Fostering Reform w/ Ryan O’Donnell | Ep. 200

For our 200th episode, we’re getting reflective—and who better to join us than Ryan O’Donnell, Co-Founder and CEO of Sunlight, a company rewriting what social justice looks like in action.

Ryan’s not just a founder. He’s a connector, a challenger, and a deeply rooted believer in what makes the North Carolina entrepreneurial scene so rare. In this milestone episode, we talk about what really holds a founder community together: shared values, hard questions, and people who show up again and again—especially when things get messy.

LINKS:

Ryan on LinkedIn

Sunlight on LinkedIn

Sunlight Website

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

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The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: Is that your tagline?

We don't add crap to your plate because I think that's great .

[00:00:03] Ryan: Hey, look, the old employers tagline at some point was, we make HR software that doesn't suck. We don't say that in Govtech land.

[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host. Joined today per usual, by Gary Voight. Hello, Gary. It's a special day today.

[00:00:25] Gary: Yeah, it's a special episode, an episode almost as old as I am.

[00:00:30] David: Oh, was, let's not go there, MATHUSLA. But it is our 200th episode, which is pretty crazy. 200 episodes.

[00:00:40] Gary: I didn't 

[00:00:41] David: have a favorite moment? I'm 

[00:00:44] Gary: moment outta 200,

[00:00:46] David: out of 200, who's your favorite guest right now?

[00:00:49] Gary: oh God, of course 

[00:00:50] David: I've been doing this thing. Is it, is Ryan? Yeah,

that's our guest today. She can't up I, here's a funny story over the weekend, and I'll get back to the 200 thing, but just reminded me, its like, so my daughter is debating colleges and she's deciding which ones, and so I have this game that she absolutely detests, but I do it anyways as I go.

Alright, gun to your head. Which one? Or B. And she's I don't know. I dunno. She just freaks out. It's a good time. Anyway, you have, I'm gonna give you some more time in this episode while we're I where we're talking to Ryan here to think about your best and worst moments of the podcast. And I'm coming back to you.

This isn't over, 

[00:01:25] Gary: All right. I'll think about it. I can't promise they'll be good or entertaining, but I'll think about it.

[00:01:30] David: It's you, so you're not gonna be entertaining. But anyway,

[00:01:32] Gary: I barely get to talk anyway, so this might be 

[00:01:34] David: Ryan O'Donnell more important than. Adults are talking. I'm very excited. We are joined by Ryan O'Donnell, who is the co-founder and CEO of Sunlight, which we're gonna get into in just a minute, but we're gonna start, it's 200 episodes. We're gonna shake things up a little bit. Alright? We are going to start with a this or that to get a little, get to know you a little bit.

Ryan has no idea what these questions are, and that's important because they're stupid questions. Alright, start off Easy. Mac or PC?

[00:02:02] Ryan: Mac.

[00:02:03] David: Mac. Alright. Do you

have 

[00:02:05] Gary: we all get the 

[00:02:06] David: for that? What's that?

[00:02:08] Gary: Do we all get the answer?

[00:02:10] David: Everybody gets answers. This is not

just for Ryan. Go ahead, Gary. We'll let you say something He

already 

[00:02:15] Gary: I'm Mac Mack. Mac.

[00:02:16] Ryan: Mac,

[00:02:18] David: am both. I have a PC at home and I work on a Mac. Because I'm a gamer and you can't game on max period.

So full stop. Anybody who wants to, I'll fight you. But I am both. I will say going back before, back between each, every day is very strange. 'cause the muscle memory of the keyboards, it's weird.

It's weird.

[00:02:36] Gary: So why does Ryan prefer Mag?

[00:02:39] Ryan: I switched to a Mac in college, never went back, 

[00:02:42] David: the battery life is hard to beat. That's really what it's at. It's, that's

why I switched for work is the battery life. I would kill a Windows battery in three hours and then my Mac will go eight hours. So I'm doing the same thing. It's crazy. Alright, we're gonna get really serious now. Marvel or dc?

