how to hire and navigate startup culture w/ ceo, kevin van gundy

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Dropping update in our Discord. Cool. All righty. Sweet. What's going on everybody? Good morning. Happy Thursday. We're almost Friday. Pumped to have Kevin on the show. You know, you know, I I I feel like there's people I so I one of the one of the issues one of the issues in what I do is I want to hang out with more people more often. And I think at the end of the day I can't. And I would say Kevin is one of those guys that I get so energized. And I'm not just saying this cuz I'm live with you, but like you're like one of the guys I get so energized to see and talk to.

Um, and so pumped for this. Um, pumped to hang out with Kevin for a little bit this morning. Um, so again, y'all say hey. Um, do my mic levels sound good because my daughter got a hold of my mic last night. So I just want to make That's good. Yeah. She was playing on my desk. She always watches me uh uh work. And so she wanted to get behind my desk last night. And uh you know, my my four-year-old she was like looking at my computer and like trying to type and stuff. So and then she like unplugged the mic and started talking to mic.

I was like, oh boy, here we go. Um, so anyways, I apologize. Yeah, man. Awesome. So pumped to hang out with Kevin this morning. Again, please say hey. We'd love to hear from you. Uh again, uh if you are tuning in for your first time, what this is so this I I've been doing this live stream now for five years. Um, and uh you know, I get to meet some amazing individuals like Kevin um on this podcast. Um, and but but what I realized is that um uh this is a networking session, right? Like this is a meetup. Um, it's a virtual meetup. And I think that's really the thing that we're trying to do at Torque.

Um everybody what's really cool is everybody wants to have a live stream. Um so I made a post this morning if you did not see it. Our guy Angelo is about to start another live stream where he's going to start to talk to to people in the tech industry that's not engineers to see w hat other career paths there are. So again, one of the things we're really really passionate about here at Torque is is developing these live streams as a way for you to network. I tell people time and time again, please send Kevin a message after this. Just tell him you saw him on Devchat 2.0.

Um what my goal is is for you to network off the back of my community, right? Um I've been I've been in the industry for 13 years. I would put my network up against anybody's. And and and I want to share that network with you. So please connect with Kevin. Please connect with people in the chat. And you will not be disappointed. And like I said, if you've been connecting for 5 years now, you would have a hell of a network. I'm just going to be honest. A few other housekeeping things before we dive in. First and foremost, want to give a shout out to Appwrite.

Um I'm going to drop a little discount code in the Torque Discord today. We got some credits from Appwrite, so shout out to them. They're doing some cool stuff. I'm on the Hero program there. Probably the only non-technical guy on a technical Heroes program, so that's fun. Also, our our community site, we got a lot of stuff going on within our community. In-person meetups, virtual meetups, you name it. I'm actually doing a 30-minute little Q&A for people who are laid off and want to navigate the job search today. So go check that out. Also, if you do want to If you want to get updated when I go live cuz I know we got a lot going on.

This is actually my number. Text live. It's not some AI bot. It's not you know, it's actually me, I promise. So would would would love to have you. We got some people tuning in this morning. Roxy, Sebastian, it's good to see y'all this morning. Kelly, it's good to see you. Christina from Vegas, I love it. Let's see here. Steven, it's good to see you. Jason, guy on my team showed up. Angelo, again, kind of like I said, he's he's launching that live stream. Pump for him. He's on my team. Um let' hat other career paths there are. So again, one of the things we're really really passionate about here at Torque is is developing these live streams as a way for you to network.

I tell people time and time again, please send Kevin a message after this. Just tell him you saw him on Devchat 2.0. Um what my goal is is for you to network off the back of my community, right? Um I've been I've been in the industy for 13 years. I would put my network up against anybody's. And and and I want to share that network with you. So please connect with Kevin. Please connect with people in the chat. And you will not be disappointed. And like I said, if you've been connecting for 5 years now, you would have a hell of a network. I'm just going to be honest.

A few other housekeeping things before we dive in. First and foremost, want to give a shout out to Appwrite. Um I'm going to drop a little discount code in the Torque Discord today. We got some credits from Appwrite, so shout out to them. They're doing some cool stuff. I'm on the Hero program there. Probably the only non-technical guy on a technical Heroes program, so that's fun. Also, our our community site, we got a lot of stuff going on within our community. In-person meetups, virtual meetups, you name it. I'm actually doing a 30-minute little Q&A for people who are laid off and want to navigate the job search today.

