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Develop Yourself
To change careers and land your first job as a Software Engineer, you need more than just great software development skills - you need to develop yourself.
Welcome to the podcast that helps you develop your skills, your habits, your network and more, all in hopes of becoming a thriving Software Engineer.
Develop Yourself
#266 - Startups 101: Insider Secrets for Aspiring Developers
In this episode of Develop Yourself, I sit down with Gabe Rucker, CEO of Founding Titans, to discuss everything from entrepreneurship and building startups to the practical side of networking and getting money from thin air.
We also dive into how Parsity students gained valuable, hands-on experience through an internship with Founding Titans, working alongside a real AI startup team.
Topics we cover include:
- Gabe’s journey from coder to founder—and what he’s learned along the way
- How to raise capital, attract the right investors, and avoid common startup pitfalls
- Validating your ideas and building a minimum viable product (MVP) that people actually want
- Why networking is critical—for both startups and job seekers
- The role of AI in software development today—and its limitations
- Behind-the-scenes: how our internship with Parsity students worked in a live startup environment
Connect with Gabe Rucker on LinkedIn:
→ Gabriel Rucker (CEO, Founding Titans)
Shameless Plugs
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Zubin's LinkedIn (ex-lawyer, former Googler, Brian-look-a-like)
Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network and more. I'm Brian, your host. All right, today on the Develop Yourself podcast, I have Gabe Recker, ceo of Founding Titans, who's going to speak with me today about something I'm very interested in and a lot of people that join Parsity are interested in entrepreneurship. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had to readjust my chair. As we said, the entrepreneurship works Did that get you nervous. No like excited, nervous, invigorated, stressed out all at once.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you like? Do you even like that term? Do you like? When people like refer to you as entrepreneur, you're like, like you feel like you don't feel like that fits what you do or what.
Speaker 2:I, I, I like the entrepreneur term. I hate the super connector term. Uh, cause that's another one that I get. Okay.
Speaker 1:I've heard this a lot now.
Speaker 2:It sounds. It sounds cocky. It sounds like I'm trying to wear like a, like a, like a Superman kind of S on my chest, kind of thing. I'm fine with being cocky, but I like to slide in the middle of cocky and confident and stride that line pretty well.
Speaker 1:I like that. I think to be an entrepreneur and to do what you do, you have to be a little bit right, because, I mean, it takes a special type of person to want to say, you know what, forget the stability or the supposed stability of a job, I'm going to do my own thing. No, I'm just going to make money out of thin air and then I'm going to live off that.
Speaker 2:You can call us crazy, it's 100% fine. What is it? The definition of insanity is what we kind of mull over a lot in the entrepreneur ecosystem, for sure. Yeah. No, I think that you have to be a certain level of crazy, or a certain borderline insane to try to do something like this in the best way possible, sometimes in the worst way, but mostly in the best way possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I know you from getting introduced through a mutual connection. Then we started doing an internship with some Parsity students and you're working on this product called Founding Titans. Before we get into entrepreneurship stuff and like all the questions I have, can you tell us a little bit about Founding Titans?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yes, I can. So Founding Titans is a community focused relationship optimization platform. We're building that to help entrepreneurs to be able to discover, analyze and engage professional networks, and basically what all of that means is we're trying to help entrepreneurs to be able to surpass their natural human limitations and 10 X their network size. So, on average, we've got about a hundred people that we connect with professionally by the one 50, uh, you know total for you know our, just our social sphere, and we want to get that to over a thousand for entrepreneurs. So that's what we're really trying to do.
Speaker 1:That that's a really cool idea, cause, cause, that's what I found. I was in an entrepreneur group full of like dudes that are founders and stuff, and I feel like the small fish in this, in this group full of guys, they're like they're, they're killing it, they're making million annual recurring revenue. They're dealing with a lot of the same problems. I'm dealing with that I'm sure you're dealing with, like saying hey, where's my next lead coming from? And I noticed an interesting thing they're working mostly in their networks. Like that is a big thing. I I hate that term. Your network is your net worth. I'm like it's true, it's, it's kind of true, right, and and if you don't have a good one like I see a lot of these guys are based in austin, for example, or the bay area but I'm like what do you do if you're in arkansas? You know what I mean Like you're kind of constrained a bit right, yeah, no, 100%, like it's.
