Empowering Teams in Fast-Growing Startups w/ Shan Mohta

Speaker A: Giving that very brutal, harsh feedback was a huge blessing to us. Right. Because you know, if you're selling to your friends, everyone's just going to be like, this is great. This is awesome. Yeah, this is cool. And like, they'll just tell you to build it. But it takes someone who's going to be really, really respectful but also critical of your idea to get you to think really hard about whether or not this should actually invest your time and energy. And I think that that was the, uh, probably the most defining moment, you know, in this company's history.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Leadership Launchpad where we help technical managers improve their teams and their organizations. On this show I talk with industry leaders, coaches, authors and experts to give you actionable leadership insights to help improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. Our guest today is Sean Mota, the co founder and CEO of Vendra, a company whose goal is making it faster and easier to order custom manufactured parts in the US With a focus on aerospace and defense. Though only a few years old, they can already name companies like Anduril, Relativity Space and Planet Labs and customers. So they are certainly gaining traction. Look, if you are in any way involved in the hard tech world, you know exactly the problem that Sean and his team are trying to solve. Manufacturing has been on the decline in the US for decades and the situation is only getting worse. With many small scale manufacturers, the mom and pop businesses forming the foundation of specialty manufacturing in the US starting to close up as their owners age out and retire. Many companies are trying to fill that void. So today I want to talk with Sean about how vendor is going to stand out in that new crop of customer manufacturers, what he learned from his time at places like Microsoft, Apple and skydio about what it takes to lead technical teams and what has already surprised him about leadership early in his founding journey. Before we dive in, I do want to remind you that minimum viable manager is out and available now. This is the book I wrote after a decade of working with leaders at SpaceX, Adams, Xprize foundation and so many other organizations. So if you are a new leader or inspiring leader, this is your roadmap to building the foundational skills you need to help your team solve big problems. So with that out of the way, Sean, welcome to the Leadership Launchpad.

Speaker A: It's awesome to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I'm really excited for this conversation because like I said in the intro, manufacturing in the US like it is the name of the game. Like we talk a lot about, you know, manufacturing Final things, you know, like whether it's rockets or weapons or ships or planes. But there's a lot of parts that go into that. There's a lot that happens before a lot of parts that go into that. And so I'm really. So, so let's start there. Tell us a little bit about what your team is doing, how you're trying to solve this problem and what makes you different.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, the short answer is we're trying to build the best manufacturing platform in the US specifically for aerospace, defense. Um, as you mentioned, every single one of those systems, right, from satellites to launch vehicles to defense systems, they have thousands of parts, discrete parts, mechanical, electrical, et cetera. We're tackling mechanical parts right now. And really what we want to help with is a customer comes to us and says, hey, I have my drawings, my designs, my blueprints for this part that needs to be made. Traditionally, they'd be waiting, you know, days and weeks trying to hear back from suppliers who has the machines, who has material, who's willing to quote it, can do it within their need by date or lead time. It is, it's just a fact finding mission. And it, and it's, it's just not efficient. You know, it takes a lot of time, a lot of cycles for supply chain teams, engineering teams to get their parts made. Uh, with Vendra, it's very different. They send us their drawings, their designs, their blueprints. Our software can analyze it, we match it to the best supplier in the US we can automate the entire process from RFQ to getting quotes, DFM feedback all the way through production and delivered parts to their door. So significantly cutting down the time you spend finding and working with a supplier, we get you to that start line where production actually begins a lot faster.

Speaker B: Well, that's, that's incredible because I really. So that means since. So you're sourcing the right manufacturer, right?

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Uh, yeah, for, for the customer. It means that we are identifying who the best fit supplier is at that specific moment in time. Uh, and really why that specific moment, time matters is everyone talks about resilience and reliability in supply chain. Like, what does that really mean? That means understanding when there might be a supply chain disruption, where material shortages might happen, where machines are actually running and at capacity or not at capacity, we take all of those insights from our entire manufacturing network so that every time a part comes in at a single part level, we can map the best way to get it manufactured through our network in terms of material availability, inspection availability, Even operators and machines that. That part's actually going to have to sit on to get manufactured. We handle everything because we have that data, we have the network. Uh, and every time a part goes through, the system just gets smarter because we get more manufacturing intelligence on what actually took, you know, to get that part from design to production to delivered part.