So go check that out. Also, if you do want to If you want to get updated when I go live cuz I know we got a lot going on. This is actually my number. Text live. It's not some AI bot. It's not you know, it's actually me, I promise. So would would would love to have you. We got some people tuning in this morning. Roxy, Sebastian, it's good to see y'all this morning. Kelly, it's good to see you. Christina from Vegas, I love it. Let's see here. Steven, it's good to see you. Jason, guy on my team showed up. Angelo, again, kind of like I said, he's he's launching that live stream.

Pump for him. He's on my team. Um let' s see here. Uh let's see here. I want to I want to talk to him as a guest. We'll shoot him a DM. Shoot him a DM. Kevin's great. Kevin's great. He'll get back to you. Um let's see here. Chris, it's good to see you. Um and then Jason uh Noah as well, part of the Torque Discord. So, we still got people trickling in. But, all that being said, enough with me yapping. Kevin, let's give the people what they want, man. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Uh so, I'm I'm Kevin.

Uh CEO and founder of HyperMode. Uh we build agent infrastructure, spending a lot of time on like multi-agent systems specifically in um I'll call it like complex organizations, to say the least. So, we do a lot of large cap enterprise, uh life sciences, uh Fed Gov, stuff like that. Yeah. Uh before that, worked at Vercel for a long time. Was was COO there for for a bit. Yeah. Um I don't know. I spent a lot of a decade in open-source dev tools. Yeah. outside of work and things like that, uh I used to surf most days. Now, I surf like intermittently at best. Startups do that to you.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Uh I live just outside San Francisco in in kind of like the the Redwood City area. Um I don't know. I have a large Bernese Mountain Dog that really wants me to pay attention to her right now instead of you. Is is she right there? Oh, she is. Yeah. And like of course, like this like small dog walks by um as as the dog barks. Just like breathing on you the entire time. Um yeah, that's me in a quick nutshell. I love it. All right. So, Kevin and I were uh yapping backstage um and and you know, again, I don't have any set questions.

So, Kevin and I I'm going to kind of ask Kevin some questions and you know, I do want to talk about startup culture, right? I've known Kevin now, he's been on my radar for a bit. Um you know, the first thing I asked him, I mean, even Kevin, the last time we caught up over a year ago, AI I mean, AI is drastically changed, right? And and and and obviously, we talked about not necessarily your pivot, but just how you were evaluating your business. Obviously, the people kind of tuning in show are definitely more, you know, it could be job seekers. Have a lot of engineering and engineering leaders that that that watch the show kind of behind the scenes that are in my DMs.

Um and so I I I guess the first question I want to ask you today and and kind of help the audience is like, hey listen, like what do you like have you done some hiring recently? What does that look like from a startup culture? How do you approach hiring? How do How should people stand out in this market, especially trying to get hired at a startup? That's a big question. Um Yeah, and it's multi-layered. So just start talking and then and then and then I'll kind of direct you. Oh, cool. Cool. Um so I think like fundamentally there like startup or I'll call it like venture-backed YC or like a Silicon Valley startups, those sorts of things, like it tends to be a relatively insular culture where like it's it's it's, you know, you leave company one, you go to company two, you bring all your buddies and so forth.

And it it can be really difficult for folks to kind of like get into that network. Correct. Correct. And, you know, I I mean so often folks are indexing on how do I get the team built as quickly as possible, how do I de-risk the hires that I'm making, and so I want to hire people that I know. And so at least, you know, what I recommend folks do and what we actually try to to to walk the walk here is spending extra time outside of your direct like, one-degree network. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's things like, you know, the the Torque community and we're doing talking about how the React Native community and like spending time in those ecosystems tends to be a way to at least be, you know, on the radar of of a of a hot startup trying to grow itself.

Um and the other piece of me for engineers, we did most of our hiring from for for Vercel from our open sourc e community. Um you know, you you submit a PR to Next.js, you submit a PR to any of our open source projects, same with Hyper Mode where we have a bunch of open source projects. Those are the folks we look at first. We go, "Oh, hey, like we know this person works great with us. They've already made contributions." Um and they don't even have to be, you know, deep kernel level stuff. You know, we have Hey, I I I I think you know, I I noticed a typo in your getting started guide.

You know, I I I I changed or hey, you know, I I I saw you guys are trying to get it launched the, you know, with the GitHub MCP server. You know, here's a quick example. What do you think? Yeah. Those are the people we we tend to hire. I love that. I love the people as people are crack hackling or cracking up at at me and you. He goes it's just the backgrounds aren't just similar. Taylor and Kevin are actually in the same room. the hall, yeah. They go they go they're facing each other on opposite walls. Um so I So you said two things I want to highlight.