Speaker 2:I mean, all founders, we all struggle, we all cry a little bit Like we're all. I literally was just on a session with for those shout out to Goody Nation. They do a session called All Founders Need Therapy, legitimately talking through all of our struggles and the pains of you know what an entrepreneur you know has to go through. Not just like, like how, how are you checking in with your family? How are you checking in with your friends? How are you showing up? Because it's completely different when you're, you know, creating opportunities for others, not just creating opportunities for yourself. Uh, like you would with a normal job. Uh, so, yeah, being able to, you know, kind of go through and build out your network is extremely important but also extremely difficult.
Speaker 2:Like, I wish I started earlier and I feel like I did in a lot of ways. But, like, how do you even track that Right? Like, how are, like, how, how are we like, uh, you know figuring out how, why we even show up? Like there are people in my network that are, you know, killing it right now and I honestly can say I don't talk to them enough like that. One of my friends just closed like a, a three hundred thousand dollar deal and the reason why I found out about that is because I was in my other friend's car that I hadn't seen in literally over like a year and a half and we were just hanging out and they were on the phone together and I'm like, oh, wow, okay, god over here, killing it, can't say his name, but yeah, he was just like just closed a 300K deal, like, and that was amazing that he got like that was his commission with $1,000.
Speaker 1:And I'm like all right, yeah, kind of kicks you into gear, right, like you can, you can listen to that. It's like damn it. I kind of love hearing these stories, like when I meet somebody and I'm hearing that they're like made some crazy amount, even as a software engineer. When I found that people like, oh, that's how much you could make, like I'm like that's cool, cause I was really low when I started off, and even now, like, and I think that can be a good thing sometimes, because then you can say, ok, what's, what's possible. Before we get into all that stuff, though, I got one thing that people listening will probably be interested in is you started off right as a coder. You know how to code. You're a software developer. Yeah, how that like take place, how that switch from like OK, I write code, and you know what? Now I'm going to be an entrepreneur guy.
Speaker 2:So I like to do what I categorize as side quests, right, like I go out and you know areas that I'm lacking in or that I'm interested in, I'll just, you know, dabble in it for a little bit. I've been a comedian, I've been a DJ, I've been, you know, my first company that I ran was a software company. But I think all of us, we all started out well not all, but a good amount of us started out with myspace, right, learning html and css and updating profile pages, yep, um, but no, for me as an engineer, uh, and things I hadn't even thought about. And I was talking to my dad recently, actually, and he brought it up, um, but like we had worked on like a mars rover in elementary school, I was in this club called young astronauts and like now going to our school and stuff, and like I built, uh, like I was more into hardware, I guess, back when I was younger, uh, and so, uh, my mom, for the first time and I remember this vividly, we were at costco, right, and then there was the one of those little build your own alarm system kits, bought one of those, learn how to code that out and like, put that on my door uh didn't function uh well for a while. I think maybe my mom might have skipped a wire, disabled it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, um, that was how I initially started out with coding, but then for my professional career, uh going into, you know like, actually uh learning javascript. That was a complete accident actually. So I was a client services manager and sales director for this organization. They built out their own choose-your-own-adventure call center scripting software, right, and so I would have to code between 200 to 500 web pages for each client to build out their call center script 200 to 500. And that would be like within a couple of days to a week that I would go these out to. This was before AI or what. This was way before this, not way before I. This was like I don't know, 2019, 2020.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like before I mean.
Speaker 2:AI has existed for a while, but I was not using any machine learning. This was for a while, but I was not using any machine learning. This was php javascript that we were using for that. So, holy, yeah, it was. Uh, it was not. Uh, not for the faint of heart. Also, I, when I shout out to calway silva, he uh helped me out with learning javascript, uh, ad hoc. So I probably did like uh, two or three sessions with him, uh, randomly, um, because I definitely broke in way more code than I probably fixed writing those websites.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, I think, my experience too, and I was learning. I'm like I was just. I was beyond useless, I was less than useless. I was actively destroying things.
Speaker 2:to be completely honest, in my first job, oh no, I looked back through some of my code once I had actually learned like what a div was, like crazy stuff. Like I was coding for probably at least two weeks without actually knowing how to code and like I was looking like at other people's code. It was actually it was decent, right, but it would 100 was a dumpster fire, like. It's like comparing like um, what is it called? Like broken glass? To like uh, what is it called? Um, an actual dumpster fire. I would say yeah, like, so it's like a little bit of trash compared to like yeah, just an entire container of garbage there's degrees right there's levels, there were levels, yeah, yeah, oh, my god, so so you.
Speaker 2:So you started doing that, and then, and then yeah, so what?
