How Make a SaaS Product That People Want - StartupSauce SaaS Podcast Episode#3 Kyle Miller - BackupParachute.com

This is a transcript from my recent SaaS podcast interview Episode #3 with Kyle Miller.

Kyle runs Backup Parachute Software (backupparachute.com) and also works as a fractional CTO to help growth-stage companies navigate complex technical challenges and drive growth. Previously he founded VehicHaul and led it to a successful exit.

Watch the full interview here.

In this episode you can expect to learn:

• How to hire good remote developers

• How to prioritize which features to work on

• How to know when to sell your SaaS

Here's a short 5-minute clip from our conversation.

 

Also you might be interested in these:

• The 10 Laws of Freemium
• How to Predict Churn (with 90% Accuracy) - StartupSauce SaaS Podcast Ep#1 Aaron Kassover
• Accounting For SaaS Businesses - A Guide For Founders

 

*** 

[00:00:00] Kyle Miller: You got to really know what you're doing before you get in there. I think, I think a lot of people have really good ideas and they're like, the only way to do this is VC and they take it. And then they really like not have done that. You know, what's your number one challenge as a business right now? I run my business.

[00:00:14] Kyle Miller: Like it's a recession all the time. Personally. I like those constraints of we don't have enough resources. We don't have enough time. I think that makes you kind of think outside the box and do things differently. What would you do differently if you knew what you know now,

[00:00:27] Ryan Wardell: Kyle Miller, welcome to the show.

[00:00:30] Ryan Wardell: Hey, hi Ryan. Welcome Just as a bit of context, I think the first time we met was, was a couple of years ago. I think I sent you a LinkedIn message. I said, Hey, you know, you should come and join this, this awesome startup source community I've got going on. And I think your response was probably the best response I've ever had to date, which was Hey, that sounds cool.

[00:00:47] Ryan Wardell: Problem is I just sold my business. So technically I don't qualify because I don't meet the revenue threshold. And I was like, that was, Either the best flex, certainly the best response I've ever heard. So, so, so Kyle, can you just kind of run us through, what, what are you working on? What do you sell and who do you sell it to?

[00:01:04] Ryan Wardell: Can you kind of explain it? Like I'm a five year old. 

[00:01:07] Kyle Miller: Yeah. Okay. So, I've been doing this a while. I just had 25 years experience, uh, last year. First five years I was working for somebody else, but the last 20, I've been running a number of businesses. The thing that I sold right before Ryan talked to me was a software platform vehicle.

[00:01:22] Kyle Miller: It's for a vehicle transportation. So, uh, I'm still, I sold that a couple of years ago, but I'm still heavily involved in it. They've kind of brought me in. I'm still running. I'm basically like the CTO for vehicle still. I, I sold it out, but I took a small piece of the bigger business. So I'm kind of still, still in the mix, still want to see that thing be successful.

[00:01:41] Kyle Miller: So,  that is. It's a package. So it's a big package, right? Uh, they, um, imagine rental cars, right? You pick up a rental car, you want to inspect the rental car before you take possession of it. The guy's got to use their mobile app. They got to take pictures. So there's a whole mobile app component to it.

[00:01:56] Kyle Miller: And then we're doing a lot of integrations of these big, um, car manufacturers, and so it's a whole kind of spiderweb. How, how did you get started with that? Like what, what, what was the origin story? Well, the origin story was I answered it. So, uh, um, I. I had a business with a couple of buddies. We were running consultancy.

[00:02:14] Kyle Miller: It was going well, we actually made a software. It, this was before SAS existed. This was like 2008 and I'm like, man, we need to, this is like, it would have been, it was very early in the SAS game, it was an MFT managed file transfer system. And it was good. It was better than a lot of the big ones. I'm like, guys, we've got to sell this.

[00:02:29] Kyle Miller: This is, we need to wrap this up as a package and sell this somehow. And I just could not get the one guy on board and I just was like, I'm out. I'm done. I got, I can't do this like anymore. So, so I quit and started back a parachute and, um, I started that as a consultancy. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I'm like, I, as a consultant, you get to dig in like a tick and learn, you know, like, uh, oh, here's a big gap in this, in this industry and I'll, I'll take it.

[00:02:53] Kyle Miller: So I'm just doing random stuff. I'm like, I'll do random, random contracts, whatever comes along. Uh, I get a, you know, a completely unknown phone number, answer it. And it's this guy's like, Hey, I'm in Chicago. Uh, we heard you've worked on a TMS before as a vehicles, uh, transportation management system. I'm like, yeah, I've done a couple.

[00:03:10] Kyle Miller: He's like, fly through to Chicago and do one for us. And I did, I went up there and I pitched it to him and I pitched it really high. It was way too expensive for him. And I said, how about this? How about you give me a good chunk of change? Okay. I'll own it and then I'll be able to do whatever I want with it.

[00:03:28] Kyle Miller: So you'll get a great deal for life, but, uh, I'll, I'll use that money to, to build it and own it. And that's whatsoever. So I started, I figured this would be a good side gig. I'll have a few customers that use this, you know, I'll make, you know, I'll be doing my consultancy, but I have some, like some, some SAS recurring revenue.

[00:03:44] Kyle Miller: I really want to get into that. And, um, it first, it was slow, you know, first couple of years, it was really just a side gig. Then all of a sudden master getting busy and got to the point where I'm like, I gotta go. I was working like two full time jobs. Like I was doing consulting stuff of the day. I was doing that at night.

[00:03:58] Kyle Miller: I'm like, I'm done. I'm jumping in. So I fired all my consulting clients and. Leaned in. So it 

[00:04:04] Ryan Wardell: was great. What's your, what's your secret sauce? So what's, what's something that you do better than anybody else? So you do better than most people. 

[00:04:12] Kyle Miller: I am a very good developer. I would, I would say in my local market region, I'm probably top 1%.

[00:04:19] Kyle Miller: I'd say top 10 percent in the country. I'm, I'm very efficient and good at what I do, but the, but really what I'm very good at. I think the difference between me and most developers or programmers is I'm very good at talking to people and figuring out what's going on. What they really need, like translating the, their wants into actual software that they want, not like, Hey, they, cause they'll say, Hey, I want a button here.

[00:04:39] Kyle Miller: And you put a button there and they don't really want that. I'm like, well, let's take a step back. And I, I make them kind of work to the problem. And I, uh, I'm able to take that and make that software. So I think that's really probably what I'm good at. I'm really good at making very, very good software.

[00:04:52] Kyle Miller: Not great to run a sales team. I'm not great at scaling it. Like the software can scale, but like saying, Hey, let's hire 10 guys. Yeah. And so this, that's kind of not, that's kind of not my thing. So, um, but, uh, 

[00:05:03] Ryan Wardell: very good software. I think that's really valuable skillset because I've met so many people that are really good on the technology side of things, but they just can't bridge that gap between what, what the client needs or what the customer needs.

[00:05:15] Kyle Miller: There's absolutely the people that are better developers than me for sure. Hard stuff. But that, but that piece being able to talk to the customers or, or who the stakeholders and really figure out what they need. I'm, I just happen to be very good at that. I don't know 

[00:05:26] Ryan Wardell: why. How did you, how did you kind of leverage that?