Um again, this is why I don't like asking preset questions. Um first thing you said, and you're not the first person to say this, is de-risking the hire. Right? I've heard I've I've started to hear that a lot lately. Um companies just don't want to take a chance um on on a flight risk or maybe an unknown entity. Can you talk about how jobs I I know you talked about contributing open source, and I want to get there in a second. But like how can people really help themselves on the front end getting into Let's just say HyperMode for example. How can they show that they're not a risk?

Does that make sense? Well, and like like like I think risk is like a really heavy word for it. We're I'll I'll do it in a couple layers. I think there's I'll start with executive hiring cuz we can beat up on them and like Yeah, yeah, 100% yeah. Beat up on the executives, yeah. Let's go ahead. So like when you're when you're growing your executive team or your lead ership team, one of the things that's tough is there's like a really long ramp period for you hire a VP of engineering, a VP of sales, you know, a a head of product. You may not know that they're not the right fit for your organization for 3 months, 6 months.

Yeah. Yeah. And of course if you want to be backing these people you hire and say, "Hey, make big changes in the organization." And so they're going to ossify a bunch of really bad habits and structures in your business. And then you you you find an expert who takes another 6 months to find the next person. And then it takes them another 6 months to undo And then you start just yeah, just becomes of that 18 months of runway, you just burned 18 months of you trying to fix the you know whatever XYZ org. And so when you hear people talk about de-risking, like a lot of times it's those types of uh company-shaping hires.

Yeah. But then when you think about a 10-person startup, a 20-person startup, you know, you're you're changing 5% of your your culture with that hire. And so that same, you know, anxiety of I really hope this is the right person Yeah. matters even for an IC engineer, for an engineer with a contributor engineer, for a you know, your first EM. And so you hear people talk about de-risking and like I think that's the the lens that they're approaching with of like this is such a dramatic percentage shift of who works here. Um and so for folks who are trying to go in there and say, "How do I prove to the team like I'm in it, I want to be a part of it?" Yeah.

Yeah. Um honestly, I think the best hires I end up making are folks who it's it's a reciprocal interview where it's not like, "Do I do I know how to do write TypeScript?" Yeah. It's they're showing up and saying like, "Hey, how do you guys work? How do you guys provide feedback? You know, how do you guys think about working hours? You know, uh what do you guys like like all those pieces to make sure like the puzzle pieces go together?" Um like those a re the ways you can help show that you're a good fit for the business of like, "Hey, look, I'm interested in things beyond hey, like when you assign me a bunch of stories in Jira, I yeah, I'll get them done, you know, cool." Yeah.

But it's it's it's how do you help you know, show that you're you're you know, excited to integrate into a culture or move the culture toward, you know, what what both you and the hiring manager aiming for. And and one of the things I mean, you brought up React Miami. I mean, you know, shout out Hank Taylor, right? Hank Hank and I, I mean, I you know, I I still remember all the people I met like four or five years ago at React Miami, right? And and and some of the big heavy hitters that I met, and I had the opportunity to MC Kent C.

Dodds' conference, Epic Web Dev, in Salt Lake two weeks ago, and he asked a question that I thought was huge, and I want to kind of tail this into this this conversation is he was like, "How many people in here have found a job because of a conference?" Half of the people raised their hands. And I feel like if you want to de-risk, you know, coming across say, I you know, it's not a flight risk on me, I think it's actually having the conversations in the hallway track, at a dinner, at a coffee, and and and and getting that hiring manager or that engineering leader, you're never going to you're never going to get somebody probably one-on-one, but in kind of a smaller environment, um and and I think that really helps, too.

Thoughts on that? Totally. I um And again, like I and maybe I'll say like this for for hiring Hypermode, like it's not even like the how how many what's the longevity going to be of this hire, it really is like um Again, I'll I'll I'll I'll speak very specifically like for like for selling Hypermode, like we have a way of working where we're very high cadence, we're Sure. we take a lot of pride in our craft, and we like it when other people are excited about like, "Oh, I just want to make the th e best thing I humanly can." Yeah. And a lot of times like it is um It it's in those conversations or in those like indirect referrals where again, maybe I'll say what you're you're saying about having those hallway conversations, it doesn't need to be with the hiring manager, it doesn't need to be with the CEO of the company.