Speaker 1:There were levels, yeah, yeah, oh, my God. So you started doing that. And then, yeah, so what happened? Like what was the thing that kicked off you saying I'm going to now do my own company? I mean, I'm guessing this isn't your first one, it's obviously not your first rodeo here, which is also common. It seems very rare that I've ever met somebody who's like, oh, my first thing, I knocked it out of the park and now I'm rich and that's it. It's like, yeah, how did that?
Speaker 2:transition take place so hilariously and I can't talk too much about it because of the, the agreements, with what happened with that first company.
Speaker 2:But I will say sure, uh, 100k in ar to cease and desist, to company being being sold or dissolved, um, and that was within like six months I did have a company that was actually extremely well uh, and then we had to, we had to do some changes, um, but the uh the biggest uh, I guess transition uh from that company towards helping other startups. So, uh, arizona state university, um was where I kind of got my start with uh consulting and I had worked probably about like 25 50 startups. First, six were dating apps, uh, which, of course, oh, of course yeah, because that's just what everybody was building in like 2013, 2014 or whatever.
Speaker 1:It was not a bad product, you know. I mean it's like something people would probably want to use.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, uh, well, the there's an interesting fact with dating apps I'll save for another time for us to chat about, but I definitely I've worked out the algorithm with. People actually want to make it successful when there's only one way to do it. Nobody's done it yet, ok, but in regard to that, so I was working with a lot of entrepreneurs. I had already had a certificate for marketing and hospitality, but I actually got in high school, um, and so it was just consulting with a bunch of startups and then, um, finally, one of those uh ended up raising their seed round. Um, a couple of years later, basically during the pandemic, brought me out to Austin, texas, and Austin. The startup ecosystem is amazing here, right, like people collaborating, just a bunch of like individuals that are all like it's like being in the room with a bunch of CEOs different levels, right, and so I was like, okay, there's something here, because there's not enough people, um, really collaboration or communication, yet there's also just this mass abundance of it, and so how do we essentially like bridge this gap to where we can fill in the holes that are occurring with, like the communication amongst all of these? You know very brilliant people, right, yeah, so, uh, talking with my co-founder, ross. Uh, you know, he and I were uh you know both uh at two different startups.
Speaker 2:At the time when we came up with the company, we actually had started another company together. He'd been working on it for three years. He brought me on a little bit later and basically we were looking at sales and M&A, which was merger and acquisitions. People know what M&A is. That company didn't really work out and so we did a quick transition to he whatever you come up with next, we'll build it. Uh, so started working on the wow heightens thing. Uh, okay, that company, literally we worked in talks before we killed it. We were, we were talking about probably over 10 million dollars we're going to sell that company for. Uh, so, yeah, how do you so turn down over 10 million dollars in an acquisition, um, to work on this, because we're really stupid and probably should have built that out and then worked on this and use the money to fuel this endeavor.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's another thing a lot of people don't know about this project is yeah, ross and I had, uh, like bare minimum. This is like if we really screwed the pooch, like $5 million, probably I would have walked away with a mill, if he would have walked away with at least two or three and that was like the worst case scenario we were looking at. Yeah, on average probably about between 10 to $25 million that we were going to sell the company for and we're in early conversations for.
Speaker 1:So that's amazing. I mean, just to even have a shot at that kind of money is is amazing, but then to turn it down, uh yeah, hey, who knows, maybe, maybe, maybe you did the right thing. You know, I'm sure there's. It's never as simple as as you know. I mean, I'm hearing this part of it, but I'm sure there's tons of context that we're probably missing from it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there, there there is tons of context, but with all that context and so even Still $25 million. Yeah, exactly, I was on a study. Actually there's a Stanford study going on right now where they're looking at entrepreneurs and their careers and really just risk takers and just stuff like that and building a study out from it. And so I was on with them for two hours yesterday just kind of walking through all of this and as I was thinking about it, I was really like, oh wow, we messed up. I completely forgot this was on the, on the road, what happened to us and how we started this, because it was basically just 30 minutes, two hours talking about how we got this company started, talking about, like, my entrepreneurial journey. And I was like, oh wow, that, like that was a real thing, that was like in our hands and tangible.