[00:02:58] Ryan: look, I know some people are hating 

[00:03:02] David: Yeah, see. 

[00:03:03] Gary: Potential clients. 

[00:03:05] Ryan: films but I'm Marvel 110%. And I really like the new Superman movie. That was great. I'm really excited for all new things. James Gun's awesome, 

OG Marvel, I can't wait. Dooms day's gonna be fun.

[00:03:18] David: Oh, man. That is the most PC answer I've ever heard. Very good. Well done. You did both. Very good.

[00:03:25] Gary: It's like you're an actual PR person in Hollywood, so 

[00:03:28] David: Do you have a minder somewhere right behind you going, you can't say that,

Gary, what 

[00:03:33] Ryan: the head question, David, it's which one do you pick? Ah, who's my favorite child? 

[00:03:38] David: Is Sophie's choice. I said that to my kids the other day and they have no idea what Sophie's choice is at all. Like it's not even a movie. It's just, what are you talking about? Anyway, Gary, what's yours? Who are you?

[00:03:49] Gary: I am gonna have to go with Marvel. 

[00:03:51] David: Marvel. All right. Alright. Phone case or no case?

[00:03:57] Ryan: I am a phone case kind of guy.

[00:03:59] David: Do you have a, do you do the big pillowy cases? Like it's a backpack around your phone.

[00:04:04] Gary: A Special Ops Otter case 

[00:04:06] Ryan: just upgraded and this is the smallest case I've had in a while. 

[00:04:11] David: Okay. Okay. So 

[00:04:12] Ryan: I am, I'm okay. I like to throw it a lot, like I'll just do this throughout the day. 

[00:04:16] David: like my wife. 

[00:04:17] Gary: you're giving me anxiety. Don't do that.

[00:04:19] David: My wife will chuck a phone like nobody's business. We buy her the inflatable cases because seriously, the girl will break a case. I'm a no case guy. I'm a fan of, I live on the edge. I have already scratched my phone, so it's all good, 

[00:04:35] Gary: I was a case man, but now I'm a no case man, because I started out with cases and then tried to get thinner cases, and then considered the little bumper ones. And I was like this is stupid. And then so I just took the case off and. Never look back.

[00:04:50] David: All right, last one. Here we go. Which, if you have a question that you don't know the answer to, are you a Google guy or a chat GPT guy or any ai, but I don't

care which 

[00:05:03] Gary: Let's say Google or ai.

[00:05:05] Ryan: So I just updated my like default search to chat gt. I have to do a little bit extra effort now, so I gotta type in google.com/and then, and then I can get to the Google.

But otherwise I just default to chatt now,

[00:05:17] David: alright. My extension to that is, are you trying any of the new browsers coming out?

[00:05:22] Ryan: have not started on any of the 

[00:05:24] David: on the Chrome. Okay. 

[00:05:25] Ryan: I'm on the Chrome. I got too many extensions. I'm a little nervous about losing them.

[00:05:29] David: they're all chromium, so you can, they call 'em with you.

They, you get 'em all. So they

[00:05:33] Ryan: Wonderful. This is great. Hello. Learn something new every 

[00:05:36] David: learn something. Gary, what are you a chat GBT guy or are you a Google guy?

[00:05:41] Gary: now? No. Now currently I am a perplexity guy using the COMET browser.

[00:05:47] David: Yeah. That's gonna

[00:05:47] Gary: I tried the others, but Comet seems to be a better fit for me.

[00:05:52] David: Dude, I give comet a year. My hot take. If I could do it, if I could, I think a apple just needs to buy perplexity, just call it today. But that's just me.

[00:06:01] Gary: Perplexity did just buy one of my favorite image generation, I guess you could say. Generative AI tools visual Electric. So I'm looking forward to see what they're gonna do with that.