Sure. Sure. Sure. He's you know, I I met someone on the community team at XYZ company and then you're then being like referred in. I'm like, "Oh, hey, you know, I'd love for you to be a part of this thing." Because then that like you're standing out above the 250 LinkedIn applicants, you know, that that that rolled through. I mean I mean I'm I'm sure you post one job and you got you guys get I mean everybody right now is getting hundreds and hundreds of job or or applicants right now. Yeah. And and again, it's it's that like that um It's and and we were actually we were talking about this as we were we were before we got on.

Like I think especially like the like post AI world where there's just so much like noise A lot of noise A lot of noise right now. A lot of noise. Yeah, then I think like human again, even like in silly formats of like, "Oh, we we met at, you know, React Miami. I can certify that they're a real person and they're nice." Like that is worth so much among the like, you know, just so much like slop on the internet now. And so I think yeah, to your point um indexing on on in-person human interaction super valuable. Yeah. Talk about talk about so open source contributions.

I I still don't think I talk about it enough as a way to land a job. I'm not a I'm not a developer. How does somebody how does somebody go and contribute to open source? Like how does somebody contribute to HyperMode's open source thingamajigger? Like I don't know. How do you do that? So, um It's so like open source like is super big gnarly topic. We're going to talk about like source available, open source. Like what what are actually the orbitals of like act ual openness? But for like it's like practical conversation if you kind of think about the like layers of an open source project, there's kind of like the core elements where you probably have to work at that company and have a really deep understanding of where they want to take the product and those sorts of things.

Sure. Sure. Like you're probably not, you know, writing a PR to you know, you know, react server components as a junior developer, you know, as your first open source contribution. But as you start to like look at the like integration layers and then the like how-to guides of open source projects, those tend to be really good areas where, for example, so we have a uh essentially agent framework called Modus at Hypermode. Okay. And we support, you know, two languages primarily, TypeScript and Go. Okay. And someone said, "I really love this language called MoonBit." And so they started writing a language integration for that language to then be used in Modus.

It's like that was such a great contribution of it's at the connectivity layer of the project. Sure. Sure. It's not dependent on everything else in the business. That makes sense. not in the project, sorry. Um And so as an open source, if someone wants to do like, I would look at how-to guides and integrations as great places to like be able to make a really meaningful contribution to the project that doesn't have a lot of dependencies that the core team is going to be like, "Oh, you know, where we were trying to take the project in X or Y directions. You know, what do we do with this thing?" That makes sense.

The way you explained it makes total sense to me. Yeah, Jason, my guy goes, "No, Taylor does all his PRs for RSC." Yeah, yeah, 100% obviously. Sebastian, documentation is a great start to better understand what a PR is. So let me let me ask you this. So So like where where like where can like where can people find your open source stuff? Like how does one go about Do I just like Google Hypermo de GitHub? I mean, like how does that work? How does one Yeah. go go about doing that? So one, yeah, for Hypermode, yes, Hypermode GitHub, you'll see us, you know, we're like an open source company, so everything's out there.

Okay, cool. Okay. Maybe less selfishly, um I would be again, like you're Yeah, as a developer, you're spending time in all of these communities, and I would just be looking at what are the projects that are being talked about on on Medium or dev.to or any of these these platforms, and I would say like most dev tools now at least have some open source thing. Yeah. And maybe what I would also say is um transparently committing like PRs to an open source project with aim of trying to work there can come across as inor you know, inauthentic. Okay, cuz I was going to ask I was going to ask like I feel like there's a line because I do feel like if you want to get seen, you it's probably good.

But then I'm sure there's probably just like networking and everything else. I feel like there's a fine line for that, right? And to at least like my my recommendation end up being like find a project that you um that you like or find interesting. Yeah. Like a lot of times, for example, um a lot of the folks that we've ended up hiring weren't necessarily contributing to um like Hypermode's project specifically. It was like, "Oh, hey, you know, a match up to pin who's who's the primary author of Modus um is is really big in like the JavaScript uh time and date community where he's trying to get standards passed and how do you do like date time work?" Don't know what that means, but that's great.

But I would say it's it's it's like one of my favorite facts of like Hypermode employees. So, if you've ever taken a Microsoft laptop across time zones and like it auto increments from like 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. is you intended, that was a big part of making that happen. No way. Okay. That's cool. It's one of my favorite quality of life uh you know, again, like these li ttle like ounces of delight. But that also gave me a lot of confidence like, "Oh, Matt knows how to be a part of an open source company. Um I know that he writes um you know, really really good code.