Speaker 2:And we just kind of said, nah, we'll do this thing, cause we were like, do we want $10 million and work on, you know this for like an extra year, year and a half, or do we want to build a billion dollar plus company and, you know, just run with this and make it functional? Um and well, what, what and what really happened where Ross said no, we're going through and doing this Out in the Arizona heat. I played the drums for the first time. I actually know how to play a bunch of percussion instruments, played the drums for the first time in years and then had this idea for the company, walking back and forth in the Arizona heat for three hours on the phone with Ross while he's back here in Austin and he's like I love it, let's do it. Like what's whatever, like we're going to drop everything else. This is the $1,000,000 plus idea. We're rocking with this and I'm like all right.
Speaker 1:I love it. Man, I dude that's. That is awesome. I'm reading this book about like this billionaire guy and he and he did a similar move to you, where he had a bunch of money on the table and he's like, nope, I'm going, I had, he had the North star and he did it and it and it worked out really well for him. He's a. He's a billionaire. We went from barista to billionaire. It's a very famous story that my business partner told me to read. So, wow, no-transcript offered for any startup idea I ever had. Pretty lame. But one thing I couldn't figure out was how do you get investors? I'm in the Bay Area. I've worked for startups. You're at a startup. You obviously have to gain capital somehow. How do people do that? How do you go from idea to being in a meeting with somebody that's like, hey, give me a million bucks and like, yeah, sure, here you go.
Speaker 2:So I'll tell you the real way and I'll also tell you where not to mess up on that, right, ok, because the biggest thing you actually want is traction, right, even, actually want is traction, right, um, even as we're going through and having the interns with parsity right now building stuff out, um, like everybody thinks that the baby needs to be cute, right, you can have the ugliest baby in the world, as long as you've got something you know in the bassinet is really all investors care about is like is the baby there? Is it breathing? Is it going to thrive? Like, are you are? Basically, are you building out? Uh, you know something? Basically, are you are you building out? Uh, you know, uh, something that people are willing and able to pay for? Right, and if you've got numbers on the books even if it's not like crazy numbers and revenue, like they just want to see that it's viable first, at least the early stages of something getting funded. So we're talking about, like, pre-seed seed stages. That's really, uh, you know what people care about.
Speaker 2:Then you start approaching uh, you know what people care about. Then you start approaching uh, you know what's called? Uh, you know product market fit, uh, which is you know, uh, this actually works in the market. This is something that you know is gaining some legs. You know it could potentially, you know, work at that scale and you've worked out some of the initial cakes. At least the market wants this right.
Speaker 2:Um, and at that stage I mean it's definitely about the numbers it's like, ok, you know what goes way more into your data room, how much information is is really on the books for for the company. But and then you know, after you hit that point where, like, basically you're scaling, then you're looking at your customer acquisition strategies and stuff like that and it's like, okay, are you actually worth your valuation? Right, are you doing a down round? Are you like if, like on paper you know, as you do these subsequent rounds, and you finally get to what's called a price round, usually around series a, if not before where essentially you know whatever the company is valued at, you know it's is valued at, you know it's realized, right, it's not like this fictitious kind of thing which you might hear with what's called a safe note or even with some convertible notes, like there's more weight attached to it, and these are all layman's terms.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to dumb this down a lot for people that are not in the ecosystems while they're listening.
Speaker 1:Good, because I'm pretty dumb and I'm still having trouble following along.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, while they're listening, but good, because I'm pretty dumb and I'm still having trouble following along. Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean there's levels to it. There's a okay even, um, if people really want to know how to uh really look at the startup space from a venture capital perspective, uh, or even just like capital perspective in general, because there are 64 different ways for a company to get funded. If 64 different versions of capital actually, um, and that includes everything from venture, you know, corporate, uh, because there's like cvc, there's, you know, sponsored capital, there's so many different ways. Uh, there's grants and different versions of grants and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yep, uh, so, like, when it comes to getting a company funded, it really just comes down to can you get some people to pre-sign up for this? Can you get some product really quick tosign up for this? Can you get some product really quick to market and you can use like lovable or we're building a market right now on lovable? Can you just use something to get something janky out, have some people using it? And then it comes down to the real part of talking to investors, right, or talking to other high net worth individuals or filling out grants, whatever it is, and in that process. It really is an evaluation, because on the investor side, you're not just trying to get a blank check right, you're not just trying to get the capital in. You have to be very strategic with it, because I've also seen a lot of founders that have lost their companies because they have the wrong person they accepted money from, they put the wrong people on the board.