[00:06:11] David: Yeah they're not gonna, when they, when all this simplifies, we're right now, we're in the big market now and they're all gonna die off in the next few years. Perplexity is toast, calling it. Alright.

I currently am on the Atlas browser, which has chat BT built in, so it's, you don't have a choice. It's

[00:06:26] Gary: Yeah, it's the 1987 duster browser. It's garbage.

[00:06:31] David: mean it looks like Chrome. It's got a little thing that says as Jet GBD. But I will say when you tell it to turn on, because we have the paid plan for big pixel. When you turn on the, Hey, do something for me, it has this really cool like sparkly space thing that, that they put in front so that you can't move your mouse 'cause they've now taken over.

It's very cool. Anyway, so let's get down to what we're actually supposed to be talking about. The only Ryan did not join us today so that he could talk about silly things. Tell me about your company. You I should say, I should start out, we have known each other a while now. You are one of big pixel's oldest clients back in the day. And to tell I was gonna tell you this story, I'm gonna tell you it now. I was thinking about you the other day because we were talking, my wife was at this Halloween party and they were a bunch of single, divorced ladies and a whole group of people were talking about dating apps. Yeah, here's a weird story. They were talking about

[00:07:29] Ryan: I know. I know where this,

[00:07:30] David: He knows exactly where it's going. And they were talking about Tinder and I said, you know what's crazy? Big Pixel was around when that was the hotness and the swiping ui. Everyone wanted to copy it, including your company employ us back in the day.

We made for you a swipe left and right employment app,

which at the time was like super. Cool. It was still a great ui. I'll stand by that one.

[00:07:56] Ryan: It was cool.

[00:07:58] David: that was crazy. It was like, man, that was like, and I was trying to think how long ago that was. It had to been at least nine years ago. It's been a

while, 

[00:08:04] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:08:06] David: but

you have now. 

[00:08:07] Ryan: ago. 

[00:08:08] David: That's crazy.

[00:08:09] Ryan: the Swipey app it did not catch on in the world of improving the process for employee referrals. 

[00:08:14] David: That's 

[00:08:15] Ryan: Turns out people don't wanna meet their next their next coworker like 

[00:08:18] David: by swiping right. 

[00:08:20] Ryan: It was not a thing. Eventually there, the problem is there's not enough jobs out there, so you eventually swipe through all the jobs.

[00:08:25] David: Oh, 

[00:08:26] Ryan: I dunno if you remember this. Once you got through all the cards in that iteration of employ us, we had the guy from office space there, yeah, she'll be great. Thanks. 

[00:08:36] Gary: You mean Lombard?

[00:08:37] Ryan: And it was some people got it, some people didn't. 

[00:08:40] David: Yeah. 

[00:08:41] Ryan: and we learned a ton.

It was a fun ride.

[00:08:44] David: fair. But you are now doing pretty important work, I should say. So I want you to tell me all about your company now. 'cause you guys, you're one of the Raleigh startup rocket ships going off. I hear, I see your name all over the news and all the goodies. So tell me about sunlight.

[00:09:01] Ryan: Story very much actually got started during the employ us days. While we were building that my wife and I became foster parents. So we got to see that whole wonderful world, the exact opposite 

[00:09:12] David: think I must say, are you, that's gotta be the most sarcastic wonderful, I think I've ever heard. That is a brutal process. Is it not

[00:09:20] Ryan: It, it is a world of fax machines and snail mail is one way to put it. We're talking about, which browser are we using? By, by which AI overlord we, we want to, give all our data to, the world of local social services is still very much a world of like pen and paper and fax machines and it just drove my wife and I crazy.

And I was like, surely there's a better way. And so we started that after we had sold employees to really just improve the quality of communication and legal representation in the child welfare world. If you look at like, all of our social safety net programs that we have in this country so many of them.

Are manual, it's paper driven. There's notes in a file cabinet somewhere. And that's no way to, to run these giant programs that like so many people depend on. And we sold the last one. We wanted to do something. And there's a very few problems, I think bigger to solve than does our child welfare system like actually work?

