Ben May from The Code Company - Understanding the Future of Web Development

Speaker A: All right, well, I'll drink for that.

Speaker B: That's. Why was the clap, sir.

Speaker C: I think the sinking stinks.

Speaker A: I'm not in the biz, as they say.

Speaker C: We need to sink. This is.

Speaker B: Are you guys ready?

Speaker C: Meaty or late? Yeah, sure.

Speaker B: Are you ready? Are you pretty now?

Speaker A: Very pret. They're playing sum 41.

Speaker B: I'm ready, guys. Ready?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And welcome to another episode of the Shub Show. If you know, you know. Welcome. He doesn't even know. That's the greatest part of that. We'll explain that to you later.

Speaker D: It's inside of inside.

Speaker B: Oh, it's an inside joke.

Speaker C: And we have two new guests.

Speaker D: Yeah, we do.

Speaker B: I mean, Adam used to be on our show at one point.

Speaker A: Original guest.

Speaker B: Adam was the original, original guest.

Speaker A: Just saying.

Speaker B: We have a pioneer fancy new guest.

Speaker D: We do, we do. We've got Ben May here. Ben is the founder and managing director of the code company. Uh, it's a digital publishing and media. He is a digital media and technology, uh, expert, an entrepreneur who has over a decade of business experience. The code company, which I will ask in a minute how long he's been there for, is a globally recognized enterprise, WordPress agency and WordPress VIP gold partner, specializing in solving complex problems at scale for some of Australia's most prominent digital publishers, including Drive, Pedestrian and Val Morgan, as well as international brands such as ebay and Fujifilm. Ben May, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Hey. Hey.

Speaker B: Welcome to this fun bar full of.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker D: Shubs, T Jabs. We got all kinds of names for it.

Speaker B: Um, should we explain the Shubs first to them?

Speaker C: Yeah, go for it.

Speaker D: You could explain it to one of your co hosts. That would be awesome.

Speaker B: So we were at the second Biz Dev Camp.

Speaker A: Second Biz Dev Camp. Correct.

Speaker B: And, uh, it was in Washington D.C. that's right. And at some point we were making fun of the way they international crowd for the most part in Washington D.C.

Speaker C: it was at a Hyatt. So, uh.

Speaker B: It was in a Hyatt. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, we were making fun of how they, um, went around of doing the, um, the bidets. Right. But it was just like hose attached to, uh, to the toilet. And.

Speaker D: And then the power of this hose

Speaker B: could have taken like rust off a car. We were like, what is happening? And then Ben comes in and goes, what the hell is the shrubs in these bathrooms? And we're like, excuse me.

Speaker C: I was happy that I didn't have a shove. That was the highlight.

Speaker B: Yeah, that was a highlight.

Speaker C: I had a normal shower.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So a shop um, is a shower in a tub. And then we just had a lot of fun with it. Somebody might have registered Shubs.com at some point. Drunk in a bus.

Speaker D: Might have happened.

Speaker B: Might have happened.

Speaker A: If there was a word to summarize that biz dev camp, it was shocked.

Speaker C: It did linger on longer than any memory or lesson.

Speaker A: Definitely longer than men wanted it to.

Speaker B: And it still lingers.

Speaker C: It still comes back.

Speaker D: It's the only thing that came out in some circles.

Speaker B: In some circles.

Speaker D: Six years later.

Speaker B: That's right, yeah.

Speaker D: Nice. Very good. Well, welcome to the show, whatever you want to call it today. Um, before we get going, a little bit, a little background on your uh, experience with the Coke company. How long have you been there? When did you start it all up?

Speaker C: Yeah, we started I think six, seven years ago now. We've been sort of in this version of the business, uh, where we're focusing on Media Publishing, WordPress. Um, uh, most of that's been in Asia Pacific and doing a bit more now in the US as well. Which is why one of the reasons we're over here as well.

Speaker D: Sure. Um, so over the last six or seven years, obviously we've experienced an economic downturn. We've gone through, ah, a global pandemic. We've come out of that pandemic. There's hybrid work, there's clients who are risk averse to digital marketing spends and oh wait, but I have to build stuff. Oh wait, but I don't know if I really want to spend all that money.

Speaker B: Oh wait, are you just reading those Slack messages?

Speaker C: No, no, this is grievances.

