Speaker 1: Afrols at San Francisco, California. Jessica Matthews, founder and CEO
Speaker 1: at Uncharted Power, is on the main stage and is
Speaker 1: in the fireside chat. Her sustainable energy technology company is
Speaker 1: growing very quickly. She's learned a lot about team building,
Speaker 1: which she discusses as well as realizing her own power
Speaker 1: to overcome big problems in solved complex issues even without
Speaker 1: the same credentials as the next person. What I can
Speaker 1: tell you is not what I did, which were just
Speaker 1: several mistakes. I can tell you what I've learned from them.
Speaker 1: The biggest mistake I made and that I have to
Speaker 1: really work on every day despite the learnings, is this
Speaker 1: assumption that I can't do what's needed. Like me, I
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to do what needs to scale
Speaker 1: my company because I didn't have this fancier experience or
Speaker 1: I didn't do this fancy thing. The reality is when
Speaker 1: you're building something that's really innovative, there is no right
Speaker 1: way to do it. There's only a way to think
Speaker 1: and feel about it, which is unbelievable. So persistent passion
Speaker 1: and what I found like I would hire these high
Speaker 1: polluted people from these fancy companies and bring them in
Speaker 1: and they'd be basic as hell, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: why are you so basic? I don't get it, Like
Speaker 1: I don't have a degree in this and I'm about
Speaker 1: to google my way to being significantly better than you.
Speaker 1: It's because no, and it's because like they you know,
Speaker 1: and even Richard Branson will say this stuff. It's like, yo,
Speaker 1: hire for culture, not not for skill set. A smart
Speaker 1: person can learn almost anything, or you can have a
Speaker 1: consultant and ask them questions. But when you bring on
Speaker 1: the team and they think they have the skill set
Speaker 1: but they don't have the culture. When things change, when
Speaker 1: you have to deal with certain scenarios, it can be
Speaker 1: tough for them. And so we at one point, we're
Speaker 1: almost twenty five, and we're right now down to six
Speaker 1: team because I just know that there were a lot
Speaker 1: of basic people eating up my burnery. I'm with Lucas,
Speaker 1: Mrs Black Tech, Dream Money. I'm gonna answer you to
Speaker 1: She just some of the biggest names, some of the
Speaker 1: brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black in building
Speaker 1: or simply using tech to secure your bag, this podcast
Speaker 1: is for you. Terror Read is founder a apps without code,
Speaker 1: you know, online learning platform which teaches anyone how they
Speaker 1: can build and launch an app to any of the
Speaker 1: big platforms like Apple's App Store and Google Play. However
Speaker 1: without writing a line of code. She's a big evangelist
Speaker 1: of the idea that technology has advanced to such a
Speaker 1: place where building an app is the easy part. However,
Speaker 1: I asked her about being that is so easy? Are
Speaker 1: there still any real excuses to be used for an
Speaker 1: entrepreneur to not have their app idea done? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they're all kinds of excuses for people not
Speaker 1: doing stuff and launching their ideas that they have. So yes,
Speaker 1: there are excuses. There's always an excuse. But in terms
Speaker 1: of technology and like I can't do it, it's it's
Speaker 1: possible now. Yeah, So much has changed over the past
Speaker 1: really like five years about what is possible to build.
Speaker 1: And I've gotten to really see and and largely usher
Speaker 1: in this whole new wave of people building things and
Speaker 1: building their ideas, their app ideas without having to have
Speaker 1: a computer science degree or pay twenty dollars to hire
Speaker 1: a developer to build it for them. Like people can
Speaker 1: really build their products themselves now without code and using
Speaker 1: after that code techniques. Yeah, I mean you said, so
Speaker 1: much has changed over the past couple of years. What
Speaker 1: has changed that allows somebody who does not have a
Speaker 1: technical background didn't start coding at two and a half
Speaker 1: years old, that's right. What happened so before it used
Speaker 1: to be that if you had an idea for an
Speaker 1: app or an online business. And really, by the way,
Speaker 1: an app is just something that you log into. So
Speaker 1: if it has a user name and a password that
Speaker 1: you can log into, it's an app. Even if it's
Speaker 1: on your computer, it's an app. So sometimes we think
Speaker 1: about apps is just the thing that's in the app
Speaker 1: store that you download, but we use apps all day
Speaker 1: every day. If you log into it it I can't
Speaker 1: even keep track of all my passwords. Sometimes if you
Speaker 1: log into it, it's an app, right. So so if
Speaker 1: you had an idea for something that someone would log into,
Speaker 1: you would have had a couple options. Before you have
Speaker 1: had to hire someone to build it for you, and
Speaker 1: usually pricing for that starts at twenty k and up.