Speaker 2:Like, yeah, there's this thing called super voter shares. Um and I'm trying to do quick highlights and non-stuffs yeah, yeah, yeah themselves and look at it. But look at, uh, you know early uber, right? Uh, you know travis and all the stuff that happened there. He had super voter shares. Uber did a bunch of stuff that was super illegal in the earlier days. Uh, there was even a lawsuit that happened with Google because Google Ventures invested in Uber at one point. Companies like that, or even what you see with OpenAI with all the stuff that happened with their half-debore eating blacklist, like two years ago.
Speaker 2:So many things have happened that like, yeah, it's a lot of drama if we're just brushing over things, but, um, in that regard, um, like, basically nobody's going to give you super voting shares unless you were already a billionaire that's done this a couple of times before, uh, and you've got, like you know, crazy track record of money in the bank right, because other people have, you know, basically made it damn near impossible for you to get that. And so now you have to think strategically of okay, can this investor give me connections? Can this investor help me put a market strategy? Can this investor help me with something other than just writing a check?
Speaker 2:And most of the time when you're raising capital, the loudest people in the room are the wrong people to write a check from. Usually, the loudest people in the room are going to be the loudest people in the boardroom. Uh, I'm not saying to get somebody that's quiet, but you want somebody that, uh, you know like, if there are, they're fighting you tooth and nail at every step of the way. That might not be the right person. But also, if they don't really care at all and they're just writing a check, that's also the wrong person. So you have to find this middle ground of support and information.
Speaker 1:So it's more like finding like a partner, it's like finding like a person that you're because I have seen this from the outside working at startups where you have investors. They're breathing down our necks to get something, or they become too loud, like you said, and basically you're working for the investor and they're big and they're changing the product direction, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on your relationship. Right, like it could be that you now feel like, oh my God, I got to build this thing for this investor. They're making the wrong decision, but I don't have enough power to fight back and I could see that devolving very quickly. This is super interesting, but where do you actually meet the people? When I think of this board of people, I'm like, okay, there's groups, but how do you even get the part where? How do they even know you exist?
Speaker 2:How do they know that you exist? Yeah, networking events the same way you would network with anybody else, for, like, how does anybody know that you have? Like that you're on their job? How do you know that somebody, like, how do you make friends? Right, like, go out to networking events, go on linkedin and, like you know, find you know the right buyer personas for people.
Speaker 2:Uh, like, in turn and I mean buyer personas isn't like the? Uh, you know, do you meet their investor thesis or whatever it is, start commenting on their posts, set up a meeting and like, uh, there's this adage of uh, you know, if you, if you're uh, looking for money, ask for advice. If you're looking for advice, ask for money or anything whatever. I'm butchering it, but basically, okay, certainly, look that up. Yeah, ask for advice, right, um, like, go go into a conversation and really just try to learn from somebody. And there are some quotes, quotes that I've been given. Like you're not, you're not kissing anybody's ass either. Don't, don't go into an investor convo. Like, you know they're this end all, be all God. Most VCs are broke.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're the best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, honestly, like literally like they're probably making you know 60, maybe they're a 60 K a year, Maybe they're reaching six figures, but like once the fund returns and their companies actually pay out, like yeah, maybe they might be a little bit more flush with cash, but mostly all VCs are not that flush with money.
Speaker 1:Imagine you're like a person like learning to code now, or you're becoming a software engineer and you're thinking you know what I want to build a product. I hear this a lot and I think this too. I think all software engineers tend to have a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. We're able to build stuff, but most of us don't build the right thing and we build things that no one wants to use, whatever. How do you determine, like, what to build and think this is an actual thing I should build? Do you do this like, based out of your like, love of something? Or is it more, you see a market need and say I might not care about this thing, that I'm, that, this you know problem I'm solving, but I know I can build a solution. Yeah, how do you go about finding the right problems to solve?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this can. This can vary slightly depending on what industry or space you're in, but for anything, consumer, 1000%. As to this, and for most forms of B2B, you can also do this or different versions. But 100 customers, 100 people.
Speaker 2:There's a book called the Mom Test, right, and so basically, the concept of the Mom Test is your mother's going to lie to you, right? Your mother's not going to tell you that your baby's ugly, your mother's going to be like, oh my God, I love this. I would use this in a heartbeat, you, right, yeah, bs comments, right? Your friends, your family, whatever it is like, are people willing and able to pay for what you have? Let's talk to over 100 people. Do 100 interviews with people. Doesn't have to be anything crazy or long or whatever, just that they're interested in the kind of product that you're building, without asking leading questions or getting biased data in, and then you know are they willing and able to pay for it? And then the next step after you get that, build out a preorder thing for the information. See if anybody actually puts, or if you get contracts or whatever, get LOIs or just trigger some buying intent with somebody. Ok, even without even building out a mock-up, if you can sell it without building out an entire, without building the thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, you've got something good, right? Um, okay, and then the final thing is build something very minimal, like and the word the term for nvp, breaking it down minimal, viable product, right, yeah, and so build something. Build the, the least amount that you need to do to be able to get in the hands of everybody. You're going to mess it up, you're going to make it way more complicated. I've done it before as well. You're going to make it more complex than it needs to be.