Speaker B: Yeah, because. Yeah. To that resiliency piece. You know, it's like there's a snowstorm somewhere, there's an earthquake somewhere, there's a hurricane somewhere. Yeah, those things can have real. If you're somebody that has a great relationship with a supplier, that's a risk for you. That's really interesting.

Speaker A: 100%. 100%. And, you know, a lot of. A lot of people ask us like, oh, we already have our own suppliers and that's, that's totally fine. You know, it doesn't even have to be a hurricane. Right. It has to be a foreman that's on vacation or a machine that has an unexpected break in the middle of the night. Like, there's like, individual cases like that where we've seen entire launch schedules slip. Right. Because you have a single source supplier and a machine goes down, and then you can't get your part in time to integrate your satellite into a Falcon 9. And then what do you do? Right, that's. That's the disruption that we try to solve for in addition to just every sort of, you know, supply chain issue that might come. Yeah.

Speaker B: So is this. You'll probably tell me it can solve the whole spectrum, but are you primarily aiming at, like, the small counter manufacturing runs, like, early in the life cycle of a product, or are you trying to tackle, like, the whole. The whole range?

Speaker A: We want to tackle the whole range, but, you know, with any new customer that we onboard, you know, you brought some of those names up earlier in this call. We obviously start with, like, the prototyping and one ops, Right. Because no one's gonna. No one's gonna trust us with making, you know, 100% of all of their parts right off the bat. But we do see that ramp pretty fast. You know, a lot of the companies that we work with, you know, will. We'll start with a, hey, can you make one part for me or five parts for me? And then they see our execution, they see that, wow, okay. They actually delivered when they said they would. The part actually works as they said it would. And working with them was quite nice. They're cost competitive and lead time competitive. Uh, and that snowball really then takes off, right? Then they're like, cool, here's 10 of this thing, here's 100 of this thing. And then pretty soon it's like, cool. I need a thousand of these every month for the next six months to support my X, Y, Z build. And we've really gotten to that point of maturity with a lot of our, you know, multibillion dollar aerospace advanced customers, which is again, I pinch myself sometimes because it's crazy in the past, uh, you know, year, what we've been able to do. But yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, you just, you just have to get their parts make. That's all they care about.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I'm guessing at least part of the pitch is, you know, I'm just thinking about my time at SpaceX and how kind of critical like the sourcers and the supply chain folks were of just like, they're constantly like calling every supplier, hey, can you get this faster? Hey, can I get the front in line? Hey, can you cut the. It was just like a really stressful job. And I imagine part of your pitch is that, well, like, we can do some of that for you. Like, you, you don't, like we can handle all that relational work or at least some of that relational work for.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we can handle all of it, right? Like, it's, it's not that we do want to, we don't want to decouple a customer from like trusting their suppliers. Like, that's not our intention here. Our intention is, you know, what you just brought up, where you have, you know, at SpaceX alone, you know, you have teams of hundreds of buyers per program like Dragon, Falcon, Starship, et cetera. What are they doing, right? They're, they're calling suppliers, trying to figure out who has the capacity, who can get this part made in time, who happens to have a stock of aluminum just big enough for that one part that's dating everything, right? Like these supply chain folks, as hard as they try and as hard as they work, they don't have a living and breathing data set of every single supplier, every single capability, every single machine. That's what we offer, right? We're tracking all of that because we're sourcing it for the SpaceXs, but also the thousand other companies, right, that compete with SpaceX, that are competing for the same capacity. So that's why, you know, over this, which large enough, expansive, uh, customer base, we're able to really optimize for a single customer, how that part needs to get routed how it needs to get made. So you know my, my pitch to this is this supply chain people is I want to make you look like a superstar at your job. Yeah, just send me all your parts.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You're going to make them the hero. That's great. Well, it's, it's, it's interesting because just a couple of days ago I made or I mean as this comes out it'll few weeks ago but I made a post on LinkedIn because I was, I was visiting some of my clients uh, in Denver and I just was reflect as I'm driving around I was reflecting like look, it's, it's really great and interesting that so many people are really excited. You know, Starbase gets all the attention or launch site gets all the attention. These, these really big companies with these big sites. You know, now everybody's talking about Tariff ab. But so much of the future right now is getting built in like random industrial parks in some town you've never even expected. There's just so many, so many companies building right now. Um, and yeah, they haven't had the time to develop those relationships yet. They don't have anything like the data sets that you're going to have. And so I can imagine you just present so much value to those companies like later on for sure, but especially early on. Um, that's incredible.