Speaker D: Inundated. Inundated. Right. So we see this, um, like last six, seven years, uh, biggest like challenges and uh, successes based on some decision making you've had.

Speaker C: Um, I mean we were pretty lucky. We were always like a remote business and sort of hybrid distributed. Like we had a, uh, few like pods of people. Um, so we were working for big companies in like Melbourne and Sydney and things like that, living in like regional Australia. Uh, so we were sort of already half there and then as Covid came around, we were already doing that anyway, so it was sort of another day. Um, we didn't have to like learn how to be a remote business by that point. So that was, that was really handy for us economically. It's probably different in Australia. We had a lot of brands that were using that time to double down and get stuff done so that when the pandemic was over, whenever that was going to be, they weren't like going to start Then and be like two years behind or a few years behind. Um, and yeah, it's like a weird survivor's guilt thing because we obviously had a very island fortress approach in Australia and had a pretty normal life. Um, but it also allowed us to um, yeah sort of just spend money and people continue to go out and do things and other than like a few spots there where lockdowns and stuff. So yeah, we had a really good couple of years. Um, the business worked as it normally did. People were spending money still. Um, the knock on which obviously everyone had was like outrageous. Hiring and salaries for engineers and digital and product uh, which I think we're starting to see now like that course correct of like layoffs and things like that to like realize the uh, over indexed salaries, uh, uh, hurting bottom lines. But yeah, so that was all those years. Uh, I think for us it was like really specializing and picking our niche three, four, five years ago sort of really work out. We're sort of a jack of all trades in the WordPress space. How do we be just like really good. And we looked back at what we were doing and realized yeah, it's this media space, this enterprise y kind of engineering and just double down in that space and sort of we were working with um, newfangled back then sort of help just like focus our efforts and that's sort of been really instrumental in getting. Yeah getting us on the right track and like following that along the way. So I'm um, not going to say Mark was the single greatest thing because that was out of Biz Dev. That was the second thing that came out of Biz Dev camp after the shovels meeting. I met Mark there. Yeah. Uh, and then we worked together for about a year or two after that. Um, and that sort of definitely put us on the right trajectory just of like sort of what we already knew but just never really had someone like tell you off for like doing too many things and focus. So uh, that worked. Yeah.

Speaker D: Are you basically the same, have you grown over this last six years from headcount revenue standpoints?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean we now are in like the mid-20s uh headcount wise and that's pretty permanent based like you know we will use contractors and overflow when we need it. Um, you know there's been plenty of pain points in learning about how to use freelancers and contractors and uh, internal team and uh, plenty of uh, projects that have uh, a lot of written off hours. But you know we've sort of got a pretty good formula doing that now and sort of some rules that we try not break or I try not breaking, um, to avoid tears later on.

Speaker D: Sure. Nice. Cool.

Speaker B: Um, I had a question.

Speaker D: It's in there somewhere.

Speaker B: It's in there somewhere. Adam, you have questions? I just lost one there.

Speaker A: I was curious about working with newfangled. Right. Having someone that's actually from the outside coming in saying, you guys are doing way too much focus on this thing. So how much of that have you been able. Because uh, if you're not working with him now, have you guys remained disciplined on that? Have you veered from the path? How is that working from? Uh. And uh, are you seeing the return on putting that marketing out there, that positioning and it coming back as leads?

Speaker C: We're pretty disciplined still. Uh, I probably wouldn't be as disciplined if we continued working with them. Um, but we've definitely stayed true to the nation. Sort of going through that process with those guys. There's probably three. There's newfangled stuff, there's sort of like some of David C. Baker's thinking about stuff and like Blair's stuff with win out pitching as well. And it's like this kind of like quasi like bit of everything that's like become this good model for us. Um, but yeah, we've been pretty disciplined about that. How we think about like content marketing, about even just like advertising where we talk to prospects and stuff. And that's worked in our favor really well. Of like uh, this is the problem. We don't solve any other problems. So if it's a fit, it's a really good fit. And if we're up against a generalist shop that does like E commerce and marketing and like event website, like whatever. It's just, it's a no brainer at that point of like we've already got a whole bunch of like institutional knowledge internally ip we can like reuse, um, and like the set the bar of what the baseline is much higher than like having to build all of that or like a lot of shops have to learn on the job for the first time of like, oh, we've never had to build a syndication system for like distributing content. We'll figure it out though. And then it's like a constant pain for like three years. Whereas we're like, we've done this 30 times. We can sort of use our framework. We already have roll it out in a couple of sprints.