[00:05:29] Ryan Wardell: Or how did you get move beyond that initial customer? What did you do? Nothing. 

[00:05:35] Kyle Miller: Nothing. I didn't do anything. I just worked hard. I literally just focused on the software, made it better, made it better, made it better, and the way that the industry that I'm in is in, it's very, very tight network. So I knew that if I killed her, if I kill this other people, cause that company has to have other people work for them and they'll say, well, Hey, you got to use our software and then they'll use it and then they'll like it and then it'll grow.

[00:05:56] Kyle Miller: And I was, it was the network effect and it worked. 

[00:05:59] Ryan Wardell: Right. I just, so you just happened to be in a space where very tight network effect, you build a kick ass product and they're going to have to do it. 

[00:06:08] Kyle Miller: So I was just like, I'm going to do a product. I had zero marketing website was terrible, just plowed it all into the software and made it.

[00:06:15] Kyle Miller: Um, and here's the thing. It's not beautiful. It's not what someone would call traditionally beautiful, but for this industry. I went out, I went with truck drivers. I like got on the truck. I was loading vehicles with them. I watched what they did. So I made an app that they love. The truck drivers love it.

[00:06:30] Kyle Miller: And that that's the key because they're not bitching to the owner. Like, Hey, this sucks. This is slowing us down. So these guys love it. And I knew if I, if I could get them to love it. It would go up and that was a, it was a gamble, but it paid off. 

[00:06:42] Ryan Wardell: See, I, I have a lot of respect for that. There aren't too many people that would get out and actually start like loading trucks just to see how the software works and how it, how it holds up.

[00:06:50] Kyle Miller: I mean, I'm in the Midwest. I'm kind of a country boy. So it's not, that's not like that much of a reach. I just, that's what I just want right over here to do it. So still you're right. I think a lot of people won't get down in the trenches and kind of see what's really happening and, and kind of focus on, on some of that stuff.

[00:07:06] Kyle Miller: So. It was, that was my key differentiator. 

[00:07:09] Ryan Wardell: Is, is that the biggest mistake that you see a lot of SaaS startups making, or is there something else that you see over and over and over again? 

[00:07:17] Kyle Miller: I think I would say, I mean, yes, they, I think they don't focus on the actual app enough. Like they, they get a little bit of success and they're like, cool, let's scale that sales team.

[00:07:27] Kyle Miller: And we're going to do SEO and we're just going to kill it. And then you get people in initially. But there's a high dropover because they get in, they're like, okay, oh, but this doesn't really do what I want to do. And then, you know, it's kind of like, uh, it's like everybody does dropship on Amazon. They're like, oh, I'll sell these sandals from Alibaba.

[00:07:42] Kyle Miller: And then people get them and then they send them back and so you got all these returns and it's ends up not being kind of really worth it. I, I've, I see that a lot in these in, in SAS, just like that initial jump. And then they're like, Oh, scale, I feel like pull back. If you could pull back and wait a little bit, I think that's a, 

[00:08:00] Ryan Wardell: I see that a lot with venture funded startups.

[00:08:02] Ryan Wardell: They raise a ton of money. Then they're under pressure to spend that money to grow at all costs. So they go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Churn rate is ridiculous. And then they end up blowing through all the cash. 

[00:08:13] Kyle Miller: You're just gasoline. When you got a port on that fire, you got to go, right? You got, you got 18 months.

[00:08:18] Kyle Miller: We've got to like double this business if you're in the right spot. So if you, if, if, if they would have done that to vehicle after five years, that'd have been great. Cause the app was killer. You could have really dumped, you know, a few million into it and just went. Um, so. But I think if you, you know, if you're doing it, like after you're one year and you don't, there's just, there's a point where it's right.

[00:08:39] Kyle Miller: And the point where it's not right. Um, so you just got to kind of like 

[00:08:42] Ryan Wardell: get that figured out. What's something, what's your number one challenge as a business right now? Like what, what are you doing to overcome it? 

[00:08:49] Kyle Miller: I mean, my biggest, it's just time we just have. So I have a very devoted customer base. And I get great ideas every day.

[00:09:00] Kyle Miller: They're like, Oh, it'd be awesome. If it'd be great. If, and I mean, I have a list of features that are just, is amazingly long and they're all great. And so just really filtering that and prioritizing it and doing what's important. I run my business. Like it's a recession all the time. I'm always have less people than I need on purpose.

[00:09:18] Kyle Miller: I don't, I think that personally, I like those constraints of we don't have enough resources. We don't have enough time. I think that makes you kind of think outside the box and do things differently because you've got to you're like, we don't have 40 developers to just mull over this for a month or two.

[00:09:33] Kyle Miller: We've got four days go. What are we going to do? And, um, so I kind of like, I like those constraints. They help 

[00:09:41] Ryan Wardell: focus me. Do you have like a, any sort of mental models or frameworks that you use for deciding which features to prioritize? Like when, when you're looking at giant feature list, how do you decide this is the one I'm going to smash out today?

[00:09:53] Kyle Miller: Great question. Um, I mean, it's got feel, really. I try to, I try to hit the sweet spot of, I've got people, you know, if you're going to do the Venn diagram, right? You've got, you've got people asking for it. It's, it's cool enough that you think other people are going to be jealous. Like, Oh, I wish my software did that, you know?

[00:10:09] Kyle Miller: So you got to kind of like, you kind of move that, that, that circle around on the Venn diagram to hit the sweet spot of like enough people want it, or I can market it enough, see, I really like, I like having people really want something. Cause then I get beta testers and they're gonna be like, then they're going to be like a mouthpiece.

[00:10:23] Kyle Miller: So they'll be like, Oh, this guy is great. You've got this super cool feature, you know, when they're out beers with their buddy that are in the industry, they're like, Oh, well, yours doesn't look a cool thing. Mine doesn't, they're going to show them. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta hit some of the cool, fancy stuff.

[00:10:35] Kyle Miller: And I will tell you that those are some of the least used features in the app, you know. But people, and then again, they have that checklist, right? Like, well, it's got to do this, even if they don't use it. Oh, well, it's got it. Got to have that. I mean, like 

[00:10:47] Ryan Wardell: it's got to have AI. I mean, obviously, even if there's nothing useful for it to do, it's got to have AI.

[00:10:50] Ryan Wardell: Sure. 

[00:10:51] Kyle Miller: Oh, I mean, yeah, you just, yeah. I mean, obviously you get the little, the AI thing on there. It's so now I've been doing it a long time, so I would say my gut feels probably better than someone that's been doing it a year. You know, but a lot of it's also going to be your industry too. You know, you got to really, I have a deep knowledge of transportation.

[00:11:09] Kyle Miller: My first job was with the railroad. So I kind of knew this world. I got out of it a little bit, but I was still, you know, I got deep enough that I could get back in pretty easily. So I knew transportation pretty well. So that was. Kind of a good thing. Like if I got, now I've worked in every major industry, I've done some military work, I've done all kinds of stuff.

[00:11:28] Kyle Miller: So I have a shallow knowledge of many things, but transportation is probably my deepest. So when the guy said TMS, I'm like, Oh yeah, this is it. I'm going to knock this out of the park. So 

[00:11:37] Ryan Wardell: if you were starting a new business tomorrow, what would you do differently? If you knew what, you know, now I would, I would, um, 

[00:11:49] Kyle Miller: I would do more marketing.