Speaker A: 100% exactly. That's totally right.

Speaker B: Just a quick interjection. I wanted to remind you that I run a company called Bilt where we train the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build teams capable of solving the world's hardest problems. If you are an aspiring technical leader, an existing leader, or responsible for training leaders in your organization, Please check out BuiltLeaders.com to see if we can support you and your team. Awesome. Okay, well that's, that's super exciting. Um, yeah, there's, there's so much to get into. But as I mentioned in the, in uh, the intro before Vendra, you've been at some really interesting companies. You were at some really big companies, you know, places like Microsoft and then you've been in the, more of the startup environment at Skydio. So I would love to start with, with that kind of background. What were some of the experiences you had that inform how you're thinking about leadership as you're building?

Speaker A: Vendra? Yeah, I mean really, really good question. You know they're totally different types of organizations, right? You know you, you have the Microsoft and Apples of the world where multi 10,000. I don't even know how Many people, they have, it's just an insane amount. And then from that I went to, to skydio, which I think at the time when I joined was, you know, 500 people. Um, I'd say the really, really stark difference that, that I noticed between the two and kind of what my inspiration for starting vendor as well was. You know, I don't think I would have started vendor if I hadn't worked skydio. And maybe we can get into why in a little bit. But uh, the accessibility of leadership I think was really, really interesting. Right? Uh, when you're at a company like Apple, you know, the C suite, the VPs, like all these people are, are treated as celebrities internally, right? Like these are people you don't have access to. Like, it's not like you can go walk to Tidbrook's desk and ask him your feedback on a design or which, you know, test methodology you should do. You'd probably lose your job immediately to get something like that. Uh, with good reason. Uh, but at skydio, you know, the, the really, really stark difference was how accessible and technical leadership was, you know, at the engineering level. Right. Like I could have a pretty informed discussion with the CTO about, you know, an injection molding part that I, you know, needed to get made or do data analysis with the CEO. You know, in a, in a meeting, if we're looking at why the drone is vibrating in a kind of weird, wonky way, uh, that's stuff that I actually did. It was really, really cool and I think it's informed a lot about how I've been building the team at Vendra. Around me. You know, there's a real core idea of accessibility. You know, not that I want to be solving every single low level problem at the company, but I want to make sure that folks on my operations team, my dev team, even on and marketing, are able to come to me, you know, and get my feedback on things and get the direction that they need in a quick, efficient way. You know, I always tell them like, come to me with all the data you have on the problem and I will help you make a quick decision. And I think that was really what I saw work really well at skydio and why a pretty small hardware team at that company was able to make, you know, such a competitive vehicle, you know, a drone that rivals some of the best in the world. Um, and it's, it's really a core part of, you know, my day to day is to be accessible to the team, um, in a way that honestly empowers them to obviously build a confidence in their own skills and abilities. But you know, I, I can support them if and when needed when things like that come up.