Speaker 2:Uh, thinking about airbnb right, airbnb started out for their first time that they got a customer with an air mattress and they had some dude just sleeping on it during a music festival and I think they had like 75 bucks or something that was their proof of concept, because their whole thing was doordash did something similar to like.
Speaker 1:They just basically had dudes like running around with shopping carts and like cars, whatever.
Speaker 2:Oh, no crazy thing for like doordash and uber and some of those early things. Like for their payment processing systems. Initially they were using Cash App and like other stuff to pay their employees so that they would be able to get paid same day. So they were just sending the money through those systems and tracking it on a spreadsheet. Yeah, like that's what I mean by minimal viable, like you don't need to have. There's certain products you don't even need to build anything engineering wise. You might even need to have. There are certain products you don't even need to build anything engineering-wise. You don't even need to build a system. Yet you could just run it off of a spreadsheet or run it off of whatever it is, get the buyer intent and then you can get the okay.
Speaker 2:Now I've got people that are willing and able to pay for this. Now I've got early adopters. I can ask them for doing user stories. I can ask them for doing beta testers, anders, and like hey, bring you on for a 15 minute call. Hey, I'm gonna walk you through this app that I built. Do you like these buds? Do you like these buds?
Speaker 1:like what do you feel when you're on?
Speaker 2:this page, whatever the hell else, for the user story stuff, but that's the way. That's the way to do it, uh, and you can get all of that done. That sounds like a crazy thing, depending on what you're building building like, obviously it could be a little bit more difficult, but anything software related, it shouldn't take you more than 30 days for building out at least a quick proof of concept or getting a wait list or whatever else. It is Right, yeah, like for us. I went out and I've done, uh, for all the different iterations and pivots of our company. I've probably done over 2000,. 3 000 customer interviews I did over like 400 and like, wow, for us alone. Right, it's not hard.
Speaker 2:I went to a couple of events. I talked to a bunch of people. I brought a little dictation device with me, um, and you know I I recorded the calls, I stuck the chat information into gpt, pulled out the transcript before we had transcripting software like two years ago, like all these messaging apps and everything else. I got the transcripts really quick. I plugged the data in and you know, we saw the correlations and we went from there. Right, it's not as difficult as people think and this is going to be somebody that did take longer in certain aspects. You don't have to. You'll get the same results and you'll, or you'll, move faster.
Speaker 1:Man, that that's, that's golden advice, because the MVP thing consistently gets screwed up by you know, I've done it. I've been at companies where it's like this is minimally. I'm like no, this is not. This is what you actually want to ship to your is your final product and you're just calling it that so you move faster. That's not an MVP.
Speaker 1:But the idea that you hit on especially is like find something that people are willing to pay for or you get buy-in before you build it, which is usually the opposite of what we do. We'll build something and we think it's minimally viable and even if it is, we might build the thing and then we realize no one wants it and we've wasted all that time. We've realized no one wants it and we've and we've, and we've wasted all that time. We don't think that, yeah, why not just have like a man behind the curtain type of approach before you actually go out to there with this kind of thing? Man, that is, that is really good advice I need to take myself. One of the last questions I want and curious to ask you about is you have a team of software engineers and you're a CEO. Why aren't you just vibe coding this whole thing?
Speaker 2:and you're a CEO. Why aren't you just vibe coding this whole thing? What do you mean by vibe coding?
Speaker 1:the whole thing. I'm being a little. I'm being a little facetious. You could say I'm what I'm trying to get it is. You've decided to actually have humans code your app, which and I think I understand why. But I'm curious because I know that a lot of people out there say, oh, you know, just vibe code the whole thing. Vibe coding you know the term, which has been a bit butchered to people now means hey, just go and use something like Cursor or Windsurf or whatever AI text editor to essentially do the work of an entire software team and build out an entire app in you know some smaller proportion of time than it would usually take for you to do it by hand. In quotes yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I can answer this perfectly, because I'm actually trying to build out a secondary mock-up just to show investors of what we're raising the money for not necessarily what the engineers are building now, the next phase or iteration why we need capital. And, yeah, after what? What? Like 50 bucks, and I think I've put in like over 150 prompts, three or what is it? Uh, one quick failed build after like three steps and then one that I put like at least 100 plus credits into or whatever. Yeah, no, it's yeah, like I could do that if I was trying to build out, uh, an application that uh, is very rudimentary or whatever, but like a complex application like this. Like, yeah, I can build this out as like a mock-up or a demo environment potentially, but I, yeah, I can't build this entire thing or this system using something like that.