For the kids and families that are impacted by it. So through our hat in the ring a couple years ago to start building stuff in that world. And it's been a blast.

[00:10:24] David: So practically speaking, what does Sunlight do? What is it? Is it just for the foster system, you're modernizing the foster? Or is it bigger than that? What, where does it sit?

[00:10:33] Ryan: Yeah. So we're building out a couple of different products. Our first product is called Your Case Plan which often will get described as like MyChart for foster care. So it's a, secure, HIPAA compliant way to communicate, helping, foster parents, connect with caseworkers, parents connecting with their attorneys really help get everyone to, stay on the same page and reduce the time kids are in care.

Reducing court delays, making sure like lines of communication, are open. So that was kinda the first product. And then we recently acquired another company called Casa Manager that builds a case management software for a child's advocate in court. And really what we see ourselves building out is a kind of collection of products that all work to I improve the outcomes of kids and families and care.

And we'll do that in a lot of different ways for a lot of different stakeholders. The system's super complicated, at the end of the day, so much of it has to do with, are the organizations like serving kids or parents actually able to like, do good work, and does technology help them do that work?

Better or faster, or does it, take 30% of their day? 'Cause they're like trying to hit refresh on an old browser that doesn't really work. And they can only upload things one at a time and the, they get the spinning wheel of death every 15 minutes, so we heard a lot of that and we were like, let's go fix those problems.

[00:11:52] David: So yeah, so you're dealing with, and I, there's a lot of. Companies that deal with your population your customer population could be on really bad internet, could be on a really old computer. And that's so different than most startups because most startups, you're assuming your client's on broadband, right?

And they're rocking it out and they've got all the fancy stuff. 'cause you're thinking tech forward, right? But that's not your world, that you've got a very different thing. So you've gotta build for that.

[00:12:19] Ryan: Oh yeah, like offline mode by default on day one, accessible, on day one being able to help folks who might not have English as their primary language day one. These are all the things that, like in tech startup land, you're going fast. These are like we'll get to it someday, things.

And that's honestly like most of the stuff that I see in the govtech world, they might speak to oh yeah, we checked that box, but the product experience is crap and the implementation is worse. The way we think about it is I need someone who is going through some of the most stressful experiences of their life and my software needs to like, not add more crap to their plate.

And if you've 

[00:12:57] David: Is that your tagline?

We don't add crap to your plate because I think that's great. 

[00:13:01] Ryan: Hey, look, the old employers tagline at some point was, we make HR software that doesn't suck. We don't say that in Govtech land.

But let's just say everyone knows there's bad software out there, so 

[00:13:10] David: so your client is governments, that's who

you're selling to, is government. That I have never been in that space. I don't think we've ever even had a client in that space before, but that sounds like the most brutal cycle. Isn't that incredibly long? I'm thinking startup, like you're getting, are you getting investment or are you self, are you, where are you at in that world?

[00:13:33] Ryan: Yeah, so we've raised some money. We funded it ourselves for the first, like two years or so, and then we raised some money this past summer. But yeah, sales cycles are long. Budgets are tight budgets are getting tighter. 

[00:13:45] David: Yeah. Especially 

[00:13:46] Ryan: it's a great time to build in Gov Tech. David that's the message.

I'm the great, a great salesman for the sector. I used to sell software to HR people, and I was told that sales cycle was long and they didn't have budget. So I decided to go after someone where the sales cycles are longer and the budgets are at sometimes even smaller, 

[00:14:03] Gary: You 

[00:14:03] David: employ employment was too easy. 

[00:14:05] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:14:05] Ryan: We gotta keep leveling up here. The bureaucracy of HR land was not enough for me, 

[00:14:09] Gary: that was the other question I was gonna have. Oh, sorry, David. You mentioned the budget constraints and right now could just also imagine the amount of communication and lack of communication between just getting something signed off and approved.