He's he's he's a thoughtful contributor, knows how to communicate with you know again with with with with code. Um and that was a good signal like of course we we want this to be part of the team. Um there's a lot about deep time, you know, and like sorry I don't like to that passion is the important part especially for startups. So like oh this person cares a lot. They're contributing to open source. Is that a signal for you guys? Like cuz I feel like I feel like like that's a big thing for startup culture in general is like you got to be all in or have at least a passion.

Like that's one thing I've interviewed on a lot over my career is hey what are you passionate about? Yeah. Like like I'm passionate about Yeah. hot coffee is garbage and you're a maniac if you drink hot coffee and I think cold ice coffee actually truly makes the taste of coffee. Here's the deal. That's not tech but I'll go to war with you on that and that's what I want. I want people to Are you a Are you a coffee guy? I got it it it it it works. Are you hot? Yes. Ah it's disgusting. The whole thing. Exactly. Yeah. I mean But but but here's the point.

Here's the point. If I if you if you were in our interview and asked me that question you I let's be honest we would segue probably into the coffee talk for at least five to seven minutes and you'd be like all right this guy's this guy's pretty chill. Like like I he's weird with his takes but I like him. Yeah. I I it's funny like I I talk a lot about this internally at Hypermode of we like people like it it like I love that that that frame of like um like what are you passionate about? Of where there's something about people who like care a lot tend to work well in startups.

Yes. And you know it and to your point all like all my our team is full of so ma ny like idiosyncratic hobbies. You know, we we have a guy who's a digital nomad who chases snow across the globe. Yeah. You know, but you know, he uh he cares a lot about building cool stuff and like he cares a lot about pursuing his hobbies and that makes him a wonderful, you know, member of the team. Correct. And uh like emphatically like we like we we we talked like hiring for curiosity. Yeah. But like curiosity passion I call them like bedfellows in that uh Yeah, 100%.

100%. I love that. It's so funny. And honestly, the chat is uh is right now with coffee. And it's a much more human interaction than like, "Hey, you know, tell me about a time where you solved a hard problem at work." And like versus you can have a much more human interaction about like the fact that I so fundamentally do believe that my hot cup of of of espresso with a little bit of milk in the morning is the best thing in the world. Right. And you know, I'll I'll you know, we'll we'll draw lines there. Die on that hill. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

I love it. Um uh uh uh Gilbert comes in here says, "My last open source contribution was me making raylib.com responsive for smaller devices uh such mobile uh and tablets. I want to do more of that." Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, like I said, I think I I think um I think one of the things too I don't talk enough about is is w- if you're interviewing for a company you really like is trying to use their product potentially to during the interview or trying to do as a lead-in cuz I feel like again, going back to passion, Mhm. for me, like if you're like, "Hey, I've been in the Torque community now for 9 months.

Um you know, I you know, I'm doing a live stream on your Discord. Yeah, I we we had one guy that's like, 'Hey, I want to do some streaming in the Discord. I'm doing some stuff with, you know, Laravel and TypeScript. I want to Are you cool with that?' I said, 'You know, so then like if you're doing this stuff in the community and I and people see you, I'm much more willing to have that conversation than a complete stranger and I think but so what are your thoughts? I mean I'm I'm sure it's probably the same but just using the product if if if if that's the opportunity too.

I it's funny. I'm like very conflicted about this where I have a great deal of empathy for you know you're you're looking for a job you're probably again more often you're applying to 5 10 15 20 companies and my if I show up and I expect hey why haven't you built a dozen you know hyper mode apps on my camera froze. Is that better? No still still frozen. Still frozen and keep What's what's what's going on? What what happened? Yeah you sound good just just just just just keep you happy just keep you happy. Um Sorry so like I like so I have a great deal of empathy for when folks are interviewing lots of companies and me getting them to do I don't call it free labor but like me getting them to do a bunch of stuff you know just for like the right to talk to me I I I empathize that that's really really really hard to do.

And so that said it does make an impression when someone shows up and like oh hey you know so I was looking at hyper mode I deployed my first app and then I was working with like you know your integration with llama 34 and it didn't do this thing and they show up and they clearly care about what I spend you know 200 hours a week thinking about I instantly like feel a connection to that person oh so so you care too you know and so it's I try not to bias you know our interviews toward you know hey you know do this thing do that thing.