Speaker A: It sounds like you guys did a lot of work to really hone in on like the core focus.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Have you reached that point where you're saying no to things that don't fit that mode or are you still kind of taking all comers pretty good?

Speaker C: I mean, we have like a loose scoring framework. How we think about, you know, are you gonna, are you gonna earn something, learn something? Is it a good case study? Could it get us a foot in the door somewhere else? Like, there's about five of those sort of things. Um, so it's got to hit at least one or two of those pretty strongly. But I think there's a very small chance we'd ever take an E commerce project or something like, or build an app. Like, we would just have no idea, uh, how to do that. So it's still got to be pretty disciplined in that space. Um, we sort of also soften that a little bit of. Instead of just medium publishing complex content or migrating 200,000 article, maybe it's not a, a publisher that's like that traditional sense, but, um, still using that kind of rich content. Yeah. Really complex information architecture and how stuff relates, authoring, multi use, like all that sort of stuff. Um, yeah, we've been pretty strict to staying to that. Um, and also like even just the name of the business, which, you know, it sort of has forced us to not like. Well, it prevents us from becoming anything other than like an engineering shop. Um, which is a nice constraint that we've got sort of baked into the brand. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Are you servicing clients all over the globe or just like very specific areas?

Speaker C: We've been trying to work out, um, with Leslie, uh, who does uh, EOS stuff. We're trying to work out our tag, not a tagline, but like our range. And it's kind of from like Singapore to New York is sort of our time zones. We can do anything beyond anything west of Singapore, like Europe just doesn't work for us.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like you can either do one side or the other.

Speaker A: Oh, interesting. It's the opposite.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, if we wanted to do the uk, we have to be like back late at night, like, like 5 o' clock or 6 o' clock at night. Um, but if you're doing like 7:00am with the US like New York, you can't do like 7:00am M and 7:00pm Right. Unless you burn people to the ground.

Speaker A: Spread too thin.

Speaker C: So we pretty much, for like anything that comes out of like that quadrant of the planet, we just say we can't do it. Here's like, maybe someone who might be able to, like someone we know, um, you know, who may not screw you over. Like, good luck. But we Just don't even try because it's just not even worth, like, trying to do a sales call. It's like, oh, I have to hang back to like, 6 o' clock because we start early. We finish early mostly.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I was like, I don't want to say back past three, like, to have to do a call at six.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: And you have to do it right before.

Speaker D: Like, I don't hang around.

Speaker C: Yeah. I got to take the dogs to the park. Like, I got things to do, you

Speaker A: know, Is there a world where code company sets up an operation somewhere in the middle where you could bridge that gap and be full global? Is there any interest in that or are you happy with.

Speaker C: I think there's more than enough. Everywhere else. I don't have. Yeah, there are people who want to, like, we're in every continent in the globe. Like, there's more than enough work for us. Like, we're about 25 people. Like, it's. We don't need, like, yeah. Office in every major city in the world. Um, there's more than enough in the US and Australia and like, APAC for us to be.

Speaker A: You don't have to dredge the ocean.

Speaker C: Yeah, Ah, exactly. Uh, and also there's different sales cultures. It's good to know, like, you know, us a certain style Asia, very different style. Even within Asia, different style Australia again. But then, like, Europe and then the UK are very different beasts as well. Um. Ah, so we just don't bother. Just do some things and do them well.

Speaker B: Yeah. You don't have to, like, retrain and figure out which one am I selling to right now.

Speaker C: Which, ironically, like, between Australia and the UK is probably very similar culturally, but, like, trying to do a deal with Frank French or Italian or German or whatever. Like, I have no idea, like, other than, like, spending, like, short amounts of times on vacations and things.

Speaker A: Like, I'd love to record those meetings, though, and watch you just go through that process.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Brutal honesty and just like, straight to the point.

Speaker B: Like, straight to the point, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Like, here's what it is.

Speaker B: You got nothing. You're like, we can't even. We can't even play with this if

Speaker C: we can't close on, like, one or two calls. And I'm not wasting my time yet. So, uh, it's, uh, it's very different. So. Yeah, we just stick to what we know we can do and we're from there. Yeah.

Speaker B: Nice, nice.