Speaker 1: Or you would have to find someone to be your
Speaker 1: tech business partner. And there's nothing wrong with that, but
Speaker 1: you want to get someone that you trust and not
Speaker 1: rush that process. And not everybody has network so that
Speaker 1: they know a bunch of developers and coders to make
Speaker 1: an app for you, or you would have to learn
Speaker 1: to code um which again nothing wrong with it, It
Speaker 1: just takes a few years for most people to get
Speaker 1: to a proficiency level. And technology moves so fast that
Speaker 1: you spending two years just to learn a new skill
Speaker 1: before you start. Like that idea is gone. And so
Speaker 1: you used to have those options. And what changed is
Speaker 1: that the platforms, the software available to let people build
Speaker 1: apps changed. Before you used to need to know a
Speaker 1: coding language to do it, and now all you can
Speaker 1: build apps in English. So the way that works is
Speaker 1: you design the app by drag, drop, point, click, you
Speaker 1: like like you're making a power point presentation. You put
Speaker 1: what you want on the page, and then you tell
Speaker 1: the app what to do in English, so like it
Speaker 1: literally says if the user clicks the button, then log
Speaker 1: them in. And it says that in English is opposed
Speaker 1: to you having to learn a whole another language to
Speaker 1: tell the app what to do. So you write these
Speaker 1: logic statements, and the logic statements tell the app what
Speaker 1: to do, and that's what's changed. So there's so many
Speaker 1: people who I would imagine come to you and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I hear you saying all this stuff. That sounds good,
Speaker 1: but you know, I still have a problem opening the PDF, right,
Speaker 1: and so like like what kind of person is best
Speaker 1: suited to be building an app without code? And what
Speaker 1: kind of person should still just leave it to somebody else?
Speaker 1: You know the question? Great question. Okay, So there's some
Speaker 1: basic just tech skills competency that it helps to have.
Speaker 1: For example, like your if answering your email is hard,
Speaker 1: you should outsource it. Somebody else can do it for you.
Speaker 1: You have other zones of genius, right, And that's just
Speaker 1: like real talk, like there are other people who can
Speaker 1: do it for you. I still think you should have
Speaker 1: someone else build it without code, particularly you're just starting.
Speaker 1: You can have someone else build it without code for
Speaker 1: you because that way it gets done in a fraction
Speaker 1: of the time and the fraction of the cost. You
Speaker 1: still want that, um, but you may hire someone else
Speaker 1: to do it for you. Um. There's also some just
Speaker 1: like general logic skills it helps to have. So I
Speaker 1: just gave an example earlier, whereas like if the user
Speaker 1: clicks the button, then log them in the concept of
Speaker 1: if this then that there are some professions where even
Speaker 1: if you've never built an app, like because you do
Speaker 1: this kind of thing at work, people pick it up
Speaker 1: so fast. So like, for example, um, if you use
Speaker 1: Excel at all, like it'll be a breeze and easy.
Speaker 1: You do lots of logic and Excel right. If you
Speaker 1: are you have part of your job is to give
Speaker 1: people detailed instructions, you'll be good at it. Um people
Speaker 1: who have people have like logical a lot of critical
Speaker 1: thinking in their work. There's some roles where like there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a larger gap. For example, like
Speaker 1: when I talk to people who are artists right where
Speaker 1: it's all full free form creativity. The computer is not
Speaker 1: smart enough to understand your free form creativity ideas. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to give it like step by step
Speaker 1: instructions which you can totally learn. But like people who
Speaker 1: for example, are struggling with the email and getting your
Speaker 1: email open outsource that use your Zonner genius for something else.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, like, is there a certain type of
Speaker 1: app that I can build without code? Because I wonder
Speaker 1: if if I wanted to make the next TikTok, could
Speaker 1: I do that without learning how to code? Versus if
Speaker 1: I was trying to make you know, a spreadsheet versus
Speaker 1: you know, kind of kind of, I would imagine there's
Speaker 1: probably some limitations or no, you can tell me no,
Speaker 1: there are limitations. So it's probably easier for me to
Speaker 1: tell you what you can't do then to tell you
Speaker 1: what you can do, because most stuff you can do now.