[00:11:50] Kyle Miller: I'd do more marketing and SEO out of the gate. Cause I just did very little of that. Cause I. I am probably more of a small business owner than I am an entrepreneur. Um, I don't take big cuts. I live in the Midwest, you know, so I'm a little more conservative with some of that. So I got into, I wanted to own my own business because of freedom, not because I want it to be Zuckerberg.

[00:12:13] Kyle Miller: Right. So I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying to scale and have a hundred employees. I'm trying to have humans are just a pain in the ass. I'm trying to have less, as few humans as possible. I want as much automation as possible. I want this software to run itself. And I just want that recurring revenue.

[00:12:27] Kyle Miller: Um, and I want to do things I like. So I was, it was more really, this is more of a freedom play. I get to, if I work for myself, I get to pick the things I do and I get to do them how I want to do them. It just happens that I've been pretty successful at it. So cool. That's good. It's good to do something you like and you're successful at.

[00:12:42] Kyle Miller: Those are, it's a sweet spot and not a lot of people hit. So I've been kind of blessed there for sure. So I think, you know, if I truly, more marketing would have been good. Not even marketing so much as just, Probably got on social more, push more, push more, um, SEO and stuff like that. That'd have been good.

[00:12:59] Kyle Miller: Um, now today, I think the thing today is different though, cause I, you know, with all this AI generated stuff, I have a feeling that search and SEO is going to really, really change SEO is going to be more like, you're going to ask. Hey, go find me software that does X, Y, Z. And I got to tell you what I, I predict I have no, no, I've, I know some AI developers, I know some guys that work at places just with casual, casual conversations.

[00:13:25] Kyle Miller: I, as a human, I'm starting to able to be, I'm able to pick out. AI written stuff. It's real wordy, real long. I think that those AI AI is going to be able to, it's going to favor other AI written content because it likes how it is. It's wordy and long. And so I think, I think I don't, as much as I don't want to use AI for some of this stuff, I think you're, you're going to be almost penalized if you don't.

[00:13:47] Kyle Miller: Right. Like, Hey, I need a lot of, I need a lot of words on my website because that's what AI lies. Cause it's shady. I there's, there's going to be definitely some black magic here where we're going to totally redo SEO for the, like. Chad, GBT overlords and gods of the new world. So, um, that's gonna be interesting.

[00:14:05] Kyle Miller: I 

[00:14:05] Ryan Wardell: don't know how we, how we deal with that. Yeah, that is a spicy take because I've spoken to some people and what they were saying is that the, because of how easy it is to generate so much content with AI now, um, the Google doesn't want to see, you know, everything kind of flooded with, with AI. So, so it's putting more emphasis on human generated stuff.

[00:14:25] Ryan Wardell: So. If you've got stuff on Reddit, that does really well. Stuff on Quora does really well. Like, it's giving more emphasis to that. However, that's a really interesting point. I don't think I've heard anyone make before. Well, exactly. But if 

[00:14:36] Kyle Miller: I'm not using Google, who cares, right? Because I'm not looking at all the results.

[00:14:39] Kyle Miller: I'm just saying it's tough because, like, I'm already using, I use the, that super human, the email thing. And you can like summarize a bunch of emails, like summarize these emails for me and it's boom, it's just, so it's full of like, I don't care because it's just telling me, Oh, ignore that, ignore that.

[00:14:52] Kyle Miller: Here's the things out of this. So, so yeah, Google's going to lose some of its luster and, or you're just going to use Google's chat or whatever, however you're going to do it. But it's, it's going to be, it's going to flip and it's going to be interesting. You know, so I think what I would have done is, I don't know what I would do right now is I'd really pay attention to what, where AI is going.

[00:15:15] Kyle Miller: I definitely, um, like I was listening to a thing from, um, yeah, 

[00:15:20] Ryan Wardell: yeah. Yeah. 

[00:15:22] Kyle Miller: He had a thing and he was like, um, he's like, yeah, like all these people are, they're just kind of making plugins and stuff. And he's like, you know, with all due respect, but like, we're going to totally crush. All of them here with 4. 5 or five.

[00:15:34] Kyle Miller: He's like, so we're just going to constantly, there's gonna be all these businesses that spring up. And then all these businesses we kill, like with every release, I'd try to stay out of that wake. I would try to be, I would try to steer clear of that. I would pick a niche and I would own that niche, something that.

[00:15:48] Kyle Miller: They don't care about and, and I would just really try to like get as tall garden walls as I could immediately. Right? Like that's, you have to go really, really, really, really narrow. I mean, you do hear these 

[00:16:01] Ryan Wardell: stories. It's a lot of kids. They come out with some, something that is basically just a thin wrapper over the top of chat GPT and they sell it and they make a pile of money for a little while.

[00:16:09] Ryan Wardell: Um, 

[00:16:12] Kyle Miller: yeah, it's cool. It's listen, fun, totally fun. But like longterm, you're, you're not, you're not going to do that longterm. Bag of parachute. This is my. 12th or 13th year, you're not going to get an AI startup. That's going to do no, 

[00:16:24] Ryan Wardell: there's an expiry date on it because, because you, you, you building a feature.

[00:16:27] Ryan Wardell: It's just that 

[00:16:30] Kyle Miller: you go on knowing that, Hey, do you want to two years? You want to make a couple of million, two years. Hey, do it. It'd be great. I mean, good on your resume. But as soon as you start doing that, man, you better, you better get a backup plan real quick. Absolutely. Real quick. Have 

[00:16:45] Ryan Wardell: you got any other, maybe not, not unpopular, but just any opinions about building a SaaS business that maybe go a bit counter to the mainstream view?

[00:16:55] Kyle Miller: Well, so what's interesting is, so like I said, I built Vehicle as a lifestyle business. My intention was, I, I was talking to some of the other guys, like these, these carriers that I was talking to. They've been using software for 25 years. So I was like, if I get these guys, if I get them to hook, I will literally be able to get this going and I will just, I'll just be on the beach.

[00:17:16] Kyle Miller: They'll be using my software. I don't have to do shit. It'd be awesome. Right. And I'll just have customers for like 20 years. And I was right. I still have customers from like the jump. I've, we've very few people churn. Um, but I have other buddies that started at the same time and they went VC startup route, like we're, we got money, we're going to burn this thing and we're going to go, and what's funny is.

[00:17:39] Kyle Miller: I started with the lifestyle business. I, I poured it all into the app and I was just trying to make, because I'm trying to make my life easy. I'm like, I'll make this app. It's just totally self service and it's good to go. It's easy to use. And our trajectory is like, they went like this and I went like this.

[00:17:53] Kyle Miller: And then we, we turned, you know, like all of a sudden I'm running a startup. Like I'm growing like crazy. I ended up selling it there. They're still just, you know, making a few hundred thousand. That means they're making, they basically run a lifestyle business and they're great lifestyle businesses. But they will tell you they run a startup every day.