Speaker B: How? I think this is a really interesting point that there's a struggle early on in a company's history when it's, when it's starting to scale because there's that accessibility piece, but it's, there's the empowerment piece as well. How do you go about working with them in a way that makes it clear, right, that you're, you're there to help them, you're not there to make the decision necessarily. You know, how, how does that dynamic play out? Because I think it can be a real challenge, especially for people who are used to solving the problem.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's true. You know, that one of the, one of the things that's challenging as an engineer turned founder now turn, like leadership, you know, for a 10, 12 person company is that in the early days, just six months ago, I was making every decision, right, like legitimately, like which suppliers to send a part to, like reviewing a drawing on my own. And I still love doing that. Like that's, that's the part of the job that I think I'll never stop doing. Obviously the volume of the work that I do is decreasing as obviously I have a team around me to, to rely on. But I think it's something that you just mentioned, right? Like how do you help them make the decision? I think a core part of it is like letting your team make the decision, but walking them through the decision making process. Right? So if there's a technical question about, hey, I don't know how to manufacture this part or what machines it needs or what supplier will work on it, you know, there's one world in which I just say it's X or Y or Z go away, right? And honestly, sometimes I have done that. I'm not going to say I've, um, you know, uh, I've sat through every decision I made just in the interest of time. It's like, okay, cool, just do X. Yes, go execute on it. But I think the longer, more call it future proofy version of that is, you know, sitting through with the team and understanding. Okay, cool. Well, I would look at this in this way. Here's the requirements that we know, here's the information that we have and tackle it like an engineering problem, right? In mechanical engineering, you know, you have, cool. Here are my constraints, my requirements, whether it's cost or weight or structural xyz, whatever, and work through that and Define the problem set and then find the solution that satisfies those requirements. And I think I walk my team through the exact same process in a very sort of mechanical engineering, analytical kind of way. Um, and you know, my team comes to me all the time with, hey Sean, quick technical question. And it might be about mechanical engineering or it might just be about something completely different, but it's technical because it still requires that very analytical framework, right. Of understanding. Cool. Here's what we know. Here's a requirement set set by the customer or the supplier or xyz. Now let's find a solution that satisfies all of this and then we kind of explore and brainstorm together. And a lot of what I try to do with, with the technical team is expose them to those problems. I mean, it's really funny actually. I, I had an interview today with a candidate, right. And they were asking me like, oh cool, how much is your team expected to know about manufacturing and blah, blah, blah. And I told them like, even the software engineers at vendor can now read technical drawings and blueprints and understand how parts get made. Just because it's so important to make sure every team member is exposed to those types of problems. And I'm not going to expect them to, you know, talk to a supplier or figure out some manufacturing issue, but you know, just being exposed to it, knowing the sort of thinking process behind how to approach this problem, especially kind of what we're building and finding solutions, I think is it's very, very important. And you know, it builds a lot of trust in my side as well in the team. Like, cool. They're actually picking up this up, they're learning. And that gives me a lot more confidence the next time to just say, well, what do you think we should do? I think we should do that. And eventually that, that turns into, you know, them being able to make a lot of their own high impact decisions and that's ultimately how we scale and grow as an organization. I can't be making all the low level decisions and not even low level, but high level in terms of, you know, strategy in uh, perpetuity. I mean, there's a point at which I have to make sure that my team is empowered and has been taught enough about how I would approach that decision so that they can, they can go kind of run on their own.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think it's, yeah, it's the, I, the way I talk about it a lot with, with clients is, um, we have a workshop called Going, uh, Switching from expert mindset to coaching mindset. And it's like making that, trying to make that shift. Any I'd be interested. I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with either like time or risk or cost. Do you have any way that you are actively trying to figure out when you should just give an answer versus when you should, uh, engage in. That is, I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with time.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, it's, it's time. It's also just like what's at stake. You know, for example, you know, uh, recently I've been traveling a lot more. I've been visiting customers, I've been going to some events to meet more prospective customers. And obviously, you know, when I'm offline, off slack or something, I tell the team, like, you guys should make your own decisions. I empower you guys each day. You know, you can have your orders, you can handle requests for customers, you can handle xyz, but if there's like a, uh, this may bankrupt the company or, you know, this might shut our doors forever, please call me and I'll be involved. Yes, I think, uh, a lot of that is around the impact or like what's at stake, you know, if it's our largest customer and we know this is a mission, like literally mission critical project for a launch or a test. And it's a technical question, like, I'll probably get, you know, not super involved in the team. Just look at it at a very high level and say, okay, cool, we have to do it this way. You know, let's just execute on it. Because A, it's time sensitive, B, it's mission sensitive. But I think for a lot of the other requests, I try to be, you know, more kind of like a coaching mindset, as you mentioned, as opposed to just do X or do Y or do Z or, you know, if I'm running out the door and I need to answer a question where I think that falls into your time category, uh, if it's truly time sensitive, then I'll, then I'll just, you know, take it on and get it answered quickly.