Speaker 1: And I'll preface this by saying that every time people
Speaker 1: ask me a question about what you can't do without code,
Speaker 1: like the next month, someone comes out with the software
Speaker 1: that allows you to do this, So it does change. Um.
Speaker 1: For example, I used to say that, like augmented reality
Speaker 1: not really possible yet without code, Like I'm sure someone's
Speaker 1: working on it, but not yet possible, but it's now possible. Actually,
Speaker 1: Facebook has a tool called spark a R which allows
Speaker 1: you to build augmented reality apps without codes, So like
Speaker 1: that's no longer true. So I say that to say that,
Speaker 1: like if someone launches something this this space is developing quickly,
Speaker 1: so like people will launch stuff, um, the things that
Speaker 1: are still hard to do without code. Emoji apps, you
Speaker 1: know those apps were like you create your own emojis
Speaker 1: and they embed into your keyboard. Still hard to do
Speaker 1: without code, um. Virtual reality so not into the reality.
Speaker 1: Augmented reality is where like let's say you hold up
Speaker 1: your phone and it puts like we see this a
Speaker 1: lot and like snapchatter chick or TikTok or filters. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a that's an augmented reality. You still see some
Speaker 1: the normal thing through the camera, but you put a
Speaker 1: hat on top of the person's head or you you
Speaker 1: augment what's actually happening in reality. UM, so that now
Speaker 1: is actually possible. Virtual reality is where like you have
Speaker 1: like a headset, for example, and you change the whole world.
Speaker 1: Your whole world is now you're in a different land. Right.
Speaker 1: So virtual reality still I haven't seen a lot of
Speaker 1: really good tools for no code with virtual reality, augmented
Speaker 1: reality yet virtual reality now, UM what else? Um, there
Speaker 1: are some limitations in like UM and this kind of
Speaker 1: depends on the tool in UM. Cryptocurrency thus far without
Speaker 1: code and really plugging into cryptocurrency platforms and doing cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: deals and transactions and letting people pay in cryptocurrency, that
Speaker 1: still is not amazingly smooth without code. But those those
Speaker 1: are the biggest areas that I see people stuck with.
Speaker 1: And there used to be other areas, and then someone
Speaker 1: came out with a tool, so like things you can
Speaker 1: do UM and actually we have like a couple common
Speaker 1: structures that we find most people's app ideas fall into
Speaker 1: UM and these are all totally possible. So most of
Speaker 1: the time UM many app ideas will give you the categories,
Speaker 1: so they will an app that recommends things right, think
Speaker 1: like Tender for example, where it's giving you recommendations based
Speaker 1: on something. An app that gives you like a community,
Speaker 1: so think like Facebook, think TikTok, think Instagram like a
Speaker 1: community based app really good for building without code. UM
Speaker 1: A marketplace app where people are like buying and selling
Speaker 1: things from each other, think like Airbnb people can buy
Speaker 1: and sell. Also a UM I would call it like
Speaker 1: a service tracking app, so think like Uber where you
Speaker 1: like book a thing and you can track the progress,
Speaker 1: or even like Domino's pizza tracker. Like those are like
Speaker 1: examples of those sorts of tracking service tracking UM I
Speaker 1: think like also UM tracking of a like numbers or metrics,
Speaker 1: so think like Fitbit or even like Salesforce where you're
Speaker 1: tracking the progress or process of a transaction, a sale
Speaker 1: of your health whatever that might be. What am I
Speaker 1: forgetting here missing those are really common ones. There's a
Speaker 1: couple more that we often have people fall into. But
Speaker 1: like those are things you totally can do, and I
Speaker 1: would count consider those things like easy to do without code. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: at what point do you think it will we will
Speaker 1: get to the place where we don't feel like we
Speaker 1: have to tell our kids and our young people go
Speaker 1: learn to code because no code has gotten so sophisticated