[00:18:09] Kyle Miller: And I'm like, bro, that's not a startup anymore. You were, you were 12 years in your, your revenue is like 3 percent every year. Like it is just, yeah, that's just a lifestyle business. I'm like, lean into it, you know, just, but so I think, I think just because you say in lifestyle business is a dirty word and startups, it's like, Oh my God, you're just like, yo, but I'm telling you what, like all the guys I know that did startups, see, they either burned cause they, they burned all the cash and everything left.

[00:18:36] Kyle Miller: Or they, they made it, they did just good enough that everybody took a write down and kind of let them run the business and they're just running this lifestyle business. And I, I ended up, I kind of focused on product more and was able to take that. Could you do that all the time and everything? No, no, I don't think so.

[00:18:50] Kyle Miller: I maybe I hit a sweet spot. I don't know. I'm going to, I'm working on a couple of new SAS platforms. So I guess we'll see how that goes. Like I'll get to eat my own dog food and see if I can do it again in a similar fashion. I don't know. Um, but again, I'm running a, my goal is to, my goal is to start up a couple of new things.

[00:19:09] Kyle Miller: And I'll never sell back a parachute. That'll be my own company, but I'm just, I'm building these things now in a way that they're easy to sell off so I can sell this sat platform or that one. I think it's big enough or. Or whatever. So, well, my goal is to just keep them. And, um, dude, recurring revenue is awesome.

[00:19:26] Kyle Miller: I love it. You know, getting paid while you sleep because it gets, I've done the, you know, consultant stuff, which you can make a lot of money consulting, but it's asses in the seats, right? Like you can only eat what you can make in a, in a day. So honestly, now the next, these next couple I'm working on, really, I'm kind of doing it for the science.

[00:19:46] Kyle Miller: I just, can I do a similar thing again? And if not, then I'll have to pour some money into marketing and do it more traditionally. But you know, I still don't think I'll do it with money. I'll still just bootstrap it and see 

[00:19:56] Ryan Wardell: where I can take it. That's, that's the thing about, about when you're building a lifestyle business, the difference is you own a hundred percent of it.

[00:20:04] Ryan Wardell: So if you've got these buddies who've taken a whole pile of VC money and they've effectively built a lifestyle business, but they only own 10 percent of it, you know, like right. 

[00:20:16] Kyle Miller: So I sold a call for low seven figures, but that's a great payday, right? Do that, do that as a 10 or 15 percent owner, you've got to get a business.

[00:20:28] Kyle Miller: That's 30, 40 million for you to, to get a decent payout and really change your life. So, I mean, I, my life is a hundred percent. I took a lot of cash off the table, but I also got to keep some ownership of the bigger company. I again, changed my life. So, um, but I'm able to do that because I owned a hundred percent of it.

[00:20:44] Kyle Miller: If I had a partner. Well, then that becomes less, it becomes less that you're like, okay, well, we gotta, we gotta grow more. This isn't enough, right? So that is, that is the dance with the devil, right? Like the VC. I mean, it is, it is a, you got to really know what you're doing before you get in there. I think, I think a lot of people have really good ideas and they're like, the only way to do this is VC and they take it.

[00:21:05] Kyle Miller: And then they really like not done that, you know, um, So nothing wrong with it. Uh, you know, you just gotta, you gotta know the devil you're dancing with. I guess. 

[00:21:16] Ryan Wardell: It sounds like you got, you got a lot of things right with, with vehicle. Like you, you, you picked an industry that had this really tight networking effects, effects.

[00:21:25] Ryan Wardell: You really just focused on the product and built the best product. And then that was able to take advantage of the network effects and grow like that without having to sink loads and loads of time and effort into marketing. Um, and it sounds like the decision to bootstrap it rather than raise VC turned out to be the right one in the end.

[00:21:42] Ryan Wardell: Um, what, what else did you get right? Is there anything else in there that you feel like I nailed that decision? I got that one, that call right? 

[00:21:50] Kyle Miller: Well, I think the time to sell was one. So I was not ready to sell. I wanted to wait. I was, I was like, I saw the trajectory. I'm like, this is going pretty good. I'm growing a lot.

[00:22:00] Kyle Miller: I wanted to wait like a year, year and a half. I want to get that revenue up a little higher, but I started fielding some really good offers. A couple of them, two or three. I'm like, All right. I need to take this seriously. I'm not ready yet, but I think that this might be the time to go. You're never really ready.

[00:22:17] Kyle Miller: Right. You always want to be ready. But then a year I would have been like, Oh, let's wait. I sold right before COVID. So that was like spot on. Oh, like perfect timing. Could have timed that one better. I mean, absolute peak. Yeah. So that was great. But, but really going back to like, I think now I nailed that.

[00:22:34] Kyle Miller: Like I knew that I wanted to sell it at that point. Like, again, the first few years, I'm like, I'm going to ride this out. But then it just started growing so much. It needed, it needed, uh, I needed more than I could give it. I needed some sales guys. I needed what I really want. And now I got a couple offers.

[00:22:50] Kyle Miller: I went, I didn't go with the highest offer. I went with the offer that had the biggest network, because I knew that this network effect could really grow it a lot more. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to try to take this whole industry over. It's a little industry. I can really, I can get a big old chunk of this.

[00:23:03] Kyle Miller: Yep. So I went with the group that had the biggest network. And we're going to kind of lean into it. And so, um, again, I wanted to be a lifestyle business, but it just started growing so fast, the carrot feeding, it needed more than I could give it. And, and I, that really, it was a good, I think it was a good call.

[00:23:17] Kyle Miller: I I'm, I'm still happy that I sold it to have no, no regrets. Um, so I think that, you know, a couple of years and that's absolutely, I think it's, it was the right choice. It was the right choice for me, my customers too, really. And honestly, some of these guys have been with me 10 years. They're like, they're my buddies.

[00:23:31] Kyle Miller: I like, I go out, I see him, we hang out, we drink beers, we smoke cigars. It was like. So we're just, I mean, we're, we're, I've made quite a few friends off of this too. Definitely some enemies, but a few friends out of the way, like a couple of friends. 

[00:23:43] Ryan Wardell: I think that's a good sign. If, if you've got customers that have been still, still around, still, you know, 10 years later, And you can go drinking with them.

[00:23:52] Ryan Wardell: It means you built something good, something people find valuable. 

[00:23:55] Kyle Miller: Yeah. It's something they're very, they're more passionate about probably than me at some point. So yeah, I think I feel happy about that. I think it was 

[00:24:02] Ryan Wardell: good. What's, um, what's your end goal? Like, is, is it still to sit on, on the beach, um, checking your bank account balance and seeing it?

[00:24:10] Ryan Wardell: I want to, I want 

[00:24:11] Kyle Miller: to start a wood shop. I want to start a wood shop, software and yeah, do a wood shop. I live in Missouri. There's no beach in Missouri. Well, there's like streams, you know, but not like, Um, my goal is, you know, I got a 12 year old, he says he wants to be a programmer. So he says he's going to take it over.

[00:24:27] Kyle Miller: So I don't know. We'll see, you know, who, who knows, you know, but I think that, um, my goal is I want to get, I have a lot of, I have a lot of knowledge that, that most guys that are running, I would say. If you're running a business, it's under, under 20 million. You don't have access to guys like me. I'm guys like me are, are CTOs or running high because you, because then you're gonna have enough budget and you're gonna be doing enough cool stuff.