[00:14:22] Ryan: Yeah it takes it can take a really long time to get anything approved. There's, you're spending the public's dollars, we got taxpayer funded things. So you wanna make sure that's not wasted. You wanna make sure things are competitive. But at the end of the day, it's great products should win, right?

And today, somehow that doesn't happen. A lot of like custom stuff gets built. We've got, some of the largest consulting firms in the world making a ton of money off of 

[00:14:46] David: Tons of money. 

[00:14:47] Ryan: Not delivering great products, 

[00:14:49] Gary: do you have to throw your hat in a ring against a bunch of other companies that are bidding for the same type of work, or are you competing with systems that are already in place?

[00:14:59] Ryan: You usually, there's nothing like, there's no incumbent to replace, it is a lot of there's a paper form PDF form that you have to like print out, fill out facts. 

[00:15:09] David: You're a first

mover for all intents and purposes. 

[00:15:13] Ryan: uh, in the grand

scheme of tech startup land. Yeah. Yeah. There's not a lot of innovation 

[00:15:16] David: not a lot of people targeting foster care and this kind of stuff. I, there's a lot of gov tech as you mentioned,

but that you've picked a lane that no one is currently in unless they do custom.

[00:15:26] Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, like there's, yeah, like we're all we're all here in North Carolina. I think Gary, I don't dunno if you're in North 

[00:15:33] David: is a Floridian. 

[00:15:35] Ryan: Whoa. Okay. Alright, that's okay. We can accept you. 

[00:15:38] Gary: Yeah, it's,

in the eighties here so

[00:15:42] Ryan: I assume North Carolina and Florida probably have similar challenges in this, but north Carolina, our state has spent over a hundred million dollars building custom software for child welfare with nothing to show for it. Some call it 

[00:15:54] David: sling some serious code for a hundred mil.

[00:15:57] Ryan: right? I'm just saying like the amount of spend compared to the outcome, there's a big gap. So it's overlooked though, so no.

[00:16:06] David: my favorite government efficiency story. I worked actually where I met Gary, I was living in Florida. I worked with Gary's brother at the Florida House of Representatives. This was 15 years, no, gosh, 20 years ago. Oh my gosh. I'm old. Anyway every, they would not buy the, oh, he's frozen again, isn't he?

that or he, there he comes. No, that's fair. I was like, either he's the most still human and I'm telling the worst story ever. Anyway, so the government would not buy, I was on the eighth floor, which is where all it was. They would not buy the eighth floor coffee. If you wanted coffee in the morning, you had to pitch into the coffee fund, and they were very strict about it. You had to get $5 a week for the coffee fund, but every two years, all the representatives, whether they were reelected or not, would get all new tech, all new phones, computers, anything, every two years. And I just thought, that is lovely. That is just exactly government in a nutshell, right there.

[00:17:07] Ryan: Yeah that, that is it. All right. So we see some crazy stuff. We see some crazy stuff. It's amazing what people actually spend money on. And like a lot of things sometimes the things that are like. They're not the biggest ticket item in government. They're not the flashiest thing.

It's not on the front page of every newspaper. But they're like the systems that like really matter and a lot of times they either just get neglected or they get built out custom 10 years, it takes five years to build it. It's outta date the day it launches and everyone's complaining about it, on launch day.

And then they complain about it for five to 10 years. And then they replace it again and it's another, 

[00:17:45] David: do it again. 

[00:17:46] Ryan: so I just believe there's gotta be a better way than that, and that's what we're trying to put out there now.

[00:17:51] David: And, but at the end of the day, what you're doing matters. If you succeed, it's gotta give you a warm fuzzy, right? That's, you're not just building another pair of pants or you're building another, social media app that'll suck your soul into your phone. You're, you are doing something that is benefiting. What's the right way of saying it? 

Some of the hardest, no, I'm just saying, I'm thinking of his population. Those kids, I'm thinking of those kids. That is

some of the hardest road, the hardest life. I know foster kids, I've known people who've gotten foster kids. It is brutal. And the fact that you're helping them and making that process easier is awesome.