Speaker 1: where you don't have to go get the engineering situation
Speaker 1: is are we still like a decade out, two decades
Speaker 1: or we a couple of years out or would that
Speaker 1: always be that you still know that we should be
Speaker 1: doing that period, Like there is a movement where it's
Speaker 1: like everybody go learn to code. Like I recognize that,
Speaker 1: particularly for folks of color, we're like, oh, look that's
Speaker 1: where the money job is. Everybody should go learn to code.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the right narrative. Um, in
Speaker 1: the same way that I don't know it's the right
Speaker 1: narrative that like when we say everybody should be a doctor, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's where the money is. I think when we
Speaker 1: do that, particularly as people of color, we end up
Speaker 1: being like behind the curve because by the time the
Speaker 1: generation whoever is giving that recommendation realizes that that's where
Speaker 1: the money is. That next generation, like the money is
Speaker 1: moved to a different kind of place. So, UM, while
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a bad thing to be a developer,
Speaker 1: to be clear, UM, I think we really want to
Speaker 1: teach people how to be in our people, particularly how
Speaker 1: to be good problem solvers. UM. The concept of thinking
Speaker 1: like an engineer, that part is useful regardless of what
Speaker 1: you do. And when I say thinking like an engineer,
Speaker 1: I really mean in this scenario, like there there is
Speaker 1: a sequence of events that need to happen, and there's
Speaker 1: a logic behind those sequence of events. And if you
Speaker 1: want to go be a lawyer and use that um knowledge,
Speaker 1: if you want to go be a developer and use
Speaker 1: that knowledge, if you want to go be an artist
Speaker 1: and use that knowledge, that's still relevant. So I'm not
Speaker 1: a huge backer of like this whole everybody should code
Speaker 1: movement in the first place. UM. I think that the distinction, though,
Speaker 1: to directly answer your question, is depending on if you're
Speaker 1: trying to get a job in tech or you're trying
Speaker 1: to do entrepreneurship in tech. All right, So if you're
Speaker 1: trying to get a job, you still need to learn
Speaker 1: to code. There are not enough companies yet who are
Speaker 1: hiring no code developers. They're more and more. So if
Speaker 1: you go on like upwork, for example, you see all
Speaker 1: these job postings for no code developers. Now, um, but
Speaker 1: most big companies are looking for you to code, all right,
Speaker 1: So if that's the goal, go learn to code. If
Speaker 1: your goal is entrepreneurship, and particularly if you're not technical already,
Speaker 1: like you're not technical, you're interested in entrepreneurship, it may
Speaker 1: not make sense to go spend years learning a new
Speaker 1: skill set when you probably ultimately in the company that
Speaker 1: you build will be doing something else, like you might
Speaker 1: be the CEO and at some point not coding at all.
Speaker 1: And in that scenario, your goal is to get as
Speaker 1: quickly to paying customers as possible, and so whatever way
Speaker 1: you can do that, usually no code will get you
Speaker 1: there much faster, if that makes more sense. So if
Speaker 1: it's about job, definitely still have to go learn to code.
Speaker 1: I think we're five maybe ten years out plus from
Speaker 1: that changing. Um, just because of how no code has
Speaker 1: gotten popularized, and I think how we're talking about it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the no Code community and space
Speaker 1: has done a great job talking about what no Code
Speaker 1: is such that it's gotten the adoption that it deserves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what's so interesting to me is you
Speaker 1: didn't it into this wanting to be an entrepreneur. You
Speaker 1: didn't see yourself as an entrepreneur, you know, growing up,
Speaker 1: and now you're running this big business, this online platform,
Speaker 1: teaching people how to do this, and a lot of
Speaker 1: folks who will be building these apps that you're that
Speaker 1: you're evangelizing don't see themselves as people who build apps.