[00:24:53] Kyle Miller: That's going to enter someone like at my level, but I, I like, I love, I did the corporate thing for a long time. I'm done with the thing. I, I like working and helping small businesses. So really, I really want to get into doing more advisory work and helping some of these guys that have great ideas, help them take them the right way.

[00:25:09] Kyle Miller: I hate, I see so many guys. Get screwed by and I'm not even gonna say they are bad people. They're just they don't know better They're like, oh I can you know, they get a tech guy. They're like, yeah, I did a thing I can do that in three months and it'll be 10 grand and it'll be great. And you know, it's just It is just a shit show from the jump.

[00:25:27] Kyle Miller: Like, and I see so many good ideas and so many people get screwed. They'll take, they're like mortgage in their house and they're dumb. Like, don't do that. Oh my God. Don't do that. Please don't do that. Like I'll do it for free. Just don't do that. Like, don't do that. Oh my God. So I really want to help. I just, I want to help help some people like that.

[00:25:43] Kyle Miller: So I think I'm really trying to, I mean, I want to spin up kind of an advisory wing and help, help, help guys really just, Do this better, you know, when, when 

[00:25:53] Ryan Wardell: is the right time to work with you, uh, in an advisory capacity? 

[00:25:59] Kyle Miller: That's right. I think talking to me early is good. You're not necessarily, I'm not going to write code for you, but I can help, help you pick the right guys and then stay around and help.

[00:26:11] Kyle Miller: Cause really what you want to get is you want to get a guy early and you want them to be involved. You want to give them some ownership and you want him to be your guy. I can help you pick that guy. I can help train that guy. I can help stay around and kind of set up a little advisory board to make sure, like, Hey, I come in every, every, you know, every once a month or something, we just kind of check, like, how are things going?

[00:26:30] Kyle Miller: What are your big problems? Like what's, you know, you know, what's the industry doing? Do you have something we need to do? And just kind of make sure they're. Making solid choices, like on an ongoing basis, right? To keep that because people want to think that software is this. It's not, it's not a driveway.

[00:26:44] Kyle Miller: You don't pour the concrete and then just walk away. And it's good for 30 years. I mean, vehicle requires constant care and feeding like we run everything in Amazon. Amazon's like, Hey, guess what? All your databases need to be upgraded today. Go. You're like, so you're just, there's a con there's, it is never, there's never not work to be done.

[00:27:02] Kyle Miller: That will always have to happen. So you have to make sure that if you want something to last for five or 10 years, you've got to really take the care and feeding and maintenance of that is very super duper important. So getting a good guy that works for two years, you're never going to get rid of that guy.

[00:27:15] Kyle Miller: Like you can't just be like, okay, cool. You did my SAS leave for two and just leave. And I'm just going to run it with a bunch of sales. It'll work for six months and then you'll be totally boned. So, um, I think getting to me early, I can help get you some guidance. You know, I think that the, the further along the path you are.

[00:27:34] Kyle Miller: You wouldn't need me for very long. Like, let's say you were doing two million error. I'd probably be coming. Hey, our dev team's kind of stuck where we've kind of like lost our way. We need to just kind of like reset the ship and go cool. That'd be like, Hey, let's, I'll work with her a couple of months, kind of get you guys going in the right direction.

[00:27:49] Kyle Miller: And then I can probably back out. Um, so if you're early, you probably have more touch points with me for a while. And then I think the further on the path, it'd be more like help us solve this issue. Hey, work. You know, our, our dev cycle time right now is really slow. We take, we get, we're doing one production deploy a month and it's not enough.

[00:28:07] Kyle Miller: Right. We got to like up the cadence and do all that kind of stuff. So I'm a big fan of, we, you know, I go to production about every, we have a small dev team, just a couple of guys. And we're going to product every, every two days or so, two or three days. Pretty good for, um, pretty good for small, and we're, we're getting a lot of stuff done so I can help kind of focus that and get some of those things done.

[00:28:28] Ryan Wardell: I know, um, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, uh, from a mentor when I was very new to this world. I'm a non technical founder and he said, okay, Ryan, like you are never going to know enough. About the technology side of things to make a smart decision about this. So go and get yourself a technical advisor.

[00:28:44] Ryan Wardell: Um, because if you try and outsource something, you find someone on, on, on Upwork, like you don't know what you're doing. That's, so that's the thing you 

[00:28:51] Kyle Miller: can outsource stuff, but you got to have one guy you trust to check that stuff and make sure that stuff is good, right? Like that's what you would do is you would have me come in and say, okay, we outsourced it.

[00:29:00] Kyle Miller: Cool. Every week we're going to come in and we're just going to do a quality check and make sure things are like really for, for probably five years of my career. When I was doing the consulting thing. All I did was rewrite outsourced apps. They looked really good. So the problem is when you give insert cheap company, cheap country, whoever it is at the time that was India, then Ukraine.

[00:29:20] Kyle Miller: Now, whoever it is, the Philippines are whatever. When you give them requirements, they do them to a tee, right? They will do exactly what you tell them. Whether it's good, right, wrong, bad. They're like, Oh, you want a button here? I'm putting a button here. But they do it in a way that it is not, you can't change it.

[00:29:35] Kyle Miller: Right. It's like, well, I, so in a different podcast, we can talk about this. I have saved. Like all the worst code I've found over the years, just like all the terrible stuff I've done, and I'm just, it's, it's, it's, it was, it's, I was awestruck by this one, it was terrible, but, um, Like it did everything perfectly, but they're like, Hey, usually make this one change.

[00:29:57] Kyle Miller: I'm like, bro, we have to write, I don't like rewriting apps. I'm like, this thing is. It'd be like a house just, you know, with no foundation, right? Just like on the dirt. You're like, oh my God, this is terrible. Looks really good now, but oh, bad. So what I can help with is making sure that that, that quality stays up.

[00:30:15] Kyle Miller: So you can outsource, you can use, you can use less expensive guys. I work, I'm working with a Ukrainian developer right now, guys, sharp as but he will do exactly what you tell him to do. And you don't know. That what you just told him, he's going to go this direction where I can filter that and be like, Oh, Ryan.

[00:30:32] Kyle Miller: Okay. Well, what really he meant is do this. And then you'll get like, Oh no, that's perfect. Right. So you, you've got to, you've got to make sure you, you know, again, you don't talk the lingo as well. So you're, you're going to tell him, Hey, I want a button here. And he's going to go, he's going to make you happy and he's going to do it.

[00:30:47] Kyle Miller: It may not be what you really. That's a subtle thing that gets kind of lost in that, 

[00:30:51] Ryan Wardell: right? Is there like, do you have any, any, any tips or hacks when it comes to. Outsourcing or hiring developers. Is this something that you look for? Does it just come down to the code review or, or there more? 

[00:31:04] Kyle Miller: Less than more higher, higher, better, higher, fewer, better developers than more.

[00:31:10] Kyle Miller: There was a great book from this guy, um, uh, from IBM in like the seventies. It's called the mythical man month, but it talks about running and how just adding more people that like exponentially makes things worse with like communication and stuff. So the more people you have, the more communication that's going to get laws, the telephone game, it becomes a mess.