That's gotta, that's gotta you go home at night going, yes, this is awesome.

[00:18:37] Ryan: We go home. It's very, it's a lot of hard work. It's a very difficult, at work, like we, we see the best and worst of society. I kid you not in every way. Like at the end of the day, like our whole company was built to reduce the time. Kids are stuck in care.

Our foster son was in the system for almost seven years, so we got to see, we got a front row seat to it. And without even getting into all the different, options in the child welfare world of, how do we best serve them? I think like everyone generally agrees that you probably shouldn't just be stuck there for most of your childhood.

Wondering like, where am I gonna go? What am I gonna do? There's reports in wake County, you got kids like sleeping in hotels because we don't have enough foster homes for them. And we've got family who's trying to raise their own family and they can't.

Connect with someone at the office 'cause the phone lines don't work. It's like there's a bunch of problems to solve there. But we can, we wanna like basically build the machine so that we can push a button and get better outcomes. And then I want to give lawmakers that button and say, Hey, the more you push this, the better the outcomes get.

And we have like real ways to like actually deliver better results. Then you know what happens, historically is like once every five years there's a bunch of hearings about it and people talk about it, and then we do a couple studies and we get a few commissions to write some reports, and then eventually we decide we should do another hearing.

You know what? So I'm just excited about solving some problems on a slightly faster time scale.

[00:20:04] Gary: you're going against the grain there, Ryan, and trying to make government efficient that's gonna be a battle.

[00:20:17] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:20:45] David: So I call this my blue sky question. So imagine in front of you, no, no major hurdles. Everything you want to happen in the next five years is gonna happen with sunlight. What does sunlight look like?

[00:21:00] Ryan: That's a great question. Like at the end of the day, like there's about half a million kids that are impacted by foster care any given year. You would look at that all of those, kids and families that, that end up getting, impacted. And like in five years, let's say we have a lever that we've pulled we should be able to look at like the day that we launched sunlight five years before, five years after.

We should look at those stats. We should say yep, kids are better off. We've got kids that are safer, reducing, like incidents of child abuse. We've got kids that have a, an experience in the foster care system. It's actually positive. Like right now a lot of kids, they age outta foster care, they're the most likely to be homeless, incarcerated at higher rates of PTSD than war veterans.

So like the stats are gruesome. And I say that 'cause, it's kinda like ground. It is like we spend like a hundred thousand dollars a year per child in the foster care system, right? And if you were to ask anyone if they would put their own kid in the system, they'd say absolutely not. 

[00:22:01] David: Yeah, that's 

[00:22:02] Ryan: So,

In five years I think if we can show hey, the states that have used our product, like they actually serve kids better, like they actually get kids the help that they need, the families, the stability that they need that would be really cool. And that would be very much like the starting point for us, in in employ us stays in the last startup, five years.

That's a, you got like an exit within five years and this one in five years, that's like. Warmup first quarter has finally finished. So it's a different timescale than the last one.

[00:22:32] David: That's interesting. So that's, are you saying, 'cause you've jumped around and done startups and all sorts of, you have been a serial entrepreneur over your, even though you're a young guy, by our standards especially, are you saying this is your passion? This is you for the next 20, 30 years.

[00:22:48] Ryan: This would be as long as I could physically do it. And I'm not that I got plenty of time. I joke with someone, and you'd appreciate this from early days of employers, like I was a recruiter in college. Like that. I was like six months, and I remember being like, ah, I really felt the pain of being a recruiter, and I spent nine years building HR software based off that experience, we got to live front row seat in the child welfare world, for many years, right? I could do this for decades, right? It's just a different scale of the problem. And I nerded out about building HR software because like I had to, it was a part of the job, but this is a much more fulfilling work than the last one.