Speaker 1: So how do you how do you think about, you know,
Speaker 1: reframing um your own mental process to be able to
Speaker 1: be successful, because if I'm just trying to run my
Speaker 1: small grocery store, now I'm building this app, you know,
Speaker 1: there's other things that go into that, you know, to
Speaker 1: find success versus just let me throw this up on
Speaker 1: app store real quick and move on. Yes. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: always tell people that they should build a business that
Speaker 1: happens to have an app, not an app that happens
Speaker 1: to have a business. The business comes first, right, and
Speaker 1: the app is just a tool that delivers it to people.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of the times it's not even
Speaker 1: useful to market. If you have an app idea, it's
Speaker 1: not even useful to market it as an app because
Speaker 1: in people's head or as just an app quote unquote,
Speaker 1: because in people's heads when people hear app, they think
Speaker 1: free cents, two dollars, ten dollars, some low price point, um.
Speaker 1: But if they hear something else, right, other energy, to
Speaker 1: hear education, to hear services, all these other things experiences
Speaker 1: we think are expensive. App we think it's cheap. So
Speaker 1: even if you're building an app, you may not even
Speaker 1: want to position it that way. And that's where your
Speaker 1: point about other skill sets comes in, because if all
Speaker 1: you're good at is building the app, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: some trouble because you won't make much money from it
Speaker 1: and really won't have a thriving business itself sustaining. What
Speaker 1: you really want to be thinking about is what business
Speaker 1: you build around this thing. And for me, I had
Speaker 1: started to my background isn't working in tech. I worked
Speaker 1: at Google, four squared, Microsoft before becoming a full time entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: but I was working on the business and marketing side,
Speaker 1: so I was not developing any apps, um, And I
Speaker 1: was not planning to be an entrepreneur like you're saying,
Speaker 1: I my plan originally was to climb the corporate ladder.
Speaker 1: The only reason, the only reason that I built an
Speaker 1: app was because I was working at the time at
Speaker 1: Microsoft and I felt like there was a lot of
Speaker 1: bureaucracy in my job and I wanted like another creative outlet,
Speaker 1: that something I had control of more as opposed to
Speaker 1: sort of like the politics playing that I was feeling
Speaker 1: frustrated with at work. That's why I built my first app.
Speaker 1: I wanted like another creative outlet, and I didn't have
Speaker 1: those words at the time, and I can look back
Speaker 1: and say, oh, that's what it was. I was just
Speaker 1: looking for like something that I could like create and build.
Speaker 1: I'd like to make things um But really I think
Speaker 1: at the time, I just felt like I like to
Speaker 1: solve hard problems. There was something about the challenge of
Speaker 1: putting something out there into the world that I made
Speaker 1: that feels cool and exciting and like, let me go
Speaker 1: check that out. That's probably closer to the words that
Speaker 1: I had at the time. And so I think that
Speaker 1: I did not think of myself as an entrepreneur. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that important that when you start you
Speaker 1: think of yourself as a hotshot entrepreneur. Um. But I
Speaker 1: do think it's important that you think about how you're
Speaker 1: going to make money with the business, and is this
Speaker 1: an idea that people are willing to pay for? And
Speaker 1: why is this idea a good use of my unfair advantage.
Speaker 1: When I say unfair advantage, I mean something that you
Speaker 1: already know something about. I often see entrepreneurs launch something
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, absolutely nothing about the industry that
Speaker 1: they're launching the app in or a launching the business.
Speaker 1: And it's not a bad thing to do. It just
Speaker 1: means you're not leveraging your unfair advantage, which is something
Speaker 1: you already know something about. So those are all the
Speaker 1: like business skills and things that surround the app that
Speaker 1: many people who are non technical they already sort of
Speaker 1: have as their common sense and are refining even more. Um,
Speaker 1: those are the things that really make a big difference.
