, Frank and Andy speak with Dan Burke or Dan is a serial entrepreneur who has founded four companies each on the forefront of a major technology wave, open source software, the smartphone.
00:00:23 BAILeY
Cloud computing and now machine learning.
00:00:26 BAILeY
Currently he leads Nam Eml, a company focused on helping app developers start and grow mobile subscription businesses.
00:00:34 BAILeY
If you follow Frank and or Andy on social media, you certainly have heard them bang on about their secret project.
00:00:41 BAILeY
I will drop a one word hint here foreshadowing.
00:00:45 BAILeY
Now on with the show.
00:00:48 Frank
Hello and welcome back to data driven.
00:00:50 Frank
The podcast where we explore the emerging fields of data science machine learning, an artificial intelligence, and if you like to think of data as the new oil, then you could consider us Car Talk.
00:01:02 Frank
Because we focus on where the rubber hits the road.
00:01:05 Frank
So with that as my guest on this pandemic road trip, that hasn’t happened.
Yeah.
00:01:13 Frank
By my copilot here is Andy Leonard.
00:01:16 Frank
How you doing Andy?
00:01:17 Andy
Hey, I’m doing pretty good Frank how are you?
00:01:20 Frank
I’m doing well, I’m doing well.
00:01:21 Frank
I had a kind of an architecture session this morning, so that went really well.
00:01:27 Frank
It was.
00:01:28 Frank
It was an interesting conversation and I love doing those.
00:01:31 Frank
Those are always fun.
00:01:32 Frank
How about?
00:01:32 Andy
Yeah.
00:01:33 Andy
Yeah, so I’m proofing the next book.
00:01:36 Andy
Proofing is the absolute last chance to remove all of the typos I’ve left in.
00:01:42 Andy
As I’ve gone through the last three full edit sessions and there’s still some there.
00:01:47 Andy
Frank, I’m convinced that the next book is going to have, you know, have a fair share of those.
00:01:52 Andy
What I’m really concerned about.
00:01:54 Andy
Is making sure that the demos work an yeah that’s you know it’s it’s tedious and it’s the LastPass so you know it’s like is this over yet? Yeah, I’m sick and tired of reading this guy’s writing and it’s me so.
00:02:10 Andy
Yeah no.
00:02:10 Andy
But yeah.
00:02:12 Frank
That was the hardest part.
00:02:13 Frank
People asking.
00:02:14 Frank
Like when I wrote a book on Silverlight an aside from it being about Silverlight, the hardest thing wasn’t so much writing, it was having to go back and re edit my own stuff and like.
00:02:24 Frank
You know, and I would look at it and be like man like I’m a terrible or.
00:02:28 Andy
That’s I have said over and over again to my computer monitor who wrote this crap.
00:02:33 Andy
By a friend if you live.
00:02:33 Andy
But Fortunately for this is a second edition, so an it’s one of those second editions where I kept the first 10 or 11 chapters.
00:02:43 Andy
I I changed from my writing language.
00:02:46 Andy
I wrote it like three years ago.
00:02:48 Andy
And I really this grew out of a series of blog posts that I wrote back in 2012. It was all in VB back then, Visual Basic. And so I wrote it that way in 2017 and for the 2nd edition I went back and updated all of that. That’s really the only thing I changed was I went to C sharp.
00:03:06 Andy
An I kind of needed to because the rest of the book was going to be in C sharp anyway.
00:03:12 Andy
And so yeah, that’s that’s kind of how it went.
00:03:15 Andy
And for anybody listen, it thinks wow, Andy is smart.
00:03:18 Andy
He’s written a book about C sharp.
00:03:20 Andy
He must know C sharp really, really well.
00:03:22 Andy
I say throughout the book I am not a C sharp developer.
00:03:26 Andy
I feel like I’m working my way up to being a noob, but but.
00:03:29 Frank
Don’t you work classes?
00:03:31 Andy
I do wear glasses.
00:03:33 Andy
Yes, yeah.
00:03:33 Frank
So you can see sharp.
00:03:36 Andy
I did.
00:03:36 Andy
They took me awhile.
00:03:37 Andy
Do you have your sound effects running from I?
00:03:39 Frank
Do were back in Zend Caster.
00:03:41 Frank
So for folks listening like I don’t remember this being on the live stream.
00:03:45 Frank
If it’s not, we’re doing this the old fashioned way right then, and don’t worry, Andy and I’ve been live streaming a lot, which you probably noticed, but today we have a very special guest, don’t we, Andy?
00:03:48 Frank
Um?
00:03:56 Andy
Yeah yeah, Dan Burke all is awesome.
00:04:00 Andy
He’s a co-founder and CEO and I hope I say this right, is it?
00:04:04 Andy
Is it nami? Nami ML Dan.
00:04:07 Dan Burcaw
Yeah nami. Like tsunami.
00:04:09 Andy
Ah OK, I got it right the first time NAMI AML and it’s a really smart service for monetizing digital products with subscriptions.
00:04:09 Frank
Well.
00:04:19 Andy
And just he’s had a whole ton of experience working in, you know, in marketing for the Oracle Marketing Cloud, working with the mobile product for that.
00:04:31 Andy
So pretty smart Guy joined joined Oracle back during the acquisition of Push IO and.
00:04:39 Andy
Push IO was a leading mobile messaging provider as well.
00:04:44 Andy
And he served there as a Co founder and CEO.
00:04:47 Andy
There’s a bunch more in here about Nan, an it all kind of boils down to super smart, successful guy.
00:04:54 Andy
We’ve had a little bit of banner before we click the record button an I can attest to.
00:04:59 Andy
That is really enjoyable conversation.
00:05:01 Andy
I look forward to this show.
00:05:02 Andy
Thanks for being here, Dan.
00:05:05 Speaker 1
Really happy to be here.
00:05:05 Speaker 1
Really happy to be here.
00:05:06 Speaker 1
Thanks for having me.
00:05:07 Frank
Awesome, so you’re a serial entrepreneur and you founded a bunch of companies.
00:05:13 Frank
Um, but my favorite part of the bio I read on you was that.
00:05:18 Frank
You wrote software that ended up on a nuclear submarine.
00:05:23 Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s right.
00:05:26 Speaker 1
It’s it’s hard.
00:05:26 Frank
That that totally away I was like what?
00:05:29 Speaker 1
It it’s it’s hard to even tell that story sometimes because it’s so unbelievable.
00:05:35 Speaker 1
I 17 years old at the time.
00:05:38 Speaker 1
The company that I cofounded was building a flavor of Linux.
00:05:46 Speaker 1
A flavor of Linux that was designed to run on Apple Macintosh hardware.
00:05:52 Speaker 1
And at the time.
00:05:52 Frank
Interesting.
00:05:54 Speaker 1
Then the the reason for that was that Apple was using the power PC chip power PC chip in that moment of time. You know, we’re kind of talking in the late 90s. Early 2000s had fantastic price per performance per Watt, which is a metric that a lot of folks in the kind of high performance computing world look at when they’re trying to figure out.
00:06:11 Andy
Me.
00:06:18 Speaker 1
How to build these kind of supercomputer clusters?
00:06:21 Speaker 1
And so it just happened at that moment in time, the Mac would had had the best price performance per Watt because of the chips that they.
00:06:29 Speaker 1
We’re using and so we we ended up doing a deal with Lockheed Martin and the US Navy to build a cluster of Macs running Linux.
00:06:45 Speaker 1
That were deployed across the US Navy nuclear sub fleet for the purpose of doing sonar image processing, yeah.
00:06:53 Andy
Wow.
00:06:55 Speaker 1
The the the software that I wrote was related to.
00:07:00 Speaker 1
You know how folks on the boat would have to manage these units if there was issues, how would you know?
00:07:07 Speaker 1
Kind of the maintainability repair ability was a big issue when you’re actually out at sea and trying to have this stuff run in kind of a mission critical fashion so.
00:07:17 Speaker 1
We ended up.
00:07:17 Speaker 1
I mean it was this was such a crazy project because the hardware was modified hardware.
00:07:22 Speaker 1
It wasn’t off the shelf Apple hardware, it was Apple Hardware and then we did a bunch of things to it and then it was Linux and then it was some custom software that made the whole thing operate an.