Speaker 2:I literally tried a couple of days ago. So I was like, oh, wow, because you, you get into this mysticism where, like I was, I tried a couple of days ago. So I was like, oh, wow, because you, you get into this mysticism where, like I was, I built out some of the pages that the interns are working on right now and I was like, oh wow, I built this out super quick. Oh my god, why do I have a dev team? I thought about that for one prompt and then the next prompt, I was like, oh dear god, I'm so glad I have an engineering team, because this is like it just bungled up the entire code within the next like it was something simple. They want to completely change up the ui yeah, completely changed up like every single little aspect, change up the colors I hate that, which I hate that.
Speaker 1:Why'd you do that? Why, how would you do that?
Speaker 2:I'm like if this was actually linked into our code base right now for github, we would be screwed.
Speaker 2:Our repo would just like. I would have to try to figure out some way to revert this because, like, it's also connected in with a database and so like, because the database got, the database got broken and it was doing like repeated calls over and over again and I'm like, thank god I didn't pay for this because I I mean, I kind of did, I paid 50 bucks but like in general, not like a full build, because even if somebody doesn't know how to code and they're using one of these things, they're not going to know how to do that. They're just going to burn through money because there's a call right now that it was doing and luckily I'm a developer so I knew how to shut it off. I'm not even back in. I luckily could figure it out enough to shut it off in two or three minutes, but I luckily could figure it out enough to like shut it off in like two or three minutes, but it had done over like a thousand calls to the API for just me being logged into the demo environment.
Speaker 1:And if you're using something like OpenAI and you're doing anything like potentially expensive, I mean man, that could really ruin your day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it would suck. Like I'm glad that I like caught it, because the thing is I didn't. If I hadn't developed the systems or processes for, like me, being a developer, I wouldn't think okay, let's go ahead and check the back end real quick. Look at the log, see if what we have broken, because I can see the error message in here and I know what this error message means. Let me fix this error. Oh, lovable said that it fixed it. I know it didn't. Uh, let me check back. And oh, yeah, no, it'll be calling over and over again.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to revert this really fast because there's no way that it's going to stop calling and even if I were to hard code this and push a patch very quickly, it would still keep calling it, because I had done that yesterday as well too. So, because I've been doing this over the last three or four days for trying to build out this, okay, and yeah, I mean there's certain things that can do really well, so I even test. Yeah, for sure, I'll. I'll type in what I'm putting into lovable in chat, gpt, I'll give it my name in terms of notes. It'll then write out a prompt for me to then pop in face in the chat gpt, so that I can save time in writing it right with cursor.
Speaker 2:I can use cursor for doing code review on it and then figure out you know what stuff is broken or whatever it is, after it does its quote, unquote fixes and but then I'm like it's just, it's just the blind leading the blind at a certain point with it and so, yeah, rather not bother. But, like the interns, right now people are using like Claude for writing out you know rfps and going through and um, what is it called? Like eric, uh, you know our interim cto. He's been jumping in and doing a crazy amount of uh of stuff. He's, uh, very, very versed on the uh, the ai side, uh and all the. You know recent developments and you know everything else and you know he's provided some great tools used like Gemini for their code review thing. At times. Myself I use Gemini for every meeting that I have Very pro-AI.
Speaker 2:Our platform is working on an AI matchmaking. Yeah, it's built on AI. Yeah, exactly, can AI be used for everything? Hell, no. I have somebody that's worked with three or four AI companies over the last couple of years. Since AI has had this boom and built myself I. I wouldn't trust it for 90% of things right now.