Speaker 1: At least for me, has made a really big difference
Speaker 1: in my business success. The app building piece has been
Speaker 1: just an extra thing that has enabled me to have
Speaker 1: reach and be able to enter tech in a different way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let's go in there, because I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you this is how do I know, Like, what is
Speaker 1: that process that you teach people on to say, how
Speaker 1: to determine if this is a viable app idea in
Speaker 1: the first place, Because so many people will come to
Speaker 1: you be like I got an idea. What's the process
Speaker 1: you go through to to walk them through and say,
Speaker 1: let's find out if this is actually an idea versus
Speaker 1: just something you and your mom said it was fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. Okay. So there's two parts to
Speaker 1: the process. The first is just coming up with the
Speaker 1: idea in the first place, and then the second is
Speaker 1: exactly what you're mentioning, which is going to test it
Speaker 1: and validate it to make sure this is something that
Speaker 1: will make the kind of business that you want. So
Speaker 1: the first step I usually encourage people like call it
Speaker 1: a smart idea formula, but to walk through a series
Speaker 1: of three questions for themselves to come up with an
Speaker 1: app idea that leverages their unfair advantage in the first place.
Speaker 1: So the first question to ask yourself is an easy one.
Speaker 1: It's like what do I do for work? You could
Speaker 1: also do the same process with what you do as
Speaker 1: a hobby, So like, what's my hobby? Because starting there
Speaker 1: allows us to build something around something you already know
Speaker 1: something about. You know more about it than I do, right,
Speaker 1: And so we start there. Then the second question is
Speaker 1: what is one thing that is hard or time consuming
Speaker 1: about what you do for work or what you do
Speaker 1: for a hobby. We all have parts of our jobs
Speaker 1: that were like, oh, I gotta do this part again,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like annoying, I've got to do
Speaker 1: this right, or even things that your boss is complaining
Speaker 1: about that you just repetitive prophecies, or things that are
Speaker 1: hard or time consuming. Even if you're a full time parent,
Speaker 1: right figuring out what your kids are going to be
Speaker 1: doing for that day is harder time consuming. And so
Speaker 1: the third question to ask yourself then is if you
Speaker 1: built an app to alleviate that stress of the thing
Speaker 1: that's harder time consuming, what could the app do and
Speaker 1: to start brainstorming there, that's the place to sort of
Speaker 1: focus your brain storm around around what you do for
Speaker 1: work or hobby, something you know something about and what's harder,
Speaker 1: time consuming and what you could build there. That's the
Speaker 1: place to start. Another way to think about that, like
Speaker 1: if I hired an assistant to help me with my
Speaker 1: job what would I have them do? Because the chances
Speaker 1: are whatever you would have them do, that's the thing
Speaker 1: that you should build something around, so that points you
Speaker 1: in the right direction. That's the first step. So let
Speaker 1: let's talk about So let's say I have an app. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do I get people to download? Because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to have the app, the whole other thing to
Speaker 1: get people to actually quick download. Yes, absolutely, absolutely, So
Speaker 1: I think that there are a couple of different really
Speaker 1: good ways to get word out about your app. One
Speaker 1: of the things that we do actually in our boot
Speaker 1: camp program is we've teach people different ways to find
Speaker 1: folks and communities of people on social media. So that
Speaker 1: could be like faithbook groups that could be on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: People are all over the place, self identifying themselves on Twitter,
Speaker 1: different things that they're posting about, and so we show
Speaker 1: a lot of our students how to get those first
Speaker 1: customers by reaching out in some of those places. But
Speaker 1: you want to find where the hubs of your customers
Speaker 1: are with means that you first have to get really
Speaker 1: specific about who the heck they are. So if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: my app is for everyone, it's like that's one of
Speaker 1: the number one rookie things that I hear people say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's for everybody. You really want to be specific, because
Speaker 1: when you're specific, you can go find those groups of people.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you there's a Facebook group for that. I
Speaker 1: guarantee you there's a meetup dot com group for that.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you there's a bunch of people posting on
Speaker 1: Twitter about that. And so those are some really good
Speaker 1: places to find people. You should not assume that if
Speaker 1: you put your app in the app store, people will
Speaker 1: find you. That used to be the case when like
Speaker 1: apps were first coming out an app store, just because
Speaker 1: you were in the app store, you'd be discovered. Now
Speaker 1: you're likely going to be at the very bottom of
Speaker 1: the list, and so you should assume that you're doing
Speaker 1: all of your own marketing and footwork and outreach to
Speaker 1: get people to you. In fact, I actually usually encourage
Speaker 1: the students that I work with, like, let's not even
Speaker 1: worry about the app store for a minute. It's not
Speaker 1: really going to help us. Let's launch a web app
Speaker 1: so that someone can use it on any device, so
Speaker 1: you can use it on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, if you have,
Speaker 1: on whatever device, because we're gonna have to give them
Speaker 1: the link to it anyway. Um, how do you get
Speaker 1: non technical people to specifically think about like utilizing existing
Speaker 1: tech versus building their own thing, because there's so many
Speaker 1: people like you, Like, there's things like if you're trying
Speaker 1: to automate the process, you don't always have to build that.