Um but it it really does help. Yeah absolutely again for those of you tuning in we're ha Kevin said oh you're back you're back you're good you're back. So when we switch to like my very sad Instagram good it still looks good still looks good. So I I finally now see for some reason I didn't see the surfboard before now I see the surfboard great I I that I love that. Yeah I think that's great. Talk ab out two, you know, you talked about startup culture. I think one of the things I realized like I like I told my wife this uh, leaving my last company and coming to Torque.

I just told my wife, I said, "I think I've I think I now I'm a startup guy." Mhm. Like I think I'm a startup guy. Like I move very fast. I break a lot of stuff. I iterate, I iterate, I iterate. AB test, AB test, yada yada yada, all the buzzwords. But I told my wife, I was like I was like I just have realized I think I'm a startup guy. And and but it took me 11 years to get there. Mhm. So, are there any advice to folks who maybe just again some more indicators on there's nothing wrong with working enterprise, right? I think you get a lot of exposure on the enterprise side of things, but I'm curious any more thoughts on on the two ecosystems.

I again, I obviously have a huge bias toward I've spent my entire life working at like Yeah, yeah, yeah. but high growth, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so I think maybe the thing that I'll I'll name most specifically is um, I think you know, you're right, like velocity, iteration, like all those pieces are critical to to good startups. But I think like the defining characteristic that I found of people who really like working in startups and people who just really don't is there is a level of like ambiguity and a lack of structure Yes. that it for some people is amazing. Like you show up and like Oh, I love it.

There I like we're I mean we're just we're blowing and going here, man. I mean we're just we're moving and I mean I even talked over there-ish, you know? Yeah, like I talked to my CEO. I was up in Boston recently in in it was January. I think it was January. And like I was like I was like, "Hey man, like just want to make sure like you're vibing with everything." He's like, "Yo, I love it." He goes, "The fact that I don't have to tell you what to do and you just do it." He goes, "It's great." And and and I think that's kind of been kind of my key success a nd and indicator why I think I'm I'm probably in a good spot for startup life.

And what I'll also say is um again, this is not true of all startups, but many startups Sure. to be as a as again, as someone in there, you tend to work with what I'll call less management. And they're like they they're like ventures and whatever. It's that they're they're they're still learning how to do one-on-one, running good regression conference. How do you negotiate salary? They're still learning all on the And I think to have to tell your on the internal locus um I don't call it like controlling of like agency like hey, I know kind of what I want to do. I can set my own goals.

I'm okay managing up to my manager and saying hey, you know, these are the things I'm working on. Tell me what you would change rather than asking for like what to be done. Um some people thrive in that and they love that they can go They're like, oh hey, this is an interesting project. I want to go work on it. I'm going to go do it. Yeah. Um but for again, a lot of junior folks, that's really hard where if you've not worked in a lot of companies, Correct. kind of like in the the big blue sea and I I don't know if I'm doing a good job, a bad job.

They just said make product and stuff. I don't know what that means. Right. I don't know how to get feedback through like, you know, it's uh it can be really tough. And so just knowing that about yourself is like are you comfortable being very uh clear with like the help in, you know, things you need to be successful. Yeah. If not, it's going to be hard for you to um extract that out of a manager who is has 25 direct reports instead of the the normal five to 10 direct reports. Yeah. Who's you know um And I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll make excuses for a lot of my team where you have the crazy CEO is showing up.

You're like, all right guys, so I I saw this great product, Goose. We we got to make our own ver- like like like we dropped the company around." And so, like, you know, middle management often has like a really rough time. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. Man, I could talk to you for hours. Um we're technically already at time. Oh, Sorry. Shoot. No, you're you're fine. You're fine. You can curse, it's fine. Um uh any any last words of wisdom Mhm. for job seekers? So, so I'm going to do two things. And last words of wisdom for just job seekers in this market right now.

And then just any advice for founders right now, too. Just uh can can can you do both sides of the coin there and then we'll wrap it up. Sure. Um for job seekers, I think my my my headline advice and and we've talked about throughout the this live stream Sure. would really be in uh it's a such a competitive market, finding ways to beg, borrow, cheat, steal your way into like the networker ecosystem of the companies you want to go work at. Yeah. Either go to these conferences, these virtual conferences, tend like, you know, things like this. And just try to find any It's really unfair to ask folks to do this, but Well, and Aaron and and I'm going to interrupt you real quick.