[00:31:26] Kyle Miller: So like, if you're going to outsource it and one place is going to give you one or two really good guys are a little more expensive, or you get like 10 guys over here. I would go two guys all day long, just two good guys. You don't need more than, I mean, I'm telling you, you four guys, you give me three good guys and I can move there.

[00:31:42] Kyle Miller: I don't need I don't need 50 people. We can, we can, you can do a lot with four or six devs. So you don't need a huge team. You need effective, effective people, right? Let's do like the military. Are you going to call 1500 people? Are you going to call it SEAL Team 6? Who are you going to, depends on your problem, right?

[00:31:58] Kyle Miller: But you, you've got a very, some of the very intricate ones solved. You're going to call the experts, right? 

[00:32:03] Ryan Wardell: What does, what does a SEAL Team 6 developer look like to you? Are there any sort of traits that kind of give it away? Is it like, what, if you're looking at, I don't know, Yeah, what would you look at to identify this is my guy?

[00:32:16] Kyle Miller: I always hire the busiest guy I can find. I always hire the busiest. I want a guy that's doing side projects and doing everything. Cause he is. Like insatiable. I want a guy that is insatiable. Most of the guys I work with are contractors because they're all doing their own stuff too. And I love that. Like, Hey, work for me part time.

[00:32:33] Kyle Miller: That's great. Do side work for me. That's awesome. Those guys, that's what they like. I heard that quote a long time. It was like, always find the busiest guy to do something. Cause the guy that isn't busy, he can't ever manage, but that guy that's busy. He is, he's knocking things out. Um, so you just, I try to find, like I said, I try to find the busiest guy.

[00:32:49] Kyle Miller: If there is somebody who's not doing side work that doesn't, they don't Like they love it to me and maybe that's a, maybe that's a, an antiquated hustle mentality, whatever. But I just know the best guys I've worked with all, all are just engrossed themselves in it and they're constantly busy, constantly tinkering, constantly goes up.

[00:33:08] Kyle Miller: And even if they're not doing something to get paid for, just tinkering, messing, just writing their own work, whatever. I want somebody that is the, the guy that is just, like I said, insatiable, just wants to, you know, And I will hire someone with less skills because the thing about it. So, like I said, I just had 25 years.

[00:33:25] Kyle Miller: I've been a professional developer for 25 years. I've had to relearn my job every five years. Technology is so much different than like, you know, 10 years ago, we have iPhones now in the, you got mobile apps and all this stuff, like. Everything's AI. Now AI is gonna, AI is gonna like wipe out a lot of this stuff.

[00:33:41] Kyle Miller: We're gonna have to relearn how to do all this stuff. How are we gonna do with AI? How are we gonna make websites that are AI compatible? So it's very hard to start your career, do one technology, and then, and then retire on that. In that technology, right? So the, you've got constant got to be learning.

[00:33:57] Kyle Miller: They've got to be up on new stuff. So if you're truly just like going to the office and clock in 40 hours and you're out, you're that guy that's trying to do one technology and go, that's cool. But that's not what you're, that's not what us in this industry looking for. We need guys that are going to constantly be learning, constantly push it out of the lobes, not just tell me exactly what to do.

[00:34:16] Kyle Miller: And I'll do exactly what you tell me to do a more, no less. That's that's if you hear people asking questions like that, I'd be like, great. Thanks. You're probably a good developer. But I don't think you're for me. I need a guy that's in it to win it. Um, and other than that, it's like I said, I, I, I hire for attitude more than aptitude because getting a kid that wants it is so much better.

[00:34:38] Kyle Miller: You can, he can learn any, any, any decent developer or any language pretty quickly. It's really not that hard. It's getting that attitude, someone that's going to work, someone that's going to like tirelessly, they're going to get a bug and they're just going to chew on it until bird dog it till it's fixed.

[00:34:53] Kyle Miller: Those guys are hard to find. If you find somebody with that attitude, hire them and then train them and you'll be so much happier. 

[00:34:58] Ryan Wardell: It seems like there's um, there's a lot of parallels. So I've, I've hired a lot of marketers and one of the things that I look for when I'm hiring a marketer is have they set up a side project selling, you know, maybe it's affiliate marketing or something.

[00:35:09] Ryan Wardell: Yeah. 

[00:35:10] Kyle Miller: Or hire good people. I think it's, you just hire good people, right? The guy that's, like, that's it. I think that there's a lot of parallels. I don't, I don't know. It's not just developers, right? Like, 

[00:35:18] Ryan Wardell: but, but, but it's, it's interesting. Cause I think there's a, there's a, there's a certain person that thrives in a startup environment and that person always has other stuff going on.

[00:35:27] Ryan Wardell: Or, or, or they want to be an entrepreneur themselves. I don't know. Like, is, is that something that you'd look for or you don't care too much? Oh, I do. I do. I have a very, 

[00:35:34] Kyle Miller: yeah, no, I have spawned multiple businesses. I've hired, I've hired young guys. I said, listen, give me two years. I will train you. I will teach you how to write good code, and I will teach you how to run a profitable, successful business.

[00:35:45] Kyle Miller: And I have spawned, now the problem is, I lose my best developers. It sucks. It sucks. So here, I'll tell you a story. Do we have time for a story? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I've got this guy. He is, I don't know, 23, 24. We worked together. I met him at a consulting gig. Sharpest attack. Awesome. Very good mindset.

[00:36:04] Kyle Miller: We worked great together. So he, he, and we were remote. He was, um, at this, he was working pre COVID, right. So this is when we could go, I've always been remote. Um, but you know, some people like working, like going into an office. So he was going into like a remote workplace, you know, and they had a, they were like VCs funded this, this kind of remote work.

[00:36:25] Kyle Miller: Um, uh, you know, like, uh, uh, like we work kind of thing, right. They want to, they kind of want to, so VCs, they kind of started this thing up. And then they, they started doing a, like a pitch competition and then they give you like, at the end of it, if you won, you got a 50, 000 grant. So they, they saw what we were doing, we were doing some cool shit.

[00:36:44] Kyle Miller: And he's like, well, they're really badgering me about submitting an app for this. So I'm like, all right. We had an intern at the time and I have a really good designer. And so we kind of had him mock some stuff up and we made a pitch and we won. And then we want, so we get this 50, 000 and they're like, okay, cool.

[00:36:59] Kyle Miller: So. I'm like, let me guess you want to run this. Don't you? He's like, yeah, I'm like, all right. You know, congrats. Good luck. I helped him, you know, get it going and stuff, but Mike, I just lost my best, my best dev there. So that was, but again, I'm fine with that. We're still good friends. If I needed something, I could call him today and he would, he would give me a weekend if I like, Hey man, I'm, I'm screwed.

[00:37:22] Kyle Miller: Give me a weekend. Help me out. He would, he would do it. So I'm, I'm, um, I'm very giving, like, I don't want, if somebody wants to start their own thing, I'm like, yeah, great, like, do you need help, what do you need me to do, I'll call people, I don't care, I'm not trying to hold anybody back like that, so, I like to, and I, I think that that is why, To this day, most of the guys I work with, I've known for 20 years and we still all work together.