Speaker D: Um, you talked a bit about really focusing on Engineering and especially publishing. I wonder, being as niche as you are, if you've experienced a shift from the clients in terms of table stake expectations around development and engineering. I think there was a period of time where you could tell a client, yes, we'll architect and we'll build something for you and then we'll make it kind of pretty and organized. But uh, the data collection, collation, analysis, translation, all that stuff, certainly seeing it uh, at crowd favorite, right. Where clients are starting to expect more on the data front. Are you seeing the same thing and how are you staffing for that? Are you bringing on different kinds of people to service client expectations that are changing if you're seeing that sort of in your vertical?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think people are getting more uh, educated uh, about a lot of things, but digging into that a little bit. There are people who are getting educated but they still don't really like that. They reading like a few headlines and uh, then asking for AI or data or first party data or dig into what they're actually looking for. And that's none of those things. You're just looking for like a login or something, you know, so, so you still got to press it back a little bit. Um, but definitely people are becoming more uh, informed and educated. First party data stuff. It's like the martech space, like it's sort of like dovetails into what we do. We don't like want to do the implementation of it because it's another whole ecosystem in itself. Um, so it's trying to like say we can, we can do the plumbing to like that next step but we don't want to like manage what that is because that in itself is usually a big organizational change project of how do we store data, how do we, how do we like you know, again, we sometimes bit too blunt of like trying to end up at the end of like what do you actually want out of this? Like building dashboards or like we can, we can collect data now but if we don't know where we're ending, like we're just wasting time of like a whole bunch of noisy data that's not structured properly or, or not connected to the right things. So you know.

Speaker D: Yeah, and I'm seeing that too where like they're turning to their vendors and saying so I've got this marketing team, they're not data analysts.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: So I need them to have, I need this data to be further along when it gets to them.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: Because they're taking up way too much time in their weeks doing, trying to Figure it out themselves and they have no idea what it is.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: Um, so, yeah, I think we're seeing something similar there for sure.

Speaker C: I think it's still pretty new. Like in reality, it's still a new, um, field. Like how to deal with this first party data. I feel like it's been a long time. We've been talking about the cookies, third party cookie going away and this is the year first party data. And that feels like that's been for five years now of like this is the year that everyone gets into first party data and then no one does anything. Um, so yeah, I don't know where that line is of like when we finally fall off a cliff and uh, everyone finally scrambles.

Speaker D: But yeah, so you're doing pretty much just straight engineering. Not a lot of consult, not a lot of like strategy and consulting.

Speaker C: Not on, not on top of that. Um, because I think it's one of those ones of just like having to keep up with where people are. Like the products that are coming out every day of the week. Like there's that, whatever that chart is of like the Martech, like footprint. Like, you know, used to be like 50. I remember being like 50 or 100 products. It now looks like, you know, just like a mosaic. You can't even see it anymore. Like it was like, how do you decipher that, that noise? Like, I think. And that could be something that like, we figure out, uh, if there's like some clear front runners of like having someone who can specialize that is like a really obvious. But the one thing that's consistent is that everyone's different and they all have a different tool. So it's like we specialize in this one, esp. But there's 4,000 other ones and the next 20 prospects are all going to want everything but what we've got. So it's a risk of like having subject matter experts out of something that's no value.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: Um, you just went to the WordPress event in DC, right?

Speaker C: Yep. WordCamp.

Speaker D: Yeah, WordCamp.

Speaker B: Right. Um, I saw Matt was there too. But what do you think the future of like WordPress is? Because it's a lot of changes in the past few short time or there will be.

Speaker C: I mean, the, the wordcamp stuff is a lot of stuff. There's like, stuff about how the product itself is evolving, like core and things like that. But also, you know, there was some, some um, stuff like NASA guys were there. They sort of talked about how they like re platform, the whole NASA suite over to WordPress and things like that, uh, and really spoke to like, WordPress's ability, like for editing and authoring and like the whole block editor, which I think came out probably a bit early, uh, when they first released it, and a lot of shops, um, and it's finally, I think just getting its stride now of you can actually customize it enough to build some really decent authoring, uh, experiences better than probably any cms, proprietary or not on the market. Um, but there's still a lot of like, work that you've got to build every time to get it to that stage. So for agencies to like, figure out how you have that like sort of toolkit ready to go, so you're just doing like the last 20%, not having to like, we need a thousand hours to do like the same thing over and over and over again. So that part of the market, I think, still figuring out where it's going to sit, like, because again, WordPress is very noisy with like, themes and plugins and, you know, you just can't spend your life testing the newest Beaver Builder or Page Builder or whatever. Like, it's just every day of the week. Yeah, it's a weird one with like. Because, I mean, like the future of WordPress, the biggest existential threat people are probably thinking about at the moment is like, AI. And how does, like, if like AI is like two faces either like generating content, so like written content, images, you know, all that sort of stuff, but also like consuming content of like, if everyone just moves to search, um, what is the purpose of a website in the future in total? Um, which is, you know, there's a lot of, A lot of hype and worry about that. I don't know if there's a clear answer to that yet. Yeah, uh, I mean, play to the extreme. If there's no websites, where's the AI going to get its information from?