00:07:35 Speaker 1
So it’s it was.
00:07:37 Speaker 1
It was a nutty project, an I’m.
00:07:40 Speaker 1
Looking back on it now, I’m surprised that it had ever shipped quite frankly.
00:07:46 Frank
Spoken like a true engineer, right?
00:07:48 Frank
You’re always you always look at your flaws and like Oh my God, that’s actually running.
00:07:56 Frank
So so you you where did you go after that?
00:08:00 Frank
’cause it says you know you’re a serial entrepreneur and so how did you get into?
00:08:05 Frank
I don’t want to steal.
00:08:06 Frank
Kind of our pre canned questions Thunder but.
00:08:11 Frank
Tell me how did you get into A&ML? Or were you doing ML on those on those retrofitted Max?
00:08:18 Speaker 1
No, we weren’t.
00:08:19 Speaker 1
We weren’t, but but you know, I think that part of the hype that world of high performance computing where a lot of our customers were, you know, national labs or defense oriented things.
00:08:30 Speaker 1
I mean, part of the appeal of what we were offering in that period of time was that they were running algorithms an doing some of this stuff.
00:08:39 Speaker 1
You know, obviously ahead ahead ahead of their time and they need it.
00:08:43 Speaker 1
There wasn’t the cloud computing yet, so they were literally just trying to assemble the biggest.
00:08:49 Speaker 1
Supercomputers using off the shelf hardware that they possibly could so we weren’t writing the algorithms.
00:08:55 Speaker 1
We were more enabling these algorithms to be run, but I would say the Fast forward is that in terms of my career, is that working on that led to?
00:09:09 Speaker 1
Being involved in sort of the mobile ecosystem from the launch of the App Store and the iPhone back in 2000, seven 2008 and in a way it was very very similar to what we did with the submarines. Because you were dealing with constrained hard.
00:09:25 Speaker 1
Where you always had to care about performance and battery life and battery life, less so on the Subs.
00:09:31 Speaker 1
But some of the same sort of constraints where you’re trying to get the best performance you can out of these things and operating in that mobile landscape and building apps for some of the largest consumer brands.
00:09:46 Speaker 1
And then you guys mentioned in the in the intro about push IO.
00:09:49 Speaker 1
This mobile messaging company that we.
00:09:51 Speaker 1
Built, we ended up at Oracle building this mobile marketing engine is part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud an and one of the things that we saw there is that now.
00:10:03 Speaker 1
Fast forward to kind of more modern times and there’s such a prevalent use out there of.
00:10:11 Speaker 1
Technology like email, you know email marketing systems and push notifications in the world of mobile in order to tackle kind of a fundamental problem that exists with some of these products, which is the user.
00:10:28 Speaker 1
Download your app, let’s say, and they use it and then and then they churn, and then they abandon an and you as a publisher of a product like this, is one of the battles that you’re trying to fight is how do I get them back into the experience and so are sort of observation is we were.
00:10:44 Andy
Right?
00:10:48 Speaker 1
You know, done our tenure there and we’re looking to do something next.
00:10:52 Speaker 1
And new was a couple of things.
00:10:55 Speaker 1
The first thing we saw was that with the iPhone 10, I think it was.
00:11:01 Speaker 1
Apple released.
00:11:02 Speaker 1
Face ID.
00:11:03 Speaker 1
And that was using algorithms running on the device, so the benefit was you could unlock the phone very, very fast, but also it had some privacy characteristics where Apple doesn’t need your face and the kind of the point cloud representation of your face to be up on their servers somewhere.
00:11:21 Speaker 1
That was really intriguing to us.
00:11:23 Speaker 1
The other thing was that we saw that the app economy, so to speak, was in transition from kind of the early days of where it was paid downloads.
00:11:33 Speaker 1
Transitioning to kind of in app purchases, which the game ecosystem has really been been focused on to trying to create more durable, sustainable revenue models through subscription.
00:11:35 Speaker 1
Which is right?
00:11:46 Speaker 1
And so how we sort of arrived at focusing a lot on data at NAMI.
00:11:53 Speaker 1
Is that it?
00:11:54 Speaker 1
It seemed to us like there was.
00:11:56 Speaker 1
If we we would, we really were excited about an idea that if we could.
00:12:02 Speaker 1
Help the guy.
00:12:04 Speaker 1
Is.
00:12:04 Speaker 1
App publishers a mechanism to send way fewer push notifications.
00:12:10 Speaker 1
An email messages because they had a technology stack that could allow them to detect in the experience, right directly on the device that somebody was showing signs of churn, or that somebody was showing some.
00:12:25 Speaker 1
Early intent that they might be a a candidate to be a subscriber, and so just that idea that maybe there’s a way that we could be part of cutting down the messaging load by making the actual experiences smarter and more intelligent about what users are doing was where we.
00:12:42 Speaker 1
Started.
00:12:43 Frank
That’s interesting.
00:12:43 Frank
That’s it.
00:12:44 Frank
What sorts of signals?
00:12:47 Frank
That you can collect given specially with Apple’s kind of enhanced privacy policies that they’ve been been doing.
00:12:55 Frank
An what?
00:12:56 Frank
What sorts of signals kind of indicate churn?
00:13:00 Speaker 1
So you know it is.
00:13:01 Speaker 1
It’s a great question.
00:13:02 Speaker 1
When we started out we were thing.
00:13:04 Speaker 1
Gain, we’re going to collect all this crazy stuff.
00:13:07 Speaker 1
I mean, we were even thinking at one point in the early prototyping that you know, maybe maybe, what carrier the user is on is some signal.
00:13:16 Speaker 1
Maybe the device form factor, whether it’s the really expensive version of the phone or the lower you know there’s all these things that we were thinking about, but.
00:13:24 Speaker 1
When when?
00:13:27 Speaker 1
And we’re not my cofounder and I are not experts in this field, so one of the things that we did was we recruited our CTO who has a PhD in applied math and had been building data science animal models, kind of in production at, you know, in the real world.
00:13:46 Speaker 1
Applications of places like the Los Angeles Times and Tribune Publishing and one of the first things he told us when he came in was guys like, wait, you’re trying to?
00:13:55 Speaker 1
You don’t need all these days.
00:13:56 Speaker 1
Points a lot of what you’re trying to collect just isn’t isn’t going to move the needle, and So what.
00:13:57 Speaker 1
Huh?
00:14:03 Speaker 1
It really gets to both on the so we look at, you know from subscriptions we’re looking at.
00:14:07 Speaker 1
Kind of two things.
00:14:08 Speaker 1
One is what are signals that show that somebody might be have a propensity to purchase.
00:14:17 Speaker 1
And then, secondarily, that early turn detection, or kind of likelihood to churn.
00:14:23 Speaker 1
And it turns out it’s it’s pretty simple on some level, because it’s really about the behavioral signals around engagement.
00:14:34 Frank
Interesting soon.
00:14:34 Speaker 1
So are they using the app or are they using the app a lot?
00:14:38 Speaker 1
Or they did they used to use it a lot and now they’re not using it as much so those are kind of the key?
00:14:44 Andy
Signals, so you’re not popping up little boxes and saying, do you want to keep using the app?
00:14:51 Andy
Check yes or no.
00:14:54 Speaker 1
No, I mean it’s it’s.
00:14:55 Speaker 1
It’s funny, you know.
00:14:57 Speaker 1
I have a friend that has that has a company that that powers some of that around the ratings right?
00:15:05 Speaker 1
Do you want?
00:15:05 Andy
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:05 Speaker 1
To make this.
00:15:06 Speaker 1
Yep, and you know they have a really fascinating take on it, which is that.
00:15:11 Speaker 1
Because whenever I see one of those, I hit no, I don’t.
00:15:14 Speaker 1
I you know, I just like want to dismiss it an.
00:15:17 Andy
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:18 Speaker 1
Yeah, he’s got a strong viewpoint that by by asking a user a binary question it provides them better data for what they’re trying to do around kind of customer sentiment an so I just thought I was fascinated by that because whenever I see one of those ratings popped up so I just wanted to like.
00:15:34 Andy
Interesting.