Speaker 2:Can you build out something quick for an MVP? Sure, yeah, quick and dirty. Yeah, yeah, build it out, get the money and then hire a developer. I'm not even joking, we're a janky BS. Oh, no, you can spend some. Like okay, google for startups gave you $2,000 in free credits. Aws gave you $10,000 in free credits. Aws gave you $10,000 in AWS credits. Yeah, you can have a couple thousand users messing stuff up and doing constant calls to your API. And then, okay, now for three months, I've got 20,000 users or whatever, and they're all in here. I'm running out of credits. I'm raising money right now, showing that I have the traction of 20,000 users that are actively using this janky system that I'm using. Like, give me money for me to be able to build this properly and to build the real thing. Uh, and then, yeah, like people will, people will fund stuff like that all day. Uh, I mean, the market is the market right now, but in general, I'll toss cash at you, for you know something that is that works and um has users.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that has users. And then get a real developer, get an actual dev team. Don't and like people also say, for a bunch of these offshore teams or whatever too, like as somebody who's used them, like are this company that we're building right now, which a lot of people don't know? Yeah, ross and I were trying to build out an ethical dev shop, which is what we were calling it. We were actually going to build a home dev like that and crank out projects, got an affordable price for entrepreneurs, and then we realized there were so many dev shops would be like screaming into the void and we decided to make an actual software system. Which is when ross then said boom, let's like this is great, great, build another plus idea Way better than all the other stuff we've been talking about. Oh, yeah, for sure. But yeah, that's the. You know, the main thing is just use devs and if you are a dev listening to this, like, you can adapt AI into your workflows. But even with the input we have now, don't just grab like, don't just code out everything with AI, because if you don't know what you're looking at, like. If I didn't know what I was looking at with that code, it would have continuously called, it would have still been on right now, even though that closed out the application, and you would not know until you got a big bill. Yeah, and then I would have just got a huge bill, right.
Speaker 2:So you know, showcasing that as just a major key highlight that the experience and things that you have, you know, as a developer, even when you're coding with AI, are extremely important. You can use it to speed up processes, but you still have to know how to do the thing. At the end of the day, you still have to. If you didn't have code, or if you didn't have, you know AI or whatever it is, you could still build this right.
Speaker 2:That's the biggest call out for artificial intelligence for any company, any space, any industry, no matter what you're doing. If you're using artificial intelligence, if you can't do it by yourself initially, then you also don't even know what the cleanup is, because I've never received an exact one-to-one. Oh god, this is perfect, I can you, yeah, right, all of this, yeah, exactly, it's a, it's a great rough draft, and then you, yes, like a little bit to be able to refine it to your use case, just so people know that you just didn't write this whole thing with ai, like that's obviously I I'm I'm super glad to hear you say that and, uh, also really good place to end off.
Speaker 1:I'm glad. I mean we hear so much about the negativity. Also, I think there's a whole class of snake oil salesmen that have risen because of this industry now telling people like, oh, you don't need to do, you can do everything with AI. I'm like this is silly dangerous. I think it's also going to maybe spawn a whole other industry of people to clean up the mess, potentially later, but we'll we'll see how this all pans out no, there's a bubble.
Speaker 2:There's a bubble that's going to pop at some point.
Speaker 2:For yeah, I think we've already already did pop in 2022, and then we just created another bubble again, create another one, yeah, um, because we like the. The thing is, media moves so fast now that we could have 12.com bubbles all at the same time and they could all install at the same moment, and then we would all still be like, well, you know, just like stuff, I think let's do web 4. I think we've had that over the last five years. So we've just seen several bubbles pop and then just go right and restart, like we've seen, yeah, metaverse, nft, web3, kind of the crypto AI machine learning, even though both AI and machine learning have been out for over 30, 40 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, we saw them hit super big.
Speaker 2:We saw the bubble pop, we saw the market adjust and then it's getting big again and it's just going to keep flexing. I don't think we're going to have linear paths, like we previously did with markets because of artificial intelligence, and I think that's the major shift that we're seeing.
Speaker 1:That's it. That is interesting, man. Hey, where can people find, like get on the signup list or find more about founding Titans?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so founding titanscom, titans with anS is. You know our website. You can register for our waitlist there. You can also find me personally, gabriel Rucker, on LinkedIn, I think, gq Rucker on other social handles for like X or Twitter all that good stuff, cool, and yeah, always happy to to connect and speak with people just on, you know, various different fronts for me and and then for the company we're actually going to be launching, I believe on about I think May 6th is the target date that we're working with. So I don't know when this is coming out, but May 6th look at stuff. If it's not there, wait another week and then come back, but right now, that's the date that we have targeted right now.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, hell yeah. I have all that in the show notes and thank you so much. Been an excellent conversation. Really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today. That'll do it for today's episode of the develop yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsityio and if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show notes. See you next week.