Speaker A: Yeah, so there's the learning data coming from, right?

Speaker C: It will just, it will only have knowledge up till 2023 and anything that happens after this, it's just its own.

Speaker B: It's going to be predicting it.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: Um, it's going to make up its own source.

Speaker C: It's going to read Twitter or something and like, that's going to be the source of truth going forward.

Speaker A: It's now X, my friend.

Speaker C: It's going to be reading X, um, and Instagram. And that's where it's going to learn everything from on TikTok, you know, TikTok.

Speaker D: Well, the question is, can the Internet ex exist without Websites. I think the answer is yes and I think it will.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I don't think anyone can actually imagine what that is yet.

Speaker D: So it's funny because this, I'm smiling because my last question, my last, not theirs, but my last question for you is literally as a digital agency focused on web development, how do you think clients and customers will consume and interact with content? As we head toward the back half of the decade, do you see people still using a browser and going to websites as they exist today in 2030? And is that hardware?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, I don't, I didn't.

Speaker D: If we're all wearing our reduced versions of the Vision Pro or whatever, I

Speaker C: don't see that being a thing.

Speaker D: Are we like soon searching w HTTPs?

Speaker C: That's right. Uh, no. I mean people probably said that about email like 10 or 20 years ago as well here. And it's the most. Yeah. And if anything it's had a renaissance lately.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Um, I think if you are like a news provider that like goes off like a lot of publishers have got very lightweight reporting and they just like bank on like SEO for long tail rubbish of like best phone cases or whatever else. Those sorts of businesses I think are dead in the water and have got a very short life because that sort of stuff will be so easily cannibalized by search and like amalgamating big data sets. I think if you are building a product that and smart media people are starting to think about like community and like engagement and like, you know, whether that includes like logged in areas or some sort of prop, like a platform more so than just like just generic content. Um, I think there's definitely a place for those. I don't see like mid sized like communities, um, like moving to like bespoke iOS apps or anything like that. Like the web still is a very rapid place to do that sort of thing.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, but yeah, I think there's a lot of crap that will get eaten away.

Speaker D: Do you think like a dot com will ever even be necessary by the end of the decade for companies to do business? I don't, I don't know. I don't. I could definitely see it going away. I mean there are a lot of

Speaker C: sort of like doesn't have the, yeah, it doesn't have the prestige that it used to like because now there's like got everything like or it's not anything like the thing that you've got to

Speaker D: type into a browser in order to get information about something. Is that going to be the like, is that the interaction that we see.

Speaker C: But if you, like, wanted to follow, you know, you know, follow a person that you, you know, because people talk to people and that's a lot going to change. If I just wanted to, like, know all of Bart's musings and his thoughts on things, I'm still going to want to follow him somehow. And there needs to be some sort of medium. And if I want to talk to people who, like, also like Bart, like, I had a chat somewhere, like, it's going to be on some.

Speaker B: It's got to be connection somewhere.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It's got to be.

Speaker C: It's not all one way. And that's saying a lot of people, like spinning up these, like, chat bots at the moment, which 90% of them are just like, search. They're not AI at all.

Speaker A: It's very insular, though. It's like a walled community.

Speaker C: Yeah. But it's, it's. I don't think that's going to replace reading. Like, I'm not going to search every question like you, you find somewhere. And like, like navigation sort of taps into like, human curiosity or navigation of like. So there's the load. And I don't know how AI, like reading the results of ChatGPT is not going to take that away.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: But it's still going to take away a lot. Like if Siri, you know, becomes chatgpt and I can be like, oh, what's the best iPhone case for hiking? Or something? And it just gives me the one answer and it links straight to Amazon or, you know, like, that's gonna knock off, like, millions of websites that do just that.