00:15:41 Speaker 1
I want to say no, even if I like the experience on some level, I have a visceral reaction that’s just like I leave me.
00:15:47 Frank
No.
00:15:48 Frank
Right, right?
00:15:48 Andy
Well, I wonder if that’s
00:15:48 Frank
Well, it’s always when you’re sorry, ID.
00:15:50 Andy
That’s OK, go ahead.
00:15:52 Frank
It’s always when you’re trying to do something or the kids are screaming like do you want to write this?
00:15:52 Frank
It’s always when you’re.
00:15:56 Frank
Like no, I want to use this stupid app like even if I like it.
00:15:58 Frank
But what I find myself doing and I’ve as I’ll say not now like like remind me later because I’m like it’s a good app.
00:16:05 Frank
I do want to review it but I never get to it.
00:16:06 Andy
Right?
00:16:11 Frank
Sorry, go ahead.
00:16:12 Andy
Yeah, that’s OK.
00:16:13 Andy
My my question was similar.
00:16:14 Andy
It was a you know what does?
00:16:16 Andy
What does that indicate?
00:16:17 Andy
’cause I do what you do and you know what both of you said you do?
00:16:20 Andy
I most of the time click no or later.
00:16:23 Andy
So what is the indication of that?
00:16:26 Andy
Is that mean somebody is is happy with the app and they want to get back to it?
00:16:32 Speaker 1
Well, I think for at least that ratings use case the what, they’re what they’re really trying to do is.
Um?
00:16:40 Speaker 1
You know, kind of build, build buckets of users where you want to know if a user is.
00:16:48 Speaker 1
If somebody says no to that prompt, well, you might want to provide a mechanism for them to leave some comments or some feedback.
00:16:57 Speaker 1
Or, or you know, target them with some messaging such that you can understand what they’re not happy with versus in with the rationale being.
00:17:07 Speaker 1
Let’s try to keep a bad review off the App Store.
Efficiency, yeah.
00:17:10 Speaker 1
Let’s try to.
00:17:11 Speaker 1
Let’s try to get the data.
00:17:13 Speaker 1
Create a customer feedback loop that we can have a dialogue with the customer rather than kind of this blind review that we don’t really have a way to kind of address.
00:17:21 Speaker 1
Other than you know, aggregate trend.
00:17:24 Speaker 1
Yeah, so that’s part of what they’re trying to do and then people that say, yeah, I love it.
Interesting.
00:17:28 Speaker 1
You know?
00:17:29 Speaker 1
Yeah, put, push them over to leave a review because it’s probably going to be a good one.
00:17:33 Speaker 1
And unfortunately, you know in these app ecosystems, reviews and ratings do have a real, maybe I say unfortunately, and I’m not sure if it’s unfortunate really, but these reviews have a bearing on searchability in.
00:17:46 Speaker 1
And whether somebody’s going to discover your app so, so that’s why it matters.
00:17:52 Frank
No, that’s very true.
00:17:54 Frank
And plus, I also wonder in terms of churn or usage.
00:17:58 Frank
I mean, there’s so many experiences, and I think there’s some apps that just notify you all the time, and eventually I’ll either uninstall the app or just turn off notifications from it.
00:18:09 Frank
Do you have that data to like you know how many you know.
00:18:13 Frank
Can you see when the users turned off notifications?
00:18:18 Speaker 1
That’s I mean, sure, we could have that data we don’t, that’s not part of our set of signals, so we’re really trying to drive what we’re trying to build really is a.
00:18:23 Frank
Oh, OK.
00:18:32 Speaker 1
’cause building the mobile part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud and that in in in a lot of the Oracle marketing cloud is about giving folks that do a lot of things.
00:18:41 Speaker 1
Commerce or E Commerce.
00:18:43 Speaker 1
You know, this kind of powerful platform where you can message.
00:18:46 Speaker 1
The user kind of in, in in the right channel, so SMS display ads, email push kind of based upon things like hey maybe they put something in their shopping cart and they didn’t complete the transaction and you want to you want them to not abandon that car.
00:19:02 Speaker 1
You want them to complete the cart, but that’s an ecommerce use case.
00:19:06 Speaker 1
We’re really.
00:19:08 Speaker 1
What we’ve identified is that in this move to subscriptions and kind of digital subscriptions, there’s not really a marketing system out there that helps folks manage.
00:19:18 Speaker 1
How they how they communicate with their users, their subscribers, their former subscribers, etc.
00:19:26 Speaker 1
Because a subscription is a life cycle, it’s not just a purchase in a moment in time, and so you have to message way more intelligently and be informed by that context of the life cycle.
00:19:39 Speaker 1
So for example, if somebody.
00:19:41 Speaker 1
Has subscribed, maybe they’ve had a couple of renewals and now they’ve turned off auto renew.
00:19:48 Speaker 1
Well, that is a signal for sure that and I don’t need a fancy algorithm to know that.
00:19:53 Speaker 1
That means that this user is showing some some indication that they are probably going to churn out of the subscription.
00:20:00 Andy
Right?
00:20:00 Andy
Right?
00:20:00 Speaker 1
Maybe they’re not sure gonna turn out of the entire experience if it has a freemium piece.
00:20:05 Speaker 1
Um, but here’s The thing is that in that window, when they turn off auto renew to when that the next renewal is, it’s not minutes.
00:20:13 Speaker 1
It’s probably days or weeks, or maybe even months, depending on the billing frequency of the original subscription.
00:20:20 Speaker 1
And so you got an opportunity in that in that window too.
00:20:25 Speaker 1
Remind users about the value of the product.
00:20:28 Speaker 1
Right and and it’s OK that some users cancel, right?
00:20:31 Speaker 1
Because the thing about the subscription economy is that it’s trying to find folks that are a great match for the product that you’re offering versus so subscriptions aren’t a scam.
00:20:42 Speaker 1
If you do it right, it is.
00:20:44 Speaker 1
It’s meant for you to find your best customers.
00:20:48 Speaker 1
Not, not everybody is a good candidate for for every app subscription, and that’s totally OK.
Yeah.
00:20:54 Speaker 1
And so rather than marketing this kind of massive audience, what you’re really trying to do is find users who are a great fit and really can become fans and advocates of your brand.
00:21:05 Andy
But doesn’t that start by mass marketing?
00:21:05 Frank
Interesting.
00:21:10 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I mean you’re right in the sense that.
00:21:13 Speaker 1
And that’s why the ratings matter and and the whole acquisition.
00:21:15 Andy
Yeah.
00:21:16 Speaker 1
I mean, you gotta find the funnel, yeah?
Yeah.
00:21:20 Speaker 1
But but what’s actually interesting is that you know there in the mobile ecosystem, there’s a lot of effort spent around.
00:21:27 Speaker 1
Acquiring installs and you pay these cost per install campaigns where you may.
00:21:34 Speaker 1
You guys may have seen it on some of the social networks where it’s an ad for an app and if you click through to the app to the ad it will take you to one of the stores and then you want to install install that app and.
00:21:48 Speaker 1
So what happens though is that a lot of marketers are measuring.
00:21:51 Speaker 1
You know, am I getting a good CPI?
00:21:54 Speaker 1
Am I getting a good cost per install rate right?
00:21:57 Speaker 1
Am I spending as little money as I can to get that install right?
00:22:02 Speaker 1
An that’s for that long or that kind of why the why?
00:22:06 Speaker 1
Part of the funnel on acquisition?
00:22:07 Speaker 1
Right, but what?
00:22:10 Speaker 1
What isn’t happening as much in part because there’s been gaps in in the data an this is one of the things that we’re trying to help with is.
00:22:18 Speaker 1
That it may actually be that the user that’s the less the least expensive to acquire the install isn’t actually the user.
00:22:29 Speaker 1
The type of user that is has the best lifetime value from a subscription perspective, you might be willing to pay more for an install if it’s more.
Right?
00:22:39 Speaker 1
It may, if it’s a better match to your business objective.
00:22:44 Speaker 1
So that’s some of what’s happening out there and and some of the old school.
00:22:48 Speaker 1
Or I say old school.
00:22:49 Speaker 1
It’s really not.