Speaker 1: You can use something like zappi are or you know, like,
Speaker 1: how do you get them to think about, Okay, look,
Speaker 1: if you're not really trying to build a situation off
Speaker 1: of this and there's tech availance, let's probably figure out
Speaker 1: to leverage tech that's already out here. Yeah. No, I
Speaker 1: mean the foundation of everything that I do is leveraging
Speaker 1: tech that's already out there. And I can give you
Speaker 1: actually a story about this because my first app idea, UM,
Speaker 1: I was working at Microsoft at the time, I had
Speaker 1: just moved into a new apartment and I was thinking
Speaker 1: about art in my home. And so my very first
Speaker 1: startup was called Collecto, and I built an algorithm, Ultimate lead,
Speaker 1: to match people to artwork based on their taste. But
Speaker 1: when I first was starting, I was like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: have a very few resources and very little budget to
Speaker 1: get this going. So what existing tools can I use
Speaker 1: to make this happen. And what I ended up doing
Speaker 1: is I used a tool called survey GisMo, the surveying tool,
Speaker 1: and surveys have this I U I used survey GisMo
Speaker 1: in an unintended way, so this is not how you're
Speaker 1: supposed to use survey GisMo, but it got me what
Speaker 1: I needed. So surveys have like show hide logic. So
Speaker 1: an example of this is like it'll ask you to
Speaker 1: survey and I'll say what's your favorite color? And it's
Speaker 1: multiple choice, and you say purple, and then it'll ask
Speaker 1: you a follow up question. The next question is referencing
Speaker 1: your answer, so it'll say, great, what do you Why
Speaker 1: do you like purple? And what it's doing is it's
Speaker 1: showing you the purple question and it's the purple follow
Speaker 1: up question and it's hiding the blue follow up question.
Speaker 1: That's what it's doing. It's showing and hiding the right thing.
Speaker 1: So what I did was I used that technology, um
Speaker 1: that show and hide component the survey to fill in
Speaker 1: a bunch of art, pieces of art into the survey.
Speaker 1: So each survey question was like a piece of art
Speaker 1: and essentially, do you like this, yes or no? And
Speaker 1: if people said that they liked photography, I would show
Speaker 1: all the photography and hide everything else. Or if they
Speaker 1: liked paintings that were abstract expressionist with a budget of
Speaker 1: under five hundred dollars, I would show that and hide
Speaker 1: everything else. So it was automatically doing the show and
Speaker 1: hide logic. And that was the very first version of
Speaker 1: the product. It was like not an actual app. It
Speaker 1: was like a survey that I built. People actually thought
Speaker 1: it was an app. People would respond to like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, it's your app is so cool. And that
Speaker 1: first version of the product that I built maybe my
Speaker 1: first thirty five thousand dollars in revenue, and it also
Speaker 1: got me a hundred thousand dollar investment from five hundred Startups,
Speaker 1: just a top tech accelerator in Silicon Valley. Like I
Speaker 1: remember my interview for a five hundred startups where we
Speaker 1: got to the part where we were talking about the
Speaker 1: tech because at that point I still was using that
Speaker 1: survey tool to make my first money. We we moved
Speaker 1: on to more sophisticated no code tools after that, um,
Speaker 1: but I remember the part of the interview where they
Speaker 1: asked me, you have a technical found co founder, like
Speaker 1: who's developing this how's that part going? And I was like, Okay, Harry,
Speaker 1: I've got to explain this. And I was kind of
Speaker 1: nervous about it because at the time, even more so
Speaker 1: than now, it was like, you have to have a
Speaker 1: tech co founder, you have to have a CTO, and
Speaker 1: that was the culture. And so I explained to them
Speaker 1: how I used a survey and how we'd use existing
Speaker 1: off the shelf tools, things that already existed to build
Speaker 1: the product. And then I quickly pivoted it too, and
Speaker 1: here's the revenue that we've made this far, and here's
Speaker 1: all our excited customers, right. And I remember that the
Speaker 1: partners who were in the interview, they looked at each
Speaker 1: other and they nodded, because what was clear was it
Speaker 1: this person was going to figure this out no matter what.