Speaker B: Um, well, it's gonna go into the, the world of, like, you don't see, you know, here in us, you don't say tissue, say Kleenex, Right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Or Xerox. But it's a copier. Like, it's gonna get into that world where it's like, just book me a hotel. It's gonna be whatever hotel is hooked up to, you know, all your stuff.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It's one of those, like, kind of things. Hey, I will understand that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, you know, all your points, everything else kind of playing with.

Speaker A: Yeah. I haven't seen anything that's going to replace the browser as the entry point just yet. Like, chat GPT is the first thing where I've seen people go in and they get sucked into that walled garden.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: But it doesn't have audio and video and pictures. What's in my mind.

Speaker D: It'll be a thing Blade Runner, 2049. Okay, so your fridge is this idea of personalization. We use it today. Forget that. Like, use the English like grammar version of personalization. So you make the sun, which is an inanimate object. You give it human characteristics. So that's personalization. Yeah. So you do the same thing with the Internet, essentially, where you do not type into anything. You don't type anything. You just speak whatever into a. Into something, and it manifests. A person, a robot, a. I don't know. Elon's gonna give us all something.

Speaker A: Uh, I don't know. Back to the future 2. We were gonna have floating skateboards.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: 2025 is 2023.

Speaker A: We are nowhere near that.

Speaker D: They went. They went forward.

Speaker A: I think it was, like, two years ago. Who knows? It already happened. 2019, pre pandemic. Uh, no floating skateboard.

Speaker C: Well, that's why you just need the chip in the brain. Elon's brain chip or whatever. And that will just fin. That'll just be the, uh, neural link. Yeah, the neural link. And then you won't need a browser because it would just, like, either kill you or, like, you'll be dead.

Speaker D: Or is it like, minority or airport, where, like, you're just advertised to or marketed to it about complete personalization, individual to individual. I don't know.

Speaker B: Um, or idiocracy, where it's just whatever.

Speaker D: Well, we're definitely.

Speaker A: Which, by the way, watch it for the first time in my life.

Speaker B: You just watched it because it gets

Speaker A: name dropped all the time.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Here's my question.

Speaker A: I watched it a month ago.

Speaker D: You find it fascinating or depressing?

Speaker A: Neither. I thought it was the worst film I've ever seen.

Speaker B: No, it's terrible.

Speaker C: It's like.

Speaker A: And I was like, everyone talks about this movie.

Speaker B: No, no, it's absolutely terrible, the buildup. But did not live up to that. The problem is it really just that, uh, what's happening?

Speaker A: We're living through it.

Speaker B: We're living through it.

Speaker A: We're living through it.

Speaker D: Water the plants with Gatorade, man.

Speaker A: Gatorade's great.

Speaker B: Science, Science, it just works, right? Is that all your questions?

Speaker D: That was all mine. Do you have. Do you have.

Speaker B: No, I have the final question.

Speaker D: Knock yourself out.

Speaker B: So, Ben, what are you currently obsessed with?

Speaker C: Uh, work wise?

Speaker A: Mm.

Speaker D: Anything we actually prefer not work.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker B: We've had some interesting past two, but go on. You do whatever you want.

Speaker C: I don't know what I'm obsessed with. Yes, you do.

Speaker D: Travel.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's probably something to travel because, uh. Uh, yeah. Uh, Course correcting for a couple years of not traveling and things like that. Um, if you want to know how

Speaker D: to fly or travel really well, talk to Ben.

Speaker C: Right. He's got all these, well, sympathy for people who don't. There is none.

Speaker D: Right. No empathy, but sympathy.

Speaker C: Um, yeah, I mean, work wise, the thing this year has been, uh, eos, which I've realized very late to the game on everyone. Uh, again, I think I heard, like, people like you guys talking to Mark about that, like, Biz Dev camp, however long ago that was, like everyone was back in the house. It sounded very culty back then, but I realized we had a lot of the same pain points. So that's been my work. Uh, uh, obsession, I guess. That's the most. There's something I'm focusing on the most. Nothing else. Um. Uh, yeah, I'm not obsessing with AI and stuff because I still think it's at the word.

Speaker A: The.

Speaker B: Too early.

Speaker C: At the geek, not the geek.

Speaker D: It's not AI.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker D: What is it, Bart?