00:22:50 Speaker 1
But how one thinks about acquisition and kind of the broader mobile ecosystem I think needs to be looked at differently if you’re trying to offer a.
00:22:59 Speaker 1
Subscription subscription revenue stream.
00:23:02 Andy
Well, I I hear you I’m an I’m I’m there actually one of the one of the businesses that I run is is products that are subscribed to an, you know, collecting data even even getting data to start with when you’re starting blind.
00:23:19 Andy
Is incredibly challenging because one of the things we were looking for is what do we gotta do to get somebody to buy this?
00:23:28 Andy
And I know that sounds silly, but this is not a trivial, you know, a trivial subscription amount and you know it’s a it’s a product that has huge arali but.
00:23:40 Andy
You know, getting somebody to plop down, you know hundreds or thousands of dollars for a subscription based on monthly or yearly is still a quite a bit of friction to overcome.
00:23:52 Andy
So I I get exactly what you’re saying.
00:23:54 Andy
You kind of you jumped over it, but you said something really important awhile ago.
00:23:58 Andy
You said subscriptions aren’t a scam and I think some of the market sees that.
00:24:03 Andy
You know, sees it that way. It’s an. It’s all you know this. It’s different when you’re charging someone $0.99. And when you’re charging them 99 bucks or 999 bucks.
00:24:17 Speaker 1
Yeah, and that to be clear, there are scammy subscriptions out there.
Oh yeah, yeah.
00:24:21 Speaker 1
It’s not to say those don’t exist, it’s just that if you actually want to build a durable, we focus on the durability of the subscription business.
00:24:28 Speaker 1
If you want to build a real subscription business that has longevity and has a really nice growing subscriber base, then that can’t be a scam.
00:24:36 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:24:38 Andy
Right, and the word we use internally is.
00:24:38 Frank
Right?
00:24:41 Andy
I like durable.
00:24:42 Andy
We use sustainable.
00:24:44 Andy
So I absolutely love that.
00:24:46 Andy
It’s very encouraging to hear you say that Dan.
00:24:50 Andy
So thanks for that.
00:24:52 Frank
I also think that.
00:24:54 Frank
It’s not just software that’s going into subscription model and I was very sceptical of the subscription model myself.
00:25:01 Frank
I thought it was a scam.
00:25:01 Frank
Was like oh OK.
00:25:02 Frank
So instead of buying like one shrink rock box box every like so many years now I have to pay somebody every month.
00:25:09 Frank
One thing that turned my opinion around on the whole notion of it being a scam.
00:25:15 Frank
Not that they are, you know, you know what I mean? It is Adobe, right? Like at one point to get everything in the Adobe product suite. I mean it was $13,000.
00:25:26 Frank
An I just wasn’t going to spend that much money to get all that, but when they switch to Creative Cloud and it’s you know 25 or $50 a month, that is far more palatable. And I also think from my point of view that’s far more palatable and predictable.
00:25:42 Frank
But also from the from the company side.
00:25:45 Frank
You know it’s it’s less money.
00:25:47 Frank
Per customer per month. But it is a per month as opposed to you know every 18 or 20 four months. You know they would get a you know $13,000 from somebody to buy that box, ET cetera, ET cetera so.
00:26:00 Frank
I, I think that’s an interesting thing and and now we’re starting to see the subscription model kind of come to content.
00:26:00 BAILeY
Right?
00:26:08 Frank
Uh, you know Disney plus D plus Peacock.
00:26:13 Frank
I mean everybody has every media company starting to do their own streaming model.
00:26:18 Frank
So I think your timing is really good to kind of, you know.
00:26:24 Frank
Analyze and kind of understand this ’cause I think so.
00:26:28 Frank
The subscription model is here to stay.
00:26:30 Speaker 1
Yeah, and I think how we think about the categories is that it really could be anything.
00:26:39 Speaker 1
I just saw yesterday with the Tesla earnings report that they were talking about offering their full self driving.
00:26:46 Speaker 1
I know that I’ll put the asterisks behind that marketing label, but.
00:26:50 Frank
Listen, but
00:26:51 Speaker 1
That currently, that’s a you know multi $1000 add-on and now they’re going to offer it as a subscription so more people.
00:26:56 Speaker 1
Right?
00:27:00 Speaker 1
You can access that.
00:27:02 Speaker 1
I think that’s exactly what you’re saying with the creative suite.
00:27:05 Speaker 1
The Creative cloud example is that you know at the shrink box price points they were just not going to be able to reach all the people that have a creative fiber that would have been able to do something amazing with that software had they had it.
00:27:21 Andy
Right?
00:27:23 Speaker 1
The other thing is is we talk about this a little bit like the plus ification, right? Everybody’s calling this Disney Plus or whatever, plus the classification of everything and so you could imagine even in an industry like heavy equipment, you know what’s the subscription service for the John Deere tractor?
00:27:44 Frank
Right is is.
00:27:45 Speaker 1
It actually accessing the tractor, you know is it?
00:27:48 Speaker 1
Is it a subscription where you you?
00:27:50 Speaker 1
You know it’s almost like a lease?
00:27:52 Speaker 1
Or is it a.
00:27:55 Speaker 1
Add on service where you can leverage that piece of physical plant and equipment using through more bells and whistles.
00:28:03 Speaker 1
More capabilities that are unlocked through software.
00:28:06 Andy
You know that is a very interesting use case, and since I live in FarmVille, VA, not the game, I have to say that every time.
00:28:15 Andy
Never played the game, but I’ve had people.
00:28:18 Andy
Read my feeds and go.
00:28:20 Andy
You know you play that game all the time.
00:28:22 Andy
I’m going out to water the chickens or work in the garden or the greenhouse.
00:28:26 Andy
I’ve never played that game so but it’s.
00:28:28 Frank
Actually doing it like that’s The funny thing people are realizing.
00:28:30 Andy
Yeah, for real.
00:28:31 Andy
Yeah, for real the you know what you could do though with the John Deere subscription is you could access the tools like maybe you need a tillage tool or a disc ’cause you only need those you know a few weeks a year.
00:28:34 Andy
So John Deere.
00:28:47 Andy
And rather than go out and pay $10,000 for this, you know superdisk, that’ll you know really cut down the amount of passes you have to make an, you know, just do everything well rather than just pay for that out, right? Let’s say it’s I don’t know $15,000. You can just subscribe for 150 bucks a month.
00:29:07 Andy
And go get it when you need it.
00:29:13 Andy
If anyone from John Deere’s listening you cut me in for actually, you should cut dandy on on for percentage of that. He’s the one who’s brought it up, but.
00:29:17 Andy
And for a project.
00:29:24 Andy
You know there it is a lot of that service, you know.
00:29:28 Andy
Service at scale.
00:29:30 Andy
You know for subscriptions.
00:29:31 Andy
I know Frank works at the Microsoft Technology Center and he helps a lot of customers think how they can apply Azure to their business.
00:29:41 Andy
Model.
00:29:42 Andy
And that’s one of the nicest things about having that technology scaling is you can go move the slider.
00:29:48 Andy
You know, the classic example is the income tax business.
00:29:51 Andy
And when you need it, you just go move the slider all the way up, and then when you’re done, you move it all the way back down.
00:29:59 BAILeY
Right?
00:30:01 Frank
Did we lose Dan or is he just really quiet?
00:30:02 Speaker 1
No, I’m here now I’m here.
00:30:04 Frank
OK, good working.
00:30:04 Speaker 1
I’m just thinking I’m I’m just thinking about the.
00:30:07 Speaker 1
Form an excite?
00:30:09 Speaker 1
Did it?
00:30:10 Speaker 1
I mean, that’s the thing that’s exciting.
00:30:11 Speaker 1
Is that?
00:30:12 Speaker 1
Where does this all go?
00:30:13 Speaker 1
And it’s not just about make packaging something as a subscription, but back to the creative example.
00:30:18 Speaker 1
Great example.
00:30:19 Speaker 1
What?
Yeah.
00:30:20 Speaker 1
How much more amazing content has been created by create tours because of access, ability to the tools and so.
00:30:30 Speaker 1
Take take that the farming. Take that to any of these other categories where you know hey, maybe I need a crane to do something, but you know, to rent a crane’s expensive right. So it’s just interesting. How might might.