[00:23:25] David: For sure. I yeah, I admire that. I think most people, it's funny, we, I ask that blue sky question pretty regularly and it's not uncommon when that five years they're gonna sell it. That's

their hope within five years. And I've been surprised by that. 'cause I've been asked, I've probably asked that 20 times now, and it's not a small percentage of people who be like, success for me is getting out of this.

And I'm like, that's really interesting because. Does that not mean you're not passionate about what you're doing right this moment?

Just don't get that. It's very different. 'cause I've been doing this now almost 13 years and I love this is what I do and the idea of selling it really makes me sad.

Not excited. Not that I'm selling it, I'm just saying it's just, it's not something I put on a five-year timeline or something like that on it's, this is what I do until I can't do it.

And so I love finding compatriots with that same mindset. You found what you were called to do, as it were, and you're now doing it, and I think that's great.

I hope you're able to do it for the, until you're as old as Gary and really that's a long time.

[00:24:20] Ryan: We had someone like we had a company had reached out about potentially a acquiring us already. And it was one of those like classic examples where you're like what else would I do? Like I would start. This again, I wouldn't know what else to do with my life, so like similar kind of thing is like the prospect of being on the other end of an acquisition and being like, what am I supposed to do now? I thought this is what I was gonna spend a few decades on. I got all this free time. What should I do with it? Let's go start Sunlight version two.

Like it's, so just skip all that, just keep going It.

[00:24:52] Gary: Ryan, with your experience as a serial entrepreneur. If you could sum up three valuable pieces of advice for a new startup or a new entrepreneur, what would they be?

[00:25:03] Ryan: Most important thing is like at the end of the day, you gotta build something that people love to use. If you do that, everything else works. It's just if you don't build something that's great then everything is a lot harder. Sales is harder, marketing is harder. Recruiting is harder, right?

When you build something that like actually works, that like people fall in love with everything's so much easier. My co-founder and our first investor in our last company would always distill things down to three things. He'd like, find three things on his desk and he is you gotta sell it, you gotta fulfill it.

And you gotta do all that back office stuff. So every problem in business, he would always distill it down to these three things. You got a problem. Oh, it's 'cause you can't sell. Oh, it's 'cause you like. Go back on your word, you don't actually deliver the thing you sold or do you not follow the books?

You don't send the invoices, you don't deal with the HR stuff, so I think sometimes we like overcomplicate things and it's just build a really good product and then those three things become very easy to do. So I didn't fit into your, the question of what are the top three?

But maybe it's just simplify it, just do one, and then the rest figures itself out.

[00:26:10] Gary: I actually like. I love the fact that just building something that people are gonna love and use, building something great. As the primary goal. Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. So if anybody wants to learn more about you, Ryan, or about Sunlight, where's the best place for them to reach out and find you?

[00:26:29] Ryan: Best place. I spend way too much time on LinkedIn. It's a side effect of building a, an HR software business as you spend too much time on LinkedIn. So you can find me there company is sunlight, our website, sunlight hq.com. You learn more about what we're building there too.

[00:26:44] Gary: Awesome. 

[00:26:45] David: Very good. Alright. 

[00:26:47] Gary: notes too.

[00:26:48] David: Now, Gary, I'm not letting you off the hook. It's time. 200

[00:26:52] Gary: was I was supposed to be thinking about something. Okay. Yeah. So no, I just, I can't pick out specific moments or events, but I can say from a high and low standpoint, the coolest thing about doing this podcast are the different guests that we get to interview, the different stories that they have behind their products and their businesses, and the range. Of different industries and products that we've been able to cover. And I will say not as a low, but I'll just say towards the bottom of that range, we once interviewed a used car salesman who had a used car salesman salesy app and had no idea what he was doing or talking about, and was pretty much half drunk during the whole interview.

[00:27:36] David: Oh man, we,

I will tell you a 

[00:27:38] Gary: high end of that scale,

present company excluded. Sorry, Ryan, but we got to interview a scientist who was actually talking to us about quantum computers and how they work and the future of quantum computers. And me and you, David, were looking at each other we don't know. We 

[00:27:56] David: What do I 

[00:27:57] Gary: huh?