Aaron Francis who uh spoke at Epic Web, she was like, "Is it fair that this is what it is now? Mhm. Maybe not, but it is what it is." Yeah. And and yeah, and and for you the individual, like, it is part of the thing we we have to do to to to to Again, I I do it to as a CEO where I'm trying to get my company positioned within other ecosystems. And I am, you know, beg, borrow, cheat, steal, you know, trying to work our way into these companies' ecosystems. Same. And yeah, it it it it it's an unfortunate part of trying to like make these things work.

Um and then for founders, and like this is like the so-called die on, is, you know, uh the there's this great paper I'm the gentleman's name from from Stanford, where he talks about like what you know, previous industrial revolutions can teach us about kind of like the AI race that we're seeing between the the US and China and and and you know, middle management often has like a really rough time. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. Man, I could talk to you for hours. Um we're technically already at time. Oh, Sorry. Shoot. No, you're you're fine. You're fine. You can curse, it's fine. Um uh any any last words of wisdom Mhm.

for job seekers? So, so I'm going to do two things. And last words of wisdom for just job seekers in this market right now. And then just any advice for founders right now, too. Just uh can can can you do both sides of the coin there and then we'll wrap it up. Sure. Um for job seekers, I think my my my headline advice and and we've talked about throughout the this live stream Sure. would really be in uh it's a such a competitive market, finding ways to beg, borrow, cheat, steal your way into like the networker ecosystem of the companies you want to go work at.

Yeah. Either go to these conferences, these virtual conferences, tend like, you know, things like this. And just try to find any It's really unfair to ask folks to do this, but Well, and Aaron and and I'm going to interrupt you real quick. Aaron Franlf�:who uh spoke at Epic Web, she was like, "Is it fair that this is what it is now? Mhm. Maybe not, but it is what it is." Yeah. And and yeah, and and for you the individual, like, it is part of the thing we we have to do to to to to Again, I I do it to as a CEO where I'm trying to get my company positioned within other ecosystems.

And I am, you know, beg, borrow, cheat, steal, you know, trying to work our way into these companies' ecosystems. Same. And yeah, it it it it it's an unfortunate part of trying to like make these things work. Um and then for founders, and like this is like the so-called die on, is, you know, uh the there's this great paper I'm the gentleman's name from from Stanford, where he talks about like what you know, previous industrial revolutions can teach us about kind of like the AI race that we're seeing between the the US and China and and and and these other world entities. And the thing he he mentioned is like the US was actually not at the time of the industrial revolution was not the best tool maker, right?

Like they were not the best at making, you know, industrial manufacturing materials. They simply were the most ardent hyper adopter of these things and learned how these new systems played into like the way in which their businesses worked. And so, even if you are skeptical of, you know, the promise of AI, if there's like a 10% chance this is that, you know, that next industrial revolution, I would make sure that you are exploring it in different ways both internally within like your workflows as a business, your, you know, all your different pieces. Um, figure out how to be a hyper adopter cuz it gives you so much more leverage to scale as we're we're seeing right now.

Now, that um, just just spend, you know, a meaningful part of your time seeing how these systems work within your business. Obviously, obviously shameless plug for HyperMode, but also just like for the the macro boom. Obviously. Well, also too, one thing I want to do too is I want to see cuz cuz we want we want to do more AI stuff in the Torque community, so we should probably chat too soon just if there's anything we can do, any sort of training, webinar, session within the Torque community too for for for HyperMode. So, um Well, and and we make it more generally helpful for folks like, "Hey, multi-agent system works.

Here's how an NCP server works." All that sort of stuff. Obviously, we'll be shilling HyperMode really, really, really hard. Obviously. But, you know, we'll do it with a nice veneer of being generally helpful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah, let's definitely let's let's keep that conversation going. Cool. All right, last last few questions I always ask. First off, I told you tomorrow and I probably know the answer to this. If you were to wake up and I said, "Hey, Kevin, you can't be in tech anymore, what hobby would you pursue for a living if I would pay you the same amount of money or more?

I I think it would probably be wood woodworking and furniture. Or I mean obviously not where I was going. I thought you were going to say surfing. I did not know you were woodworking guy. Oh, so well not in this background, but I like to build furniture in my spare time. You serious? Yeah, like it's very like antiquated hobby. know what a hammer is, so that's great, man. Oh, it's I mean it's so much fun like where again like you spend all of your time with like digital things. Yeah. It's so much fun like I made a chair today. Like it's it's it's relaxing. Wow, and like I'm getting woodworking.