[00:37:43] Kyle Miller: We've like, it, it, it fosters, like, I'm not trying to keep them out, keep it secrets and holding them. It's like, Hey, you do you, you know, like, and when they're between things, like, yeah, I got, yeah, I got work. I got stuff to do. And so I'll, I'll hit them up. But they'll call me like, Hey man, I'm having this problem.

[00:37:57] Kyle Miller: Can we do some design stuff? Can you come over and help out? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So, um, I like that. I like that kind of, like I said, we kind of have this, like, it's almost like a cabal of, you know, Of like, of groups that we kind of work together and we kind of scratch each other's back and, you know, if I get a customer that one, I'm like, Hey, I got a guy, call this guy, you know, hook you up and yeah, so it's good and bad.

[00:38:21] Kyle Miller: You gotta, you gotta find new blood, right? Cause you're like, you know, those guys are going out, but there's, uh, you know, you kind of a little proud about some of the success stories. So it's like, it's good. 

[00:38:30] Ryan Wardell: Um, I, I, I think too, like the, especially if you've got that person to kind of, you know, vouch for you and say, yeah, I worked with Kyle.

[00:38:38] Ryan Wardell: It was amazing. I learned so much. And then moved on to my next thing and, you know, couldn't, couldn't say anything, um, anything bad about the experience. It was, it was awesome. I, I've always, 

[00:38:48] Kyle Miller: I'm a bit of a yeller. I don't know if they wouldn't say anything bad, but it would be more positives than negatives.

[00:38:51] Kyle Miller: Let's say that, like, uh, 

[00:38:53] Ryan Wardell: I, I, I think though, there's, um, a lot of people have a fear of hiring people that, uh, entrepreneurial because they're worried they're going to lose them. Yeah. And we're 

[00:39:03] Kyle Miller: gonna lose someone like that, but you just gotta, you gotta be comfortable. Like, Hey, I'm going to lose you, but these three or four years, you're two to four years.

[00:39:10] Kyle Miller: You're gonna be with me. We're going to kill it. Like we just, you gotta, you gotta lean in and you gotta kill it. And then you gotta let them go and you just gotta get the new guy and you're going to get that new book. Honestly, there's very few people that can sustain that what is needed for five or 10 years.

[00:39:25] Kyle Miller: I can, cause I'm the owner I'm getting, I get a lot of rewards from it, but I mean, you know, some of these guys, it's, it's hard for me to do this. So you get a good two, three years out of somebody and you can, and you can leave on good terms, you can help them out. I think that's. I'll call that a win. I call that a win.

[00:39:38] Kyle Miller: Then I'll get some new blood in there and you get new blood, get new ideas. You get, you know, it kind of keeps everybody on their toes. 

[00:39:45] Ryan Wardell: Good. I think, I think there's, there's a, um, there's a real superpower in being able to spot talent before they know that they're good. And then you get, you probably get a couple of years out of them where you're, you're getting someone who is actually very, very good, but you're not actually paying them what they're worth just yet.

[00:40:00] Ryan Wardell: They get that with the next job. And if you can do that repeatedly over and over and over again, I think that's a real superpower as an entrepreneur. 

[00:40:07] Kyle Miller: I've done that a few times. I don't have any, I'm kind of looking for a mentor, like a, um, what I would call an apprentice right now. That's kind of how it was almost like I, like you said, I kind of spot him like, Oh, this guy's sharp.

[00:40:16] Kyle Miller: Let's, let's, let me help him get to where he's going. I'll get some good value out of him while he's, you know, a little cheaper. I'll help him go. And then, then he starts his own business. I, I've been too busy in the, in the weeds too. I've been, so that's, that's the thing that I do poorly. You asked that before.

[00:40:30] Kyle Miller: Like, what's the thing I do bad? I work in my business too much instead of on my business. That, that is a problem I have a lot. Yeah. Of two heads down in it. And, um, so I've honestly, I've kind of been needing a new apprentice probably for the last few years to just kind of get some of that new blood in and like, kind of jumpstart that a little bit.

[00:40:50] Kyle Miller: Um, so that's probably the thing I'm gonna, I did make the mistake of I put, um, I figured like, yeah, I mean, a lot of people are laid off right now, but I'm a small company. I'll put a job rec out on LinkedIn. Holy shit. That was a bad idea. Oh my God. Oh my God. I shut it down immediately. I just had so I'm like, I, this was terrible.

[00:41:10] Kyle Miller: I figured I'll put it out there. It'll be out there for a few months. I'll get like one or two people apply, maybe three, no big deal. You know, like, Oh Jesus. They're like, I woke up in the morning and my phone was just like, why I shut that off? That was, that was not good. How many, how many did you get before you turned it off?

[00:41:27] Kyle Miller: We're talking like, like 16 hours in. I'm like, this is, I can't, I mean, I'm it's me. I'm like, I have to review all these things or I'm like, I, I'm, I'm done. Just, I'll just wait on that. Holy shit. It was, don't do that. That was a mess. 

[00:41:43] Ryan Wardell: So. Final, final, final question. Cut. Do you, do you have any other hiring hacks?

[00:41:47] Ryan Wardell: Like, is there, is there a good place to find. Maybe not LinkedIn or at least not right now. But is there, is there a good place to find developer talent? Um, that's a little bit outside the box college. I, I, 

[00:42:00] Kyle Miller: I went to, um, I went to, I had this girl that was working with me and she was like a fresh grad, she was doing like QA and stuff.

[00:42:10] Kyle Miller: And I said, Hey, you're just out of college. Like go, go back there and find. Is there like a computer science group or somebody you can talk to? And she, she got me this kid and was the best mobile developer I've ever worked with. He's awesome. And, uh, but again, he was young, but he had a couple of apps on the app store.

[00:42:25] Kyle Miller: I'm like, perfect. Love it. Let's I didn't, I was like, hire, let's, let's go. I get, you already got two apps, get an app on the app store as a. Major pain in the butt. Oh my God. Um, even if it's simple. And so I, I just, I, I think that's interesting. Like going back to your college, go to your alma mater and be like, Hey, I want, I want a couple of interns and just, um, maybe start there or something like that.

[00:42:45] Kyle Miller: You know, there's a lot of, I think that there's. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of good Ukrainian guys, for sure. I've worked with a few really sharp ones. Um, Payton's a little funky with some of the, you know, there's, there's some downside to that. Um, like I said, I, I kind of like, I kind of think of it like a farm team.

[00:43:05] Kyle Miller: You know, I like to grow and, uh, I like to make good developers and then, um, kind of roll them out. So I try to get them out of college. Now, what's interesting is though, I'll tell you one of the guys that applied on LinkedIn. He's a, he's like 74, super sharp. Interesting. It is interesting. I mean, I think he's the one that I'm going to end up hiring and give him a shot because it's just, um, yeah, he, I mean, he like went to Harvard.

[00:43:32] Kyle Miller: I mean, now it was a while ago. I mean, he's an older guy, but he's, uh, he's got that attitude. He really, he's like, he just doesn't want to, he just wants to, The work and, um, yeah, hard to find this. So I'm like, I'm gonna give him a shot. So be 

[00:43:45] Ryan Wardell: a couple old guys doing some stuff. We'll see how it goes. There is this sort of perception that you get beyond a certain point as a developer and everyone just wants to hire the young kids straight out of college, right?