What

we,

[00:28:00] Ryan: We 

[00:28:00] Gary: was way out of our league. questions. No, we had questions, but not smart questions, but we did learn a lot, so that was really cool.

[00:28:08] David: So that guy that for he first mentioned, I obviously won't mention his name, but before he came on, this is 100% true. This was. Early. I'll just say that it was early. The dude comes on just like you are now. He's looking. He's got his, we were in Zoom back then. We were not on Riverside yet, and he comes on, he's got a beer in one hand and a vape in the other. Okay. This starter isn't true

[00:28:32] Gary: He's leaned back, reclining in his chair. 

[00:28:35] David: He finishes off his beer, puts it off camera, puts the vape down. He is like, all right, let's do this. And we're like, so we called him, what was it? Is it beer? Mc Vapes, I think is what we've called him from that point on. 

Unbelievable. That has happened one time. Unbelievable. And I hope, and his startup made no sense, like we had to edit it so bad because what he was saying

[00:28:58] Gary: I don't even know if we actually

put it out. 

[00:29:01] David: we did. It was really

short. It was really

[00:29:03] Gary: Don't go back and look up that one

[00:29:06] Ryan: Every, everyone just go back to the episode list,

[00:29:09] Gary: Yeah.

So 

[00:29:10] Ryan: sort my link.

[00:29:11] David: super short one. You

[00:29:13] Gary: So this is actually episode 1, 99 0.5.

[00:29:16] David: no, when we're gonna go delete that one and now this is 1 99 and no one understands what's going on.

[00:29:21] Gary: We'll just put an asterisk up. Yeah. Clarified in a couple years.

[00:29:26] David: Alrighty. On that

[00:29:28] Gary: Wait. Whoa. You don't get the.

You have to answer that question too.

[00:29:32] David: I was too busy interviewing our guests to be thinking

of what? I don't know if I have a high and low. I've enjoyed doing the show. I would say 90% of the time, man, we've had some rough guests over the years, but I love

[00:29:46] Gary: We've had some really great ones too.

[00:29:48] David: We have. Yeah. And talking about things that mean something. That's what I was getting excited about with Ryan. Talking about and being able to nerd out with some guests. That's been really fun. But I think I love entrepreneurship in general and so I think that passion is the reason we keep doing this.

And talking to people like Ryan who are building the next thing in his case, I think it's amazing. But there's a lot of startups that don't understand what they're doing. And that's fine because it's exciting for them. But I love what you're doing anyway.

[00:30:17] Gary: When Ryan speaks to solving a problem, he's actually solving like a real problem. It's not just some, like way to get new leads as solving a problem, like it's actually solving people 

[00:30:28] David: if anyone needs custom software for leads, we will. We will happily build it

[00:30:32] Gary: Yeah.

[00:30:32] David: On that note. We don't have to have a really super deep cut software all the time. Anyway, on that note, thank you Ryan, so much for joining us. It's been so much fun.

[00:30:42] Ryan: It is been a blast. Guys. It was a great catching up.

[00:30:45] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:30:46] David: on that note, we are out. Yeah, Gary, no one cares.

[00:30:50] Gary: I know. Thanks for letting me talk more than three seconds to this episode. 

[00:30:54] David: Hey, every once every 200 episodes, I'll let you talk a bit more.

[00:30:58] Ryan: You get a five minute, Gary's corner here, you.

[00:31:01] David: Gary's corner over there. That's

[00:31:03] Gary: I'm gonna start my own podcast. This what Gary would've said, and then 

[00:31:07] David: and 

[00:31:07] Gary: publish it the day after this one.

[00:31:09] David: That's fair. Thank you everybody for joining us this week. We'll be back next week. Have a good one.

[00:31:15] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's Wife. Yep. I finally took the mic or rusted it away from David. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software. This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel.

Want to connect, shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.