It's coming, guys. Like don't you worry. Yeah, and then like doing you know being on a farm, right? Like you know it's like you know I can go weed eat for 4 hours and I can see what I've done. Mhm. Right? So I get It feeds the soul, man. It's it's wonderful. I get that. Yep. Second question, so Easter's coming. Mhm. Candy is on the shelves. So we got to ask the heavy hitting question here. What is your go It could be Valentine's you just any holiday candy. What's kind of your go-to hey, I'm going to indulge myself a little bit with with with a specific candy on the shelves right now.

Uh I don't I don't know if these are seasonal so they transcend seasons. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Uh so 100 Grand bars which is kind of like a idiosyncratic choice. I like them. I like them. People got their thoughts, but I like them. Yeah, people have thoughts that they're not great are wrong. I'll I'll die on that hill. That's my hot coffee cold coffee. 100 Grands are excellent. There you go. Or a good a good like just mega stuff Oreo. Like I love Again, I'm pro the the extra cream in the cookie. Like There you go. Love that. Love that. If you're trying to get a job at Hypermode said Kevin, espresso, 100 Grand bars, and Oreo double stuff.

And you may or may not get a job. Um Uh next question. I always wanted to Are there any other founders, companies that you want to give a shout-out to that you really like what they're doing? You You like what they stand for. You think they're doing a good job right now in this market. Oh my gosh. I I I I wish you'd like prepared like a list. It's going to be like I know. I know. Everybody always says that, but I I don't prep on purpose. Uh, it it's I've been spending a bunch of time Also I've been spending over at Corey Labs. He's doing a bunch of I'm going to basically just name all my customers.

He's doing a bunch of really cool stuff on the uh, central IT team persuasion side. Uh, Nick Hubacker, uh, I I will not name the name of his company cuz he's in the middle of naming it. Uh, he's just another extraordinary founder who I mean he is one of the most passionate people where we met each other at like one of these like random AI dinners. And you know, we like briefly like, "Oh, hey, you work at tech. You work at Cool Cool Cool." And he just starts telling me all of his favorite sci-fi books. And he just like lit up like, "Oh, I read this short story." And then like we spent two hours talking about sci-fi like short stories.

Yeah. And I was like, "I don't know I don't I don't care what you do, but can we hang out? You're so much fun to hang out with." Yeah. Uh, who else? Uh, I I'm I'm blowing it. I'm I'm going to feel really bad as soon as I log off. There are there's 53 other companies that I wanted to say. You're fine. You're fine. Yeah. I'll leave it to those two for now. I love it. I love it. All right, last question. We'll wrap up here. Um, and again, for those of you who tuned in, thank you so much. The chat's been off the chain, especially your woodworking and the struck a chord as well.

Um, uh, the show's called Guidance Counselor 2.0 cuz we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now as adults we don't necessarily have anybody to turn to and ask for just general career advice. If you could go back in time and tell young Kevin one thing, what would it be? I This is such hackneyed advice, um, but I'll say it anyway. Um, I would strongly and emphatically recommend, uh, enjoying that like careers in life are not necessarily linear and You will, you spend so much time like seeing like the like glossiest retro-actor storytelling version of people's careers of oh I did this and this and it all built and it was so perfect.

Um life is messy and difficult and even people you admire most have had these like ups and downs. If I could emphasize to myself uh there's something fun about just like hey wow I am you know I'm I'm I'm in I'm in a downward trajectory of I think I'm going to learn a lot in this pit and that's okay and you know life is long and we'll find the up slope rather than being so anxious like oh gosh you know I'm supposed to be a VP at this age I was supposed to be this at that age and you know I saw these other people and they're doing better than me and like it's you you rob yourself of the fun of like you know the the different moments that you're getting in life.

Um that'd be the big one of especially where there are lots of ambitious people in the tour community and just like giving yourself a little bit of grace through that. I think it's huge. I love that. I love that man it's so good. All right y'all Kevin stay on a sec and say bye to you backstage but y'all have a good one. Jason just posted on our Discord he is doing live resume and portfolio reviews right now so go hop on over to Jason's he posted that on our Discord. He's on his Twitch channel doing that so y'all go hang out with him and uh we'll see y'all tomorrow 9:30 a.m.

Central special Friday edition my guy Lawrence Lockhart founder of after he signed an offer letter 89 days after getting laid off and he's going to talk about his tactics on how he did it and I will tell you this it is crazy. It is basically the opposite of what I teach which is wild. Um so can't wait to hang out with him tomorrow. Kevin you're a gem thank you so much and uh we'll see y'all tomorrow. Peace.