Speaker B: I, I think, uh, the thing I love most about what you just said there is the constraints that you were putting on people of specific. And I think, because I think this is something a lot of leaders miss is when to come to me.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And framing your expectations in terms of when to come to me. I'll never forget, um, years ago when I first read Four Hour Workweek by, by Tim Ferriss and he was telling a story about his first company. I forget what it was, but it was a consumer facing company. So he was getting, he was fielding a lot of calls from customers and things and, and it was overwhelming him. So he hired a, like a customer service agency. Right. So they could deal with it all. But then all that happened is instead of being inundated by customer requests, he was inundated by customer service requests, by requests from this customer service agency of how should we deal with this? How should we deal with this? And it wasn't solved until he gave them the constraint of if you can solve the problem for under a hundred dollars, you can make the decision, you can just do that. So if you, you know, so if you're, if, if it's a refund or whatever. And so there was this massive amount of requests from customers that fell into that bucket so they could just be handled now. And so he only had to be brought in for the, for the higher ones. And so it's kind of like what you were saying. It's like, you know, if this is going to impact a mission, if this is a key customer, like, like then you come to me. Otherwise you saw, you handle it yourself.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's very analogous to exactly like how we think where if it truly is something that is going to, you know, bankrupt the organization. Let's, let's talk about it. But I think a lot of the questions, I think our team has a really good sense of exactly who the, you know, tier one customers are, who the tier two customers are kind of, you know, which, what latitude they have to make decisions for maybe a smaller startup that we work with as opposed to like a multibillion dollar, you know, aerospace organization. And I think they have a very good sense of problems that they should just go and solve on their own versus come and check in with me with, you know, feedback or direction that might be needed. And I think it goes back to what I said where I love when they come to me with a complete data package. Right. Like, here's everything that we know. All I need you to do, Sean, is to make a quick decision one way or another. Here's all the requirements that, and I think, I think they, that ends up becoming a lot more respectful of my time, but also respectful of their time because that means they've done the due diligence, right? That means we don't have to have a half hour discussion and burn, you know, a full hour between the two of us, you know, to kind of figure out what the constraints are what the problem set is. We can just look at everything in front of us and then there's two people with a very clear, you know, set of instructions. And then you just follow a path and commit to it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's something that stands out to me, uh, for the most intense leaders I've, I've ever worked with or talked to, or the most demanding leaders, it still really just comes down to like, have you done the work before you come to me?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Speaker B: Ah, in some ways, you know, and I think that's just for anybody who's looking to get ahead in their career or whatever. It's just like if you're getting ready to present to an executive or you're getting ready to present to some, your boss or somebody above, you just pause. Like, what question are they going to ask me? You know, just like, ask yourself that a couple times. And I think it can dramatically improve the way conversations go and the way, you know, presentations go or whatever of spending that extra, that extra brain cycle to, to think ahead of what it's

Speaker A: going to be like in the moment. And I don't know, I feel like, you know, a lot of times when technical leaders have to, you know, I saw this at skydio as well, where we kind of did the same thing where, you know, I think the CEO is very good in design reviews. Right. At, at making an informed decision. If he had all the information in front of him in a very concise way, and it doesn't necessarily mean he's micromanaging because he's making, you know, uh, a very specific decision. It just means in that moment he wants all the information presented to him in a way that he can quickly get to a very, very fine level in terms of, I have this, I know this, I need to make this decision. And I think that that's what I try to do a lot. Uh, you know, obviously sometimes I have to be a micromanager, quote, unquote, where you have to get into the details of the whole project and go from start to finish. But I think a lot of times when, you know, when all of that data is presented to me and then we can just quickly mix it. And the other part, I think, is that the thing you brought up about, have you done the work before? Coming to me, I think is really important because a lot of times they'll already have a framework of an answer, like they already know what the correct path forward is. It's just like a validation step needed by Me or someone else like my cto, to go and make that decision. So it ends up just being so much more of a productive conversation. I really like when that happens.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned earlier you kind of hinted or, uh, threw out the line there of, you know, why you started the company. You know, we're talking a lot about, you know, a lot of this discussion, especially early on in leadership, it's about, uh, defining what the culture is, how people make decisions, how involved is a leader going to be. Yeah, what, what did kind of, kind of drive you just to decide? You mentioned that it was going from kind of the big company to skydio, and that, that experience at skydio, really something there kind of inspired you. What was it?