00:30:43 Speaker 1
Make.
Yeah.
00:30:44 Speaker 1
Things that have traditionally been incredibly specialized, inexpensive, more accessible.
00:30:52 Frank
No, that’s true, and it I think it I think it’s a win win for everybody because it’s more accessible.
00:30:57 Frank
You also have a shorter feedback loop.
00:31:01 Frank
Have to get paid for the company.
00:31:04 Frank
So I think it it’s not that typical and software has been kind of moving towards us.
00:31:07 Frank
Anyway, you know what I mean like?
00:31:10 Frank
You know the continuous delivery or continuous integration and that sort of thing is just something that.
00:31:16 Frank
I don’t know if the chicken or the egg came first, but I mean certainly you know if you were only deploying something once a year or every 18 months.
00:31:26 Frank
Certainly you don’t have to have processes in place if you’re deploying something every 18 days.
00:31:31 Frank
It’s a, it’s a.
00:31:32 Frank
It’s a different scale and I think I think it’s interesting to see you’re right that these tools are becoming more and more accessible.
00:31:41 Frank
With that that’s.
00:31:43 Frank
That’s interesting, it’s interesting.
00:31:45 Frank
The farm example is interesting ’cause I know there’s a lot of controversy about right to repair, particularly bringing John Deere, I think is somewhere in that.
00:31:53 Frank
So I wonder how?
00:31:55 Frank
I wonder how that will shake out.
00:31:56 Frank
Do you do you think that’s?
00:31:58 Frank
Even Tangental, or is it just kind of you know, Frank had too much coffee today.
00:32:09 Speaker 1
Yeah, I don’t know the answer to that.
00:32:10 Speaker 1
That’s definitely above my pay grade.
00:32:12 Speaker 1
And outside of my industry sector expertise.
00:32:15 Speaker 1
But you know, if you have to, if you have to even ask if that’s a question that comes up.
00:32:21 Speaker 1
It’s sort of like the robe.
00:32:24 Speaker 1
Or taxi use case where you know you hear people talk about well, who takes the liability?
00:32:31 Speaker 1
Um, if if the robotaxi you know run somebody over is it?
00:32:35 Speaker 1
Is it Tesla is it?
00:32:37 Speaker 1
Is it the person that owns the Tesla?
00:32:39 Speaker 1
Is it the Uber service that operates the network and you know what?
00:32:43 Speaker 1
I think it’s just going to get figured out and it will take some time and there will be like everything you know.
Yeah.
00:32:50 Speaker 1
With the the right guard where rails probably won’t be there on the on day one, but then there will be unfortunately an incident or something and then it will get sorted out, although I think in that particular case people are being a little more proactive thinking about some of these doom scenarios.
Right?
00:33:05 Andy
Well, when it’s life and death, that makes perfect sense.
00:33:09 Andy
You know, just circling back down a little bit.
00:33:13 Andy
’cause I like Frank, I absolutely love you.
00:33:17 Andy
Said it twice.
00:33:18 Andy
Now about how many things have been created using the the Adobe Suite because a whole different group of people got access.
00:33:28 Andy
Two, that technology I I think 2 about the about Adobe.
00:33:34 Andy
You know how?
00:33:35 Andy
I wonder how the economics worked out for them.
00:33:38 Andy
I wonder if if they grew enough.
00:33:42 Andy
To overcome the $13,000 price point every so many years or months, Frank, you know, I wonder how that total amount of income compares to the amount of income that’s trickling in by comparison, you know each month at 25 or $50 a month.
00:34:03 Frank
Yeah, I mean that’s interesting. I mean that that’s how data driven is produced. Anything you see me do on, you know video eyes on social media. I mean, that’s I I have Premier. I have. I have the whole suite. This is edited in audition and filter to audition. And honestly like you know, I wasn’t going to drop $13,000.
Huh?
00:34:23 Frank
You know, I think it.
00:34:24 Andy
Right?
00:34:24 Frank
I think you’re right.
00:34:25 Frank
I think it did open up a whole market for them and Adobe.
00:34:28 Frank
Adobe is doing a lot of interesting things.
00:34:30 Frank
I don’t want to go into rabbit Hole on that, but.
00:34:31 Frank
If anyone from Adobe is listening and you love to come on the show.
00:34:35 Frank
We could talk.
00:34:36 Frank
But but yeah, no, I think it.
00:34:39 Frank
I think it’s it’s.
00:34:40 Frank
It’s the fascinating shift and I think I think you’re right.
00:34:42 Frank
I think companies were sceptical an I think that I think it consumers were skeptical, you know.
00:34:51 Frank
I mean Microsoft.
00:34:52 Frank
Yeah, I think when Microsoft and Adobe Shift that I think the consumers kind of and generally IT departments in general.
00:34:59 Frank
Kind of made that shift too, because you know you don’t have to buy office every so often.
00:35:05 Frank
You know, however much that would cost for an enterprise.
00:35:08 Frank
You just subscribe per month per user.
00:35:11 Frank
So you can scale up and scale down your costs.
00:35:11 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:35:14 Frank
I think that you know.
00:35:16 Frank
Obviously I work for Microsoft and you know, they pay my mortgage and all that, but I mean, I think that’s a great example.
00:35:21 Frank
You know, ’cause think about how ubiquitous offices and I guess I do have access to the financials.
00:35:28 Frank
But if you look at Microsoft stock, I mean it’s done pretty well.
00:35:32 Frank
Probably in in no small part.
00:35:34 Frank
The fact that it is subscription based and you know you don’t have to buy and stand up a server.
00:35:39 Frank
You just kind of.
00:35:40 Frank
It’s everything as a service.
00:35:42 Frank
You know what I mean like?
00:35:43 Frank
Even even in the you know small businesses, they can get, you know, if they pay X amount per month, they’ll have the same access that large enterprises do.
00:35:52 Frank
You know with the telephony and all the all the bells and whistles you get on office.
00:35:57 Speaker 1
Also, the mindset of scale down is really important because it’s OK if somebody needs to, you know go to fewer seats, or in the case of consumer software, OK.
00:36:08 Speaker 1
If somebody turns out of the subscription.
00:36:11 Speaker 1
So here’s an interesting feature.
00:36:13 Speaker 1
So the Google ecosystem Google Play.
00:36:17 Speaker 1
They have a mechanism where if you try to cancel a subscription in one of your apps, they give you an opportunity to pause the subscription.
00:36:27 Speaker 1
Which I think is very fascinating an that’s another signal, right?
00:36:31 Speaker 1
Because sometimes people.
00:36:34 Speaker 1
Want to cancel because they want to shift the dollars somewhere else or they want to?
00:36:38 Speaker 1
You know, they want to save some money this month.
00:36:41 Andy
Right?
00:36:41 Speaker 1
That doesn’t mean they don’t like the product, it just means they’re trying to reallocate resources.
Right?
00:36:46 Speaker 1
Pause is interesting because it gives the publisher a signal that, hey, this user is not upset with the experience.
00:36:54 Speaker 1
They just need to take a break.
00:36:58 Frank
Interesting, I like that.
00:36:59 Andy
That’s very interesting.
00:37:02 Andy
Very very cool.
00:37:03 Andy
Well Dan, we have a list of questions that we usually ask guests around this time in the show and the very first question is how did you find your way into data and kind of as a clarification of that?
00:37:17 Andy
Did data find you or did you find data?
00:37:25 Speaker 1
Well, it it it probably found it probably found me in in in the sense that the eye opening experience working inside the Oracle Marketing Cloud was kind of seeing the the ad tech part of the world and how companies are trying to stitch together data.
00:37:46 Speaker 1
Across all these disparate sources, in order to have a more fulsome understanding of the user, they’re trying to market to.
Uh huh.
00:37:54 Speaker 1
So that was that was pretty eye opening because you know, we’ve all had the experience where the banner ad kind of follows you throughout the Internet.
00:38:02 Speaker 1
We kind of understand why that’s happening.
00:38:06 Speaker 1
Really, really interesting.
00:38:08 Speaker 1
It quite frankly informed why with Nami we’re trying to use things like the on device machine learning capabilities an and focus our our collection and try to minimize things like PII.
00:38:21 Speaker 1
An other kind of more personal information.
00:38:27 Speaker 1
And yet still drive some of these.
00:38:29 Speaker 1
Emals based solutions because we didn’t want to necessarily build something that was just another part of this, this very privacy unfriendly part of the ecosystem.
00:38:41 Andy
Right?
00:38:43 Frank
Interesting and an the privacy and the PII and the management of that is a moving target.
00:38:49 Frank
Isn’t it with all the legislation in Russia?
00:38:50 Speaker 1
At sure Oh yeah, sure is and and some, especially in the in I don’t see especially.
00:38:56 Speaker 1
But in the mobile space there’s been.
00:38:58 Speaker 1
You know analytics tools and all these other solutions for years now that have taken approach of basically vacuum up everything and it’s going to be much harder for those guys to stay compliant with ever changing regulation when that’s how they’ve architected their whole system.
00:39:06 Andy
It’s.
00:39:17 Speaker 1
We’ve architected to try to be.
00:39:19 Speaker 1
More of a data minimalist.
00:39:21 Speaker 1
Now it means there’s some engineering challenges, right?
00:39:25 Speaker 1
Eight we we we make our our lives a little bit harder, but we just think that it’s if if it gives us more.
00:39:36 Speaker 1
It gives us a better position to be in relative to regulation, but more importantly, we’re trying to think about this as end users ourselves and try to strike a little bit of a more mindful thread about what data am I willing to give up to get something in return.
00:39:56 Speaker 1
Instead of just assuming that you know.
00:39:59 Speaker 1
Users are going to be fine giving everything up and but they’re not.
00:40:03 Frank
Right consent driven model.
00:40:05 Frank
I think you’re right has has a future.
00:40:10 Frank
So R’s, I’m sorry, go ahead.
00:40:10 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:40:12 Speaker 1
No, I was just gonna say so that I guess data kind of found me, but here we are.
00:40:19 Frank
So second question, what’s your favorite part of your current gig?
00:40:25 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, there’s there’s two answers to that.
00:40:30 Speaker 1
I mean, one is that I’ve got such a great team and nurturing the team and recruiting new people and that part of it just as a non technical.
00:40:41 Speaker 1
Side is really great an it’s especially so because while we’re we’re working on, you know we’re not.
00:40:48 Speaker 1
We’re not trying to cure cancer and So what it means is that we have to figure out how to talk about what we’re doing in a way that people get excited about.
00:40:59 Speaker 1
And what I found is that.
00:41:01 Speaker 1
Some of the topics around privacy.
00:41:03 Speaker 1
Some of the topics around trying to engineer at scale and some of the things that we’re doing it just.
00:41:09 Speaker 1
It’s just a really attractive recruiting.
00:41:12 Speaker 1
Opportunity for us an and it’s just that the team that we’ve been able to put together is just.
Yes.
00:41:18 Speaker 1
I can’t see anything.
00:41:19 Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s it’s.
00:41:19 Speaker 1
It’s it blows me away.
00:41:23 Speaker 1
The second part though, is that.
00:41:26 Speaker 1
We’re kind of creating a category this subscription marketing system that we’re building.
00:41:31 Speaker 1
It’s kind of a new thing, and so that’s exciting.
00:41:35 Speaker 1
Both because we’re kind of plowing our own frontier.
00:41:39 Speaker 1
But we’re trying to to do that informed by all these lessons from companies that we’ve been involved in in the past.
00:41:48 Speaker 1
So be it going.
00:41:49 Speaker 1
There’s still examples going all the way back to that shrink wrap software containing Linux for Mac that got deployed on to a submarine that still inform how I think about things or things I did push IO.
00:42:03 Speaker 1
And then things inside of Oracle, and so you know doing something new but but being informed by the lessons of the past.
00:42:08 Speaker 1
Masters is the other part that’s really exciting for for us.
00:42:13 Speaker 1
And oh, by the way you were doing things in some cases with on device mill that really feels like it’s at the state of the art and maybe we ended up.
00:42:23 Speaker 1
We end up placing some wrong bets on some of this stuff, but it’s still still rewarding to try even if.
00:42:31 Speaker 1
We’re not sure where it’s all going to lead to.
00:42:33 Andy
It makes perfect sense and I I love your emphasis on the shift from, you know, collecting data at the server end of the pipe versus collecting it at, you know, at the point of contact that’s on the phone or device itself that.
00:42:48 Andy
That’s gotta be game changing.
00:42:51 Speaker 1
Yeah, I think there’s going to be whole whole categories of companies that you know web analytics or mobile analytics or some of these other.
00:43:01 Speaker 1
Parts of the marketing or advertising tech stacks that changed that edge based approach hold.
00:43:08 Speaker 1
New companies are kind of the next generation of these categories, so we’re trying to do something kind of new.
00:43:15 Speaker 1
I think there’s existing categories that are going to see some disruption driven by privacy and.
00:43:21 Speaker 1
You know, think about how powerful these devices are.
00:43:24 Speaker 1
There’s no reason they can’t be taking some of the burden, so as much as, yeah, we can scale up our Azure as much as we want.
00:43:32 Speaker 1
You know there’s there can be there all also can be a balance where if I can do more on the device then I can focus my Azure or my other cloud infrastructure on the things that really need to be at the cloud scale.
00:43:46 Andy
Right now it makes perfect sense.
00:43:48 Andy
They really does, so we have three complete.
00:43:53 Andy
This sentence questions next, and so the first is when I’m not working, I enjoy blank.
00:44:04 Speaker 1
Well, normally I would answer that question with one of my hobbies which is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
00:44:12 Speaker 1
However, I am currently on jiu jitsu hiatus, in part from.
00:44:19 Speaker 1
Because of the pandemic, it’s obviously a high contact sport, but also because I’ve got a kiddo on the way, so I’m trying to limit my exposure.
00:44:20 Andy
Sure.
00:44:29 Speaker 1
To kind of anything outside of my house, but it’s a it’s one of the things I like to do an an it’s totally different from technology, but it’s incredibly while a physical sport.
00:44:34 Speaker 1
Right?
00:44:45 Speaker 1
It also activates a different part of my brain and kind of creativity so.
00:44:50 Speaker 1
It’s yeah, it’s so great.
00:44:52 Andy
Well congratulations yeah yeah.
00:44:52 Frank
Well First off, congratulations yeah.
00:44:56 Speaker 1
Yeah, thanks yeah yeah this is so. This will be numbers. This will be this will be #1 so we’re.
00:44:57 Frank
Yes, also, Father Hood is the ultimate trip.
00:45:02 Andy
Oh wow.
00:45:04 Speaker 1
We’re we’re nervous, but excited.
00:45:07 Frank
Now that’s awesome.
00:45:08 Frank
Congrats, it’s a.
Yeah.
00:45:09 Frank
It’s an adventure that never ends.
Uh.
00:45:17 Frank
So of next fill in the blank question is complete this sentence.
00:45:22 Frank
I think the coolest thing in technology today is blank.
00:45:27 Speaker 1
I just think how it surprises us and how it’s applied.
00:45:31 Speaker 1
I mean just that this just this week seeing how you know Reddit meets Robin Hood meets.
00:45:39 Speaker 1
Destroy a hedge fund.
00:45:40 Speaker 1
You know I would have.
00:45:41 Speaker 1
That wouldn’t have been on my bingo card and I’m not necessarily saying that I’m an advocate.
00:45:47 Speaker 1
Eating, using, manipulating the market that way, but it’s, it’s just like we’re constantly surprised by technology, and that’s what makes it so so delightful to work in this field and just see new things that seem so obvious once you experience them.
00:46:02 Speaker 1
But they weren’t obvious until somebody came up with it and put the.
00:46:07 Speaker 1
The love and energy into bringing it to the universe.
00:46:12 Frank
That’s a good point there.
00:46:13 Frank
I think if there if there was a movie about kind of what’s happening with GameStop and read it in the hedge funds, it would have been branded as ridiculous.
00:46:22 Frank
But here we are.
00:46:23 Speaker 1
Here we are.
00:46:24 Speaker 1
The other thing was this week back to Tesla, the new Model S refresh that they did.