Speaker 1: We can help her with the other stuff, but like,
Speaker 1: she's got grit and she's gonna use the tools that
Speaker 1: already are out there to figure it out. I think
Speaker 1: it actually works to my advantage. And that was the
Speaker 1: beginning of me looking at no code tools. I eventually
Speaker 1: wanted to get more sophisticated and found other tools. At
Speaker 1: the time, I use a tool called Bubble to build
Speaker 1: the next version of the product um but that was
Speaker 1: how I started. I use existing tools that were already
Speaker 1: out there to get my first version built. It's particularly
Speaker 1: and I've asked almost everybody in the podcast this question
Speaker 1: because it's it's so important to me. It's particularly in
Speaker 1: this moment um, this COVID you know, hopefully end of
Speaker 1: COVID moment, this you know, um social unrest moment where
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out, you know, our new social discourse,
Speaker 1: a new way of dealing with each other. How important
Speaker 1: is this moment for black entrepreneurs who I'm looking for,
Speaker 1: you know, opportunities to scale their business and looking for
Speaker 1: opportunities to do business better. How important is it that
Speaker 1: they don't miss out on the opportunity right now to
Speaker 1: be able to do their thing? Oh man, I mean, so,
Speaker 1: the reality is that during crisis and or recessions, that's
Speaker 1: when people society, individuals in society make their next level up.
Speaker 1: Like that's the reality of how wealth gets generated. So
Speaker 1: people say that, like during a recession, you go from
Speaker 1: economy to first class, or you go from first class
Speaker 1: to a private jet, Like that's the opportunity, that's the
Speaker 1: window is usually during a recession because things in industries
Speaker 1: are all being shaken up, and so there's all this opportunity, right,
Speaker 1: and so yes, you will not meet the opportunity at
Speaker 1: every recession, in every crisis to make that jump, but
Speaker 1: there are huge opportunities there, and so particularly for folks
Speaker 1: of color, for black folks, like, we need to make
Speaker 1: those jumps, right, We need to be thinking about those
Speaker 1: opportunities and making the most out of those time periods.
Speaker 1: Who I would say, even though we're sort of at
Speaker 1: the hopefully end of this period, we're still in it.
Speaker 1: And this is not the time to be like, you
Speaker 1: know what, like I'm gonna play it safe, like I'm
Speaker 1: just really not going to launch that thing that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking of, Like this is the time for the risk.
Speaker 1: It feel and it feels the opposite. That's the tricky
Speaker 1: part about it. It feels like the time to be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, let me not take risks right now.
Speaker 1: A lot's going crazy in the world. No, this is
Speaker 1: the time where actually people are making these seismic shifts
Speaker 1: in their own income, wealth class, and so this is
Speaker 1: the time, this is the moment right now for us
Speaker 1: to be like, you know what, I'm gonna take a
Speaker 1: staff at That Idea. Yeah. Black Tech Green Money is
Speaker 1: a production of Black and the Afro Tech on the
Speaker 1: Black Effect podcast network in My Heart Media and it's
Speaker 1: produced by Morgan Dubon and Me with Lucas, with additional
Speaker 1: production support by Love Beach, raveneer Boy. Special thank you
Speaker 1: to Michael Davids since the car savan Yon you know
Speaker 1: like the Wine. Yes that's his real name. Learn more
Speaker 1: about my guests and other tech disruptres that innovators at
Speaker 1: afrotech dot com. The video version of this episode would
Speaker 1: drop the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week,
Speaker 1: so tap in, enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, leave
Speaker 1: us a five star rating on iTunes. Go get your money.
Speaker 1: Peace of luck,