[00:43:53] Ryan Wardell: So I suppose there are some really, really good people that maybe get overlooked sometimes. And 

[00:43:58] Kyle Miller: there's a lot of experience in that, man. You can't. You know, there's, you, you've lived, you've lived, um, I have, I've worked through some holidays, worked through, I mean, you know, you got, when you're young, you maybe haven't felt some of that pain.

[00:44:11] Kyle Miller: Right. So like when I'm developing code, I'm like, okay, if I do this. That's what I used to get called about on the weekends, right? I'm gonna mess that up, I'm gonna mess up my weekend. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do it this other way. You know, you get that scar tissue, and you're kind of like, Oh yeah, okay, I'm gonna do this a different way.

[00:44:28] Ryan Wardell: Kyle, if someone's thinking about bringing you in, um, and, so we spoke about, like, early on, it makes sense to talk to you basically. You know, as soon as possible, even if it's just a conversation now that might, it might lead to something in the future. Um, what about for someone who's a little bit more established?

[00:44:44] Ryan Wardell: Um, but things have, you know, the wheels have just come off. Maybe they made some bad hires. Maybe they, I'm probably going to help them 

[00:44:50] Kyle Miller: find a CTO. I'm not going to be, you know, but I can help you find a CTO. So you've either, cause what, and you know this too, right? You get, get five, six, eight years in. And that, that technical founder, you, you got, he's bored.

[00:45:04] Kyle Miller: He wants to do something new. Right. So there's a little bit of a blow up. It's gone. You're, you're doing a million MRR or ARR. You've got a decent business, but you're like, and you've got four devs, but you need somebody to lead them. Right. I've, I've helped quite a few people like that. Like, okay, let's source some CTOs.

[00:45:22] Kyle Miller: Let's go through them. Like, I like to go in there, learn their business a little bit, try to find a guy that, you know, is, it's kind of in their vein and then, but then what I think is good. Is I, I'm like, okay, we got, you got a new CTO. He sounds good on paper. Hopefully he's great. However, sometimes, you know, a lot, most of the time it's not a technical thing.

[00:45:41] Kyle Miller: It's just more of a, like the CTO and the CEO, they've got to have, they've got to be able to come up with like a shared, you know, like dictionary approach because he's going to say technical stuff. You got to be able to like explain that to him and be like, yeah, no, this is good. And stuff like that. So I like to stay around and kind of do the advisory board thing.

[00:46:00] Kyle Miller: That's where I think it's for like, so you're, you're, you've got it. You've got a stable business. We need to get you a new CTO. We want to make sure he's good. You don't want me like encroaching on him and making it feel like I'm like hovering just as a is an unbiased third party I'm good at being like hey, that wasn't a great decision.

[00:46:16] Kyle Miller: That was really good Let's do more of that less of that and just kind of that helps that can help the CEO You know just feel comfortable like okay And let's say this guy gets because I had to have him once too We I helped a guy and he got he picked up He picked a guy, he actually picked a guy, he didn't pick the guy he suggested he should pick, he picked a different guy.

[00:46:36] Kyle Miller: A month and a half in, he bounced, and the good news is I was still there, so I could, I was helping with code reviews and kind of keeping the devs going. He's like, okay, well, we need to source some more, and then, then he picked the guy I told him to pick, and then that guy stayed longer, and then You know, I did like a three month thing, just kind of, I'll, I'll stay around for a few months, just make sure they're good.

[00:46:54] Kyle Miller: And then, then I kind of like shoved them off and they were good. So, um, that's kind of how those tend to go when they're a little. 

[00:47:01] Ryan Wardell: I've seen sort of two, two trigger points with that. The first one is where the technical founder is there because he can code, not because he can lead a team of developers.

[00:47:10] Ryan Wardell: And the moment you go from one developer to a team, they get found out really quickly. I don't know if you've probably seen that too. 

[00:47:17] Kyle Miller: Oh, of course. Well, let's just think about Twitter, right? Like Twitter started, these guys wrote, they rewrote Twitter. Twitter has been rewritten like five or six times, right?

[00:47:23] Kyle Miller: Cause as you go, as you scale from this size business to that size business, you got to get more devs. You got to get more servers. And just cause you're the best coder in the room. Doesn't mean you're good at leading people, leading people and leading, leading code and it's different, right? So, um, you know, getting a guy with the mix is good.

[00:47:38] Kyle Miller: You got to have a guy that can talk to the CEO, translate that to the devs, make sure the devs are doing what they're doing. So he's got to be. Technical, but also approachable, you know, so there's a, like you said, there's a fine line there, right. And, um, as you go through those steps, you might, you might find out, okay, this, when it was me and my technical founder and that was it, we're great.

[00:47:56] Kyle Miller: Well, we hired three devs and they're doing God knows what. And, and we're kind of like, we've kind of lost the ships without a rudder, you know, um, and that's what it's kind of now that's a hard one, cause that's when you gotta be like, all right, listen. You're really technical. You can be the team lead, but you can't be the CTO.

[00:48:14] Kyle Miller: And that, that is when you lose, you'll lose a tech founder with that. But sometimes you need to, right? I mean, sometimes that's, it's the right, right time to do it. So, um, But those are uncomfortable for sure. 

[00:48:27] Ryan Wardell: For sure. And you want to make sure you've got, you've got some backup. Well, you gotta, 

[00:48:31] Kyle Miller: you gotta get, yeah, you want to have some stuff in line before you have that conversation.

[00:48:36] Kyle Miller: So you don't, don't do that one. Um, on a win I've come into that situation too. Like, well, we just got in a fight and he left. Not good. Okay. And honestly, sometimes that's a good time to hire it and sold. Right. And like, Hey, I'm going to bring a guy in. I have a three month contract. We got to get a feature out while you're doing that.

[00:48:56] Kyle Miller: We start sourcing guys. Cause you know, hiring for CTO, it's going to take you the bigger your organization longer is going to take. Right. I mean, just because you have more, more money, more costs, more risk use, you know, so if it's, if you're, you're making a million or 2 million, it's not as big of a risk as if you're making, you got 40 million business, you got to really pick this guy, right.

[00:49:15] Kyle Miller: Cause you want them to take you from 40 to 200 or 300, right. You know, you're going a million to 3 million. That's a big deal, but it's also. Less of a risk, right, than, than some of that, that bigger stuff, so. 

[00:49:28] Ryan Wardell: Kyle, it's, it's been a pleasure, buddy. If someone's thinking about getting in touch with you, or they want to work with you, or they just want to, you know, maybe explore that option a little bit more, what's the best way to get in touch?

[00:49:39] Kyle Miller: Well, I mean, I wanted to have some, like a whole landing page ready for this, but I, you know, life happens and I didn't. Probably just go to backupparachute. com and uh, there's a contact and you can be there or I'm sure they can get to you and then you can get to me or you know, 

[00:49:54] Ryan Wardell: however that goes. I'll stick a link to backup parachute software in the, in the, in the description.

[00:49:59] Ryan Wardell: Fantastic. Kyle, thank you so much, man. It's been a pleasure.