00:46:30 Speaker 1
It has this kind of crazy looking steering wheel and I just read an article about ’cause there’s no.
00:46:35 Speaker 1
They got rid of all the little stocks.
00:46:37 Speaker 1
So like the turn signal stock and all that’s gone and so the question was well how do you?
00:46:45 Speaker 1
How do you go into reverse or how do you go into drive?
00:46:48 Speaker 1
An I saw an article that explained it and they’re using.
00:46:51 Speaker 1
They’re trying to use their autopilot cameras to know that hey, if you’re in front of your garage, well, drive isn’t a valid choice, so you must intend to go in reverse, and that blows me away.
00:47:05 Frank
Interesting.
00:47:06 Speaker 1
I mean, we’ll see how that works in the real world.
Sure.
00:47:09 Andy
Yeah.
00:47:10 Speaker 1
Like
00:47:11 Speaker 1
But it again, it’s like that is.
00:47:15 Speaker 1
That is just some some cool technology.
00:47:18 Speaker 1
It will be one of those interesting things, like in a few years this the stock come back because that was maybe a bet that they made too early.
00:47:26 Speaker 1
Or did they?
00:47:27 Speaker 1
Did they get it right?
00:47:29 Frank
Yeah, or will there be an aftermarket for people to install them?
00:47:31 Speaker 1
Yeah Oh yeah.
00:47:34 Speaker 1
Bring your own stock.
00:47:35 Frank
Right, right?
00:47:36 Speaker 1
That’s right.
00:47:37 Andy
Yeah, if you want to go all Dukes of Hazzard then what I mean?
00:47:42 Frank
Get the world with the workshop right?
00:47:42 Andy
Right?
00:47:44 Andy
I guess wow, that’s our next and final complete this sentence.
00:47:50 Andy
I look forward to the day when I can use technology to blank.
00:47:56 Speaker 1
I, I think one of the most annoying things about the Internet is recipes.
00:48:03 Frank
Right?
00:48:06 Speaker 1
Um, I know that sounds crazy, but I I solve this something the other day that said like 20 like food and beverage related websites get like 27% more traffic search traffic then.
00:48:22 Speaker 1
The next top category, and you know we cook a lot.
00:48:25 Speaker 1
Ah.
00:48:27 Speaker 1
We love to cook and try new things and it just feels like it’s a constant struggle and these experiences are because they’re all very like ad driven.
00:48:36 Andy
Yeah.
00:48:36 Speaker 1
You can never actually like see the recipe or the directions are always getting covered in a banner ad and.
00:48:39 Frank
Yeah.
00:48:42 Speaker 1
And so it sounds like something simple, but it’s like I just.
00:48:44 Speaker 1
I want a wonderful experience that can help me explore the world of cooking and kind of know what I like, but also that helps encourage me to try some new things.
00:48:55 Speaker 1
But that’s a delicate balance ’cause you don’t want it to take. Yeah, kind of 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Or maybe you do, but sometimes you just want to be like Oh well, you know this pattern exists. You tend to like to use rices and pastas. Well, what if you introduced into a recipe that you’re already?
00:49:17 Speaker 1
Like to make, why don’t you try to introduce quinoa?
00:49:20 Speaker 1
Or you know and just like kind of a food?
00:49:20 Speaker 1
You know?
Yeah.
00:49:24 Speaker 1
Navigater both in terms of ingredients in flavors, but also in terms of skills.
00:49:30 Speaker 1
Because I’m not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, I’m basically like not even an amateur chef.
00:49:38 Speaker 1
It feels like with some of this stuff coming out of our kitchen, but I’d like to get better and I’d like some help.
00:49:44 Speaker 1
Doing it.
00:49:46 Frank
So it’s funny you mention that because I’m sorry.
00:49:46 Andy
I’ma go ahead, Frank.
00:49:48 Andy
Now go OK.
00:49:49 Frank
No ’cause I’m.
00:49:50 Frank
My wife cooks really well.
00:49:52 Frank
She she’s really good at it and I’m like a noob like boiling water.
00:49:55 Frank
I would have to like look it up online.
00:49:57 Frank
Figure out what.
00:49:59 Frank
But
00:49:59 Frank
So one of the things that I got for Christmas last year was a larger echo show.
00:50:08 Frank
Which is an Amazon Alexa device and as soon as I say her name, she’s probably going to perk up and start chiming in.
00:50:12 Frank
But there is a Food Network or food kitchen to go or something like that.
00:50:18 Frank
It’s called and there’s this whole.
00:50:20 Frank
Cool.
00:50:21 Frank
Recipe making thing that it has.
00:50:24 Frank
So if you go through it, it doesn’t quite do what you said with the recommendations, although I would imagine that with all the smart people at Amazon, I’m sure that that’s coming.
00:50:32 Frank
But what’s cool about it is you can see a video of it being made and you can go through the recipe and the screen stays up.
00:50:40 Frank
Doesn’t like go into.
00:50:41 Frank
The dark mode, which is a problem on my iPad.
00:50:44 Frank
I don’t know.
00:50:45 Frank
I think it’s well designed.
00:50:46 Frank
Is it perfect?
00:50:47 Frank
No.
00:50:47 Frank
Do I need to do a lot to learn how to cook?
00:50:50 Frank
Oh yeah, but I think it’s a step in the right direction and in particular.
00:50:54 Frank
The I don’t know, I just think it’s fascinating that you can, and with when you’re cooking, your hands are usually busy and their or their messy.
00:51:01 Frank
I think the voice UI aspect of the electric devices I think, lends itself to a significant advantage there, so I don’t know.
00:51:10 Frank
I think it’s cool, but you know, I’m a nerd, so.
00:51:14 Frank
And it works for me to get a better Amazon Echo so.
00:51:17 Andy
There you go.
00:51:18 Andy
I I was gonna share that I’m a professional eater I think.
00:51:23 Andy
Not.
00:51:23 Andy
Not so much, but I enjoy preparing foods and Frank and I have both the experiment with Dietze and Anan.
00:51:31 Andy
Both our wives are are really good cooks, so that works out well for me.
00:51:37 Andy
Being a professional eater I think.
00:51:40 Andy
Um, I just I’ll.
00:51:42 Andy
I’ll jump in here Frank, with our 6th question I share something Dan about you.
00:51:48 Andy
Yourself, but we remind you something interesting or different about yourself, but we remind you it’s a family podcast so.
00:51:58 Speaker 1
Something different from being a 17 year old writing code for nuclear submarine.
00:52:02 Andy
What that’s, you know, that’s a powerful story so.
00:52:06 Frank
Yeah, that’s hard.
00:52:06 Frank
That’s hard to be there.
00:52:07 Andy
It’s going to be on the top that yeah, yeah, maybe we’ve already covered this.
00:52:08 Frank
You have to skip your phone.
00:52:09 Frank
I don’t know.
00:52:15 Frank
That that is hard to beat.
00:52:16 Frank
I mean, that’s like that’s like one for the books right there.
00:52:21 Speaker 1
I don’t know if I can beat it.
00:52:22 Speaker 1
I mean, that’s basically it.
00:52:23 Frank
No, that’s hard to be.
00:52:26 Speaker 1
Anything else is just going to be weak.
00:52:29 Frank
Yeah, you’re right.
00:52:30 Andy
Well, the Brazilian jujitsu that was interesting I.
00:52:33 Frank
That was cool.
00:52:33 Andy
I thought I’ve I’ve never heard of Brazilian jiu jitsu.
00:52:37 Speaker 1
So have you seen sort of?
00:52:39 Speaker 1
Like if you ever come across to a UFC fight?
00:52:42 Andy
Yes.
00:52:44 Speaker 1
So you know UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship, but it’s kind of generally mixed martial arts and so you’ll see folks that are like boxers and you know folks that have other martial arts background, but a lot of those people that win have experience with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
00:53:01 Speaker 1
And you know the whole.
00:53:04 Speaker 1
The whole kind of basis for it is a.
00:53:07 Speaker 1
A it came out of Brazil and you know, kind of from the streets, so to speak.
00:53:12 Speaker 1
Although actually it’s got origin in lineages back to judo out of Japan.