Speaker B: It's not. It's just some language models.

Speaker C: It's just a hype at the moment. Yeah, it's not. There's no wrong word for it. So I'm. I'm watching, but I'm not.

Speaker B: I wasn't gonna say it. You brought it up.

Speaker A: It's great for vc.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. If you add AI into whatever we're

Speaker A: trying to pitch Adam. AI.

Speaker C: That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: I'm here. Invest in me.

Speaker D: Are you. Are you here?

Speaker B: Are you actually here?

Speaker C: Maybe it's a visual representation.

Speaker D: You have to find out.

Speaker A: Wait, do I have to do a spoken word notes? Adam waved his hand in front of his face.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker D: Uh, if you don't watch on the video, that's going to ask him.

Speaker B: Yeah, we can actually ask them.

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: Are you currently upset?

Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.

Speaker B: Well, uh, you're sitting here, so you got to contribute.

Speaker A: Uh, well, I mean, I have a new phenomenon. My oldest started college last week.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker D: Wow.

Speaker A: So I'm obsessed with, uh, the idea of my own mortality. I thought you were gonna say how I am old. Um, no, I mean, that's been great. Uh, yeah, the usual. Like, I'm listening to, you know, far left socialist podcasts, watching shows about aliens, and, um, helping people train for marathons.

Speaker D: So, getting ready for hockey preseason?

Speaker A: I am very ready for hockey preseason. I'm very disgruntled about all of the NFL football coverage.

Speaker C: Football's coming, man.

Speaker A: I loathe the culture and everything about

Speaker D: that Ben doesn't care about any of it.

Speaker A: We are unified in that we've seen unity. Um, I do love Australian rules football, though. That's wild, right? That's. That's. That's.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's like in an NFL cross with soccer, crossword. Like sprinting, but, like, people on shoulders.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: It's like you had me of. That game is pretty interesting.

Speaker A: That's a game I could get into.

Speaker C: I mean, I don't know. I learned a little bit of it in, like, elementary school, like, having to, like, you have to bounce the ball like every 10 steps or so, every five meters. Like, just all these, like. It's like a football. You've got to, like, bounce it and catch it. I remember having to learn to do that. It's very tricky. Um, what's a rugby ball? Right. Yeah, it's a rugby ball.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a rugby ball. Right.

Speaker C: Because you call it a pig skin based off all my American.

Speaker B: Well, no, I mean, if you look at. If you look at the football, it looks.

Speaker C: But you've got to. You've got to sort of throw it just right to bounce it while you're, like, sprinting, basically. Um, keep bouncing the ball and then, like, kick it like, you know, 200 meters between, like.

Speaker A: I do have a question for Ben.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Of all the American movies you've watched that. That talk about, like, American culture.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: When you've come here, which one has been the closest to, like, wow, they really do that. Dumb.

Speaker C: There's a lot. There's a lot. The Simpsons, Family guy, South park do give you a very good external of the reality when you get here.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: Uh, of the reality.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I mean, it's.

Speaker B: It's okay.

Speaker C: There's like 3 trillion episodes of the Simpsons, so there's going to be some that says accuracies and inaccuracies along the way, but. Well, they're pretty.

Speaker B: They predict a lot of things.

Speaker C: It's amazing. I mean, you put that much content out, some of it's going to be right.

Speaker D: Didn't they do the whole thing with Trump and Melania coming down?

Speaker A: Yes. Oh, they've done.

Speaker B: It's all of m. It. Like, it's just like. They're so.

Speaker C: So there's like pandemic related ones that they've done, like. Yeah.

Speaker B: Kind of amazing.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: 1989 or 88. That show's been on since.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been forever.

Speaker C: It's like 30.

Speaker D: That makes me feel older than you're a kid going to college.

Speaker B: It makes me feel and then if you really want to go to CSI, it's smpp.org and it's everything. And every script and every vowel, it's a single.

Speaker A: Even the stuff from the Tracy Ullman Show.

Speaker B: I don't think it's. I think it's from the beginning of, uh.

Speaker A: Talk about dating yourself and being old.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Ben, it was awesome to have you here.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker D: Thank you so much.

Speaker C: Good to see you all.

Speaker B: Thank you. Kind of did this on prompt, too, but thank you, guys.

Speaker A: We'll see.

Speaker B: In case you couldn't tell, next time,

Speaker A: off to the show.