Speaker A: Um, I think it really goes back to the leadership accessibility, but in a little bit of a different lens. Right. You know, you're at, you're at Microsoft, you're at Apple. You know, it's like when you look at a final product, you look at a final design. Like you look at a car, right? You're like, how did someone make this? Like, they design every single part of it. Like, it just seems incomprehensible. But then you start with like, just starting, you know, small builders block and you design every little piece and you're like, okay, cool. It's actually not that impossible. It just, you know, takes effort and a team and coordination, et cetera. You know, at Microsoft and Apple, you're in there and you're like, how did they start this company? Like, you know, your, your mind, your mind doesn't comprehend that it starts in a garage. And it took years to. You kind of just think that two founders got together and then next, the next day it was a trillion dollar organization. Right? So it just seems incomprehensible. And I think what, yes, uh, what was really cool about going to skydio is, you know, realizing that the founders, you know, full respect to them, but you know, they're just like normal people. Like, they're, they're like you and me, you know, like they, they just, they had a good idea one day, they worked really hard for it, they built the team around them and you know, scaled it from stage to stage. And I think the entire idea of a startup just became a lot more like humanized by, by interacting with them and meeting them. And it, it didn't seem like, how do I build a 5 trillion dollar apple? It became, uh, a, hey, cool, I can just find someone that I know really well, have an idea that, you know, has some, some weight and go build it and maybe it will become something like this. Like, it just became so much more accessible in my mind. It was like a really, like a mental barrier that I think I had to break down by being exposed to it.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's neat. Yeah. You kind of saw that interim step and you know, very often the. What is it? The. What's the window? The. It's not. I keep thinking average in window, but there's like a phrase of like, you open a window, it's just like the window of possibilities kind of in your mind. And sometimes it's these experiences that, that make it that, um, of what we think is possible. So that totally makes sense. So then I guess then where I would take it next is. So you saw that example, um, made you believe that it was possible and you got. And you start building it from a leadership perspective. What surprises have happened and what surprised you as you've been building this company? Any particular challenges that stand out or things you're just like, oh, I, I didn't, I didn't realize that was a thing I was going to have to. Have to figure out.