00:53:17 Andy
OK.
00:53:18 Speaker 1
Jujitsu and judo to Japan.
00:53:20 Speaker 1
But it’s really about close contact, so you know where is your standing up and swinging at somebody.
00:53:27 Speaker 1
Um, somebody that’s a Jewish jujitsu practitioner.
00:53:31 Speaker 1
Their objective is to try to get the fight to the ground and then figure out how to obtain and maintain a dominant position.
00:53:36 Andy
Huh?
00:53:40 Speaker 1
So that’s either, you know, being on top of somebody or sweeping them so that you’re in control an it’s.
00:53:48 Speaker 1
Sort of like.
00:53:50 Speaker 1
It’s a 3 dimensional chess game in a way because based upon you know, so you get to fight to the ground and in in jujitsu training you know we grapple, and so there’s rules around. You know you’re not allowed to break somebody’s arm, obviously.
Right?
00:54:07 Speaker 1
Or, or you know manipulate their fingers or you know.
00:54:14 Speaker 1
Poke them in the eyes, but you’re able to do certain things to try to get them into a submission.
00:54:21 Speaker 1
Hold where they’ll then tap an.
Mean.
00:54:24 Speaker 1
That means you reset an you know go back to neutral and then figure out who can get back to that dominant position, and so it ends up being this sort of wild game of.
00:54:34 Speaker 1
Based upon what somebody else is doing, how you respond and the folks that are blackbelts have been doing this for more than 10 years in a lot of cases.
00:54:44 Speaker 1
You know their menu of options of how to respond an based on the other person is like this very large list and I’m only a blue belt, so my list of options is short, so if you.
00:54:44 Speaker 1
What?
00:54:55 Speaker 1
If I’ve if I’ve if I’ve done, you know the three things I know how to do to cope with a certain situation, and then they know how to react to that.
00:55:04 Speaker 1
An now I don’t have the 4th item in my toolbox.
00:55:07 Speaker 1
Well then I guess I’m about to get tapped out.
00:55:11 Andy
So I’m making a note here.
00:55:12 Andy
You can hear me writing and it’s don’t mess with Dean.
00:55:20 Speaker 1
Or if you do, make sure you’re a black belt or a Brown belt, purple belt, or probably even most other blue belts.
00:55:25 Frank
This is for training.
00:55:30 Frank
Where a so question 7 is where can people find out more about you and what you’re doing?
00:55:36 Speaker 1
Why?
00:55:36 Speaker 1
Well, the company Nam Eml. Our website is www.naminami-m-l.com, so that’s that’s the company I’m on. All the socials. My last name is Burke Obl. So if you want to follow my crazy journey, any of the normal places.
00:55:56 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:55:57 Speaker 1
You’re fine.
Me.
00:55:58 Frank
Awesome.
00:56:00 Andy
Very cool well Dan. One last thing Audible is a sponsor and listeners can go to the data drivenbook.com and if you do that.
00:56:13 Andy
You get a free audible book an we get a little bit of a kickback if you subscribe, so it helps keep the show going.
00:56:23 Andy
It helps helps us explain to our wives what we’re doing.
00:56:27 Andy
You know appear talking to ourselves, so or is Frank’s in the basement. I’m upstairs so up here down there talking to ourselves can can you recommend a good book that someone might listen to?
00:56:41 Speaker 1
Do I get 2?
00:56:43 Speaker 1
Can I recommend you as?
00:56:43 Andy
Oh absolutely yeah yeah, alright?
00:56:44 Frank
Many one yeah.
00:56:45 Speaker 1
So I’ve got a data one so that that’ll be the the one that I do first, so so this books from a few years ago, but it’s I think it’s totally relevant to folks that are working in this world.
00:56:57 Speaker 1
It’s called the weapons of math destruction.
00:57:00 Speaker 1
In
00:57:00 Frank
Oh cool name.
00:57:02 Speaker 1
By Cathy O’Neil.
00:57:04 Speaker 1
And the subtitle is how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy.
00:57:10 Andy
Wow, OK, important or.
00:57:10 Frank
Wow.
00:57:12 Speaker 1
She really gives that away.
00:57:12 Speaker 1
Continue, she gets into you, know, making sure that you’re thinking about the data biases and different things as you’re building these algorithms.
00:57:22 Speaker 1
So that’s a great one.
Right?
00:57:24 Speaker 1
And then.
00:57:25 Speaker 1
For the from the Wayback Machine, the first book that I read as I was geeking out.
00:57:32 Speaker 1
As a junior high school kid that was fascinated by computers was it is a book called The Cuckoo’s Egg an It’s this old school real kind of based on a true story about computer espionage in kind of the early Internet. Really back to BBSS, wow.
00:57:52 Speaker 1
Wow, and it’s just a fun read for those either.
00:57:53 Speaker 1
And.
00:57:56 Speaker 1
For people, people that have been around awhile and it’ll it’ll give you some nice sentimental about the old days.
00:58:04 Speaker 1
Or if you’re just getting started in computing, it’s a fun story about where all this started.
Me.
00:58:11 Andy
Interesting, very cool.
00:58:13 Speaker 1
That’s my Clifford Stoll.
00:58:13 Frank
Awesome Clifford stoll.
00:58:16 Frank
Clifford Stoll, yeah.
00:58:17 Frank
He’s a character Cliff Stoll.
00:58:19 Frank
He used to be my first saw him.
00:58:22 Frank
He was on a PBS documentary about how we caught.
00:58:26 Frank
I think Kevin Mitnick.
00:58:27 Frank
I want to say.
00:58:27 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah exactly yeah.
00:58:28 Frank
Yeah, plus he also had a regular segment on a TV show that used to be on.
00:58:34 Frank
I forget the channel but it was called the site.
00:58:37 Frank
It had Soledad O’Brien and.
00:58:42 Frank
Uh Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m blanking on his name, Leo LaPorte. Leo laporte’s.
00:58:46 Speaker 1
Oh
00:58:46 Speaker 1
That was like a CNET. Or was that yeah, for?
00:58:48 Frank
With the net or like.
00:58:50 Frank
CNBC, yeah, and that was the first show that was like on a mainstream cable.
00:58:56 Frank
That was about kind of technology and the web and the Internet.
00:59:00 Frank
This that show always blew me away.
00:59:02 Frank
But Cliff had like a kind of a.
00:59:05 Frank
He they gave him kind of free rent to talk about a topic for five minutes and it was always entertaining.
00:59:13 Frank
Awesome.
00:59:15 Andy
So with that.
00:59:16 Frank
I want to say thank you Dan for your time.
00:59:19 Frank
Thanks for joining us here at data driven Ann.
00:59:24 Frank
Go check out his site and go check out what he’s doing.
00:59:26 Frank
’cause I think the subscription model is here to stay and I think it’s going to find in a lot more places.
00:59:33 Frank
And if you’re listening to this at some point in future, yes that might have been foreshadowing.
00:59:37 Frank
Oh
00:59:39 Frank
So with that I will let the nice British lady and the show.
00:59:44 BAILeY
Thanks for listening to data driven.
00:59:47 BAILeY
We know you’re busy and we appreciate you.
00:59:49 BAILeY
Listening to our podcast.
00:59:52 BAILeY
But we have a favor to ask.
00:59:53 BAILeY
Please rate and review our podcast on iTunes, Amazon Music, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to us.
01:00:01 BAILeY
You have subscribed to us, haven’t you?
01:00:04 BAILeY
Having high ratings and reviews helps us improve the quality of our show and rank us more favorably with the search algorithms.
01:00:12 BAILeY
That means more people listen to us spreading the joy and can’t the world use a little more joy these days?
01:00:20 BAILeY
Now go do your part to make the world just a little better and be sure to rate and review the show.
About the author, Frank
Frank La Vigne is a software engineer and UX geek who saw the light about Data Science at an internal Microsoft Data Science Summit in 2016. Now, he wants to share his passion for the Data Arts with the world.
He blogs regularly at FranksWorld.com and has a YouTube channel called Frank's World TV. (www.FranksWorld.TV). Frank has extensive experience in web and application development. He is also an expert in mobile and tablet engineering. You can find him on Twitter at @tableteer.