Speaker A: Um, I mean, I mean, maybe not strictly leadership, you know, but we, we started with this idea and it was a totally different idea. You know, when we started the company versus what we're doing now, we were building like this vendor management software. It was kind of like, you know, Jira, like Atlassian Software, but for hardware companies. And one of the funniest things that happened was we got into YC with this idea. Uh, and I remember very clearly, the, the YC partner in the interview was like, when he let us into yc, he was like, your idea is not that great, but I like you guys, so I'm gonna let you in. And it was just like, hm, okay. I wonder what he means by this. And then like a month later, you know, we're in yc, uh, we're at this happy hour for hardware founders. And we were selling the hardware company. So I was like, this is great. You know, we're gonna make a bunch of sales. It's gonna be awesome. And I remember being like, in a circle with these really, really crazy hardware founders. And I won't name them just to not expose them, but, like, you know, Matt Yaldick was there. He was very nice. He wasn't one of the ones that shot us down that evening. But, like, we were in this circle and one of these guys was like, yeah, Sean, this is a terrible idea. You should stop working on this, like, right now. And it was. He like hauled us a tarpit idea in front of all of our friends, in front of the entire batch. And I was just like. It was like the worst I'd felt, you know, in my professional career. Because it's just someone you look up to for a really long time, like, sees what you build and it's just like, please don't do this. This is not a good idea. Um, but I think, you know, Anish and I, my co founder and I, we, We learned a lot from that moment. And, you know, we looked at this person as a bit of a mentor for the next six months and we pivoted and iterated ideas and eventually built something that he's actually a huge fan of now, which is. Which has been really, really cool. And I think, I think. I don't know, the thing I tied to leadership here is that, you know, he was kind of a coach slash mentor to us, you know, in those early days, like helping us figure out exactly what, you know, is desirable people actually want, what, what things are actually needed. But I think giving that very brutal, harsh feedback was a huge blessing to us. Right? Because, you know, if we, if you're selling to your friends, everyone's just going to be like, this is great. This is awesome. Yeah, this is cool. And like, they'll just tell you to build it, but it takes, you know, someone who's going to be really, really respectful but also critical of your, of your idea to get you to think really hard about whether or not this is, um, to actually invest your time and energy. And I think that that was, uh, probably the most defining moment in this company's history because we literally shut our very first product down and then started scrambling. And it took us six to eight months to find another idea and land another idea that we wanted to execute on, which is obviously when we built this manufacturing platform early last year. And since then we've just taken off. So it was, uh, a difficult but important moment in our journeys.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, and there's. There's so many successful companies that have a similar origin story. What, you know, of it being their main product was this. And. And uh, it was just going bad and so they pick up something else. I mean, even you mentioned, Matt, you know, astroforge started as. What was it like an undersea mining company, I think, or submersible company or something. You know, it was. And so they, they clearly pivoted. Um, but there's also so much to that about, you know, the, the, in my opinion, a really powerful element of that story that could be amazing for company culture is just this idea of look like ideas are only as good as the market will accept. And you have to be able to accept that feedback. You have to be able to pivot. One of my favorite lines, the co founder and first CEO, uh, of Netflix, Mark Randolph. The way he always puts it, he says, every idea is a bad idea. You just don't know why it's bad. And so you have to put it out there and get that feedback. And it's something that most people aren't ready to do. And I think. And a company culture needs it. And so it's great that you kind of have that part of your story that you personally had to go through that, um, so it makes it easier for others to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think they see it too. You know, we, we spend a lot of time, you know, not like talking about the glory days or anything like that, but we talk a lot about the early days of our company, you know, before we had any employees even, it was just me and a niche. And I think a lot of people realize that, you know, you can kind of just do things right, like whether it's talking to a customer, getting feedback, you know, from a supplier, or, you know, one of the things I like to empower our team to do is every single member of our team. I think, uh, even software folks, you know, they, they talk to our customers, they talk to our users. They either from a manufacturing perspective or like a feature perspective, like, everyone is very exposed to the people who use us every single day. There's not a single person in the company who doesn't know all of our customers. And I think that's very, very important because it goes back to the feedback idea, right? Like, getting really discreet, actionable feedback is something you only get by just being out there and exposing yourself to whoever, whether it's on the supplier side, on the customer side, I think it informed a lot intrinsically just about company culture, that we have to talk to a lot of people, we have to get out there a lot, and we have to figure out what works. And then we figure that one sliver out that there's one thing everyone likes, and you just become really, really good at that one thing. And that's really. We've turned that into different product lines, we've turned out into different sales strategies. But I think always going back to figure out what's working with these people, that's making them really happy. Just nail down on it really, really hard, and then it'll take time, but you'll just build something that people are just huge fans of and they just. They'll rely on you and they'll depend on you and they'll trust you to make, you know, all their hard problems go away.

Speaker B: Excellent. Awesome. Yeah. Well, this is. This has been a fantastic discussion, Sean. It's really exciting to get to get to chat with you, like, really early in the journey. And then we'll definitely have to make sure to check in again, you know, a year or two from now when you got like 500 employees or something like that. I don't know. I don't know how quickly you're hoping to ramp, but we got to check in later on and see how things are going.

Speaker A: As fast as possible, man. As fast as possible.

Speaker B: Excellent. Okay, well, have a great day. Really, really excited chat with you. Um, and we'll do it again.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks.