TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode Dave and Evan toss questions back and forth with Josh Little of VolleyApp.
Josh is a serial entrepreneur. "I am a maker who is prolific at creating original works that I am proud of and are worthy of remark." He has started and exited several companies, and he loves to make things happen.
Asynchronous communications are all the rage. SMS, WhatsApp, Slack and more are often easier and preferred over a phone call. But text messages have their own set of issues. Confusion is all too common. Voicemails can be more clear than text, but are also limited in their own way.
An emerging option to consider is asynchronous video. Each user records a short talking head video and shares it with other(s ). Recipients can respond in turn with their own video clip (TalkingHeadz!). Volley offers an enterprise-grade async video service. It can be used on its own, or in conjunction with messaging apps such as Teams and Slack. And, it's free!
TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode Dave and Evan toss questions back and forth with Josh Little of VolleyApp.
Josh is a serial entrepreneur. "I am a maker who is prolific at creating original works that I am proud of and are worthy of remark." He has started and exited several companies, and he loves to make things happen.
Asynchronous communications are all the rage. SMS, WhatsApp, Slack and more are often easier and preferred over a phone call. But text messages have their own set of issues. Confusion is all too common. Voicemails can be more clear than text, but are also limited in their own way.
An emerging option to consider is asynchronous video. Each user records a short talking head video and shares it with other(s ). Recipients can respond in turn with their own video clip (TalkingHeadz!). Volley offers an enterprise-grade async video service. It can be used on its own, or in conjunction with messaging apps such as Teams and Slack. And, it's free!
And on today's talking heads we welcome the CEO and founder of Bali, Josh Liddell,
Dave Michels:but before I used to play volleyball we played I played volleyball, I guess was high school.
Evan Kirstel:I was very tall. I was pretty good at volleyball. Oh, my, my jump was about three inches. So it wasn't very solid career for volleyball.
Dave Michels:I had a really good sir. What other things do you play in PE in high school?
Evan Kirstel:You know, I hated PE I generally hid in the gym, and did not attend any of the PE lessons. What about you childhood games? Were you a big childhood gaming person?
Dave Michels:We played baseball, all the stuff. But what I find really, really interesting is how the games we played as kids are so different than the games we play as adults because it's kids. You know, we play kickball, we played I mean, dodgeball, we play out, you know, we play all these games as kids that were good for kids. Everybody knew how to play tetherball whatever. And then then you go to these retirement communities and they really brag about I don't even know what a bocce court is, what the hell's bocce? Does anyone under if I know how to play bocce,
Evan Kirstel:I think the Grandmaster of Bochy, bocce is about 90 years old. So I, I have all that to look forward to and shuffleboard.
Dave Michels:You know, nobody, nobody played shuffleboard as a kid and you know, but they're like every retirement community. It's like when you buy a board game It says, You know what ages are, it's good for,
Evan Kirstel:but these physical games that we play, they need to have like little age decals on them or something. You know, it's like this. This game is only for people below ninth grade. Why I noticed all the young kids at Gen Z or Gen X under they love card games, and I sort of gave up card games after go fish but they're they've made a big comeback. Yeah, actually,
Dave Michels:board games are making a big comeback too. But just as well, because I never liked Foursquare Foursquare was a dumb game.
Evan Kirstel:Well, my childhood games were mainly Space Invaders and Pong. So I, you know, I don't know about all these games. I just want to get on and live in the metaverse. Let's get on and find out
Dave Michels:about Alright, let's do it.
god:Talking. It's a semi monthly podcast with interviews of the top movers and shakers and enterprise communications and collaboration. Your hosts are Dave Michaels and Evan Kersal. Both of which offer extraordinary services including research, analysis and social media marketing. You can find them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or at talking points.com. That's points with a Z and Devin Kirsten calm. That's KR STL.
Evan Kirstel:Seven Christelle here with Josh Liddell of volley. Josh is a serial entrepreneur, he's been searching for the answer if there is one too remote working for years, and says a video first approach to communication is key. But not what you are thinking. Hello, Josh, how are you?
Josh Little:I'm so good. Thanks for having me. You guys.
Evan Kirstel:Thank you for being here. And I doing my research here. Your bio says quote, whether it's a company and musical performance, a jar of pickles, a piece of furniture or welded brackets I was born with a need to create. I'm very intrigued and also confused by that quote. So please, please introduce yourself.
Dave Michels:I've created pickles. I just want that on the record. I have done that.
Josh Little:Nice, nice. Well, we could share tips. Yeah, I mean, my life's mission is to make beautiful things. That's why I'm here. And like I like you. You said there. You know, I can create beautiful things in in a lot of different ways. But it is building a company that taxes me the most is the most taxing creative endeavor. And so that's why I'm a serial entrepreneur. And now on my fourth, I just kind of can't quit when it's so much fun.
Evan Kirstel:Absolutely. So everyone needs a purpose state these days, particularly during an after the pandemic, Dave still trying to find his own apartment for the whales, but yours Josh is building a tight knit team of the right people and making meaning and passing this vision of yours and be remarkable. So I really I think I need to up my game. But what does that have to do with volley and your purpose?
Josh Little:In order to build a company that solves a problem you need to cast an effective vision and, and bring on a killer team. So it's directly related in my book, I can't code all I can do is talking point. And so I've got to bring on the smart folks to help me build this.
Dave Michels:I don't accept this advice unless you've got a proven track record. Have you ever started a company before for example,
Josh Little:volleys, my fourth tech company I've created for now, Maestro BlueFire quiser have two exits, hundreds of millions of users, and a fun journey. I thought I was done. But then after a four year break, in the pandemic hitting I just thought I know what the world needs a better way to communicate it and I'm going to create that so we pulled the team together shortly after the pandemic hit and started building volley.
Dave Michels:BlueFire sounds familiar refresh my memory on that. Well, yeah. BlueFire
Josh Little:the space is called Knowledge Management. Today, I created a social learning platform. 12 years ago, I thought the enterprise world was ready to be social at work, right? You know, the year after Twitter launched wasn't quite ready. I was a little early on that one. Today, of course, we're going to share videos with each other and share knowledge with screen records and all of that, and we want that all, you know, in a closed space. So that's bloom fire, it's it's easiest way to share knowledge with your team and kind of collect your organization's brain and in one place.
Evan Kirstel:Excellent. So fast forwarding to volley. You envision a future where we meet less, and communicate more, which sounds counterintuitive, but explain for us. Yeah, yeah. I
Josh Little:mean, it's kind of keying off where I started with BlueFire. Good. How do you get the right information to the right people at the right time? That's a hard question or hard problem to solve. The two ways that we have to communicate historically are either talking, which is synchronous, like we're doing now at the same time, or typing, which is asynchronous, and I'm talking about email, chat, text, pretty much all of our communication goes into one of those two buckets. So when you talk about email, that's a written asynchronous version of communication. And we all have the urge to talk. And when we do, we know we've either got to get on a zoom or get in a room. And so this is the problem with communication and why a lot of remote teams are having meeting fatigue and you know, lack of communication and loneliness is because we're either on Slack crack or Zoom Doom all day, and neither of them truly solve the problem. So volley is kind of a hybrid, where it brings the richness of talking together with a flexibility of texting. And I've described it in the past, and it seemed to click with people that it's like video texting, and I'll let that sit. And I know that's not a thing. And you guys are like, that's not a thing. And I'm like I know, but if you can imagine, like texting a video back and forth, that's what volley is like. And you might say, well, I can already do that. Like, I can already send a video and text Josh, like, this is not special. And I'm like, Well, do you. And that's the thing no one does. Because text chat slack is a text first medium, there's a text box in front of me. That's what I'm going to do volley. There's a camera facing you. There's record button below. So in volley, we take turns just like any other conversation, except we record our turn with video, which allows a number of magical things to happen. I can listen to you on to x, you can skip back and listen to the things I said you can sync before you answer because you don't have to wait just 200 milliseconds, and I can skip forward or I can skip the part of the conversation that doesn't pertain me and I can the person that talks too much, I've got a perfect solution for them. I'll just to x them and and then skip to the end, and everyone has an equal opportunity to hit the record button. So there's a lot of interesting things that can happen when you break up the turns into conversation into something asynchronous, and allow them to be created with video. So I'll stop there is that am I tracking so far? I know you guys are savvy. So are you tracking? Help me with your listeners? Do we need to go deeper? Well on
Dave Michels:savvy others not so savvy.
Josh Little:Okay. Okay. Got me as I settle?
Evan Kirstel:I think I get it. What about you, Dave,
Dave Michels:I get the concept. I really like asynchronous communications. And it's kind of a similar, what you're describing is in the voice realm, Push to Talk is becoming popular again. And the new version, the push to talk in the voice is essentially a synchronous is they idea that your field technician is maybe at a customer site. And still you don't want to call them and interrupt because they might be talking or busy. So you push to talk to records. And then they play it back when they and then they play back on demand. So push to talk went from asynchronous, going from a real time technology to asynchronous technology, and you're effectively doing the same thing. But more in video, is that is that accurate?
Josh Little:That's right, you can also push to talk and record an audio or record your screen or share a file or a document. So what next tell figured out years ago, like the early Push to Talk, walkie talkie,
Evan Kirstel:we're great getting old here.
Josh Little:We're going deep, right? But that just blurted out this message in front of your construction crew or whoever, right that at that time, like, even though you're talking at that time, doesn't mean I want to listen to it at that time. It might just be 10 seconds, like hold on. I've got to like go around the corner. I'm gonna play this and make sure that's okay. But that's what volley afford. So we're recording. It's not live. It's not broadcast live. So we're recording but you can record it with an audio message or video, but you're totally right. Things like Voxer
Dave Michels:I think that no cell reference is really important actually. Because next till, you know was a small carrier and they had a very clever, unique concept. And the way that the other bigger carriers competed with that was free calling with a network and they killed the feature, but they missed The whole point, Nextel got smaller and smaller ended up getting acquired. And it took a few years for the idea to come back. And so I love what you're doing. I think it's great. So tell me how, how does it work? Obviously, you know, you're gonna need some sort of app to do this. And so you've got your volley app. And I assume that is a mobile app. And I don't know if the desktop is that a web app? Or is that an installed app? Or how was it on the desktop?
Josh Little:Yep, is a desktop app, you can also use a new browser on it. Okay, so
Dave Michels:you have your app. So now, can we only communicate using volley within within a company? Or do you have a way of working with, say, partners or suppliers or outside your company?
Josh Little:Yes, both we have 1000s of companies teams using it to collaborate kind of like a video slack. If that makes sense. The functionality values kind of like if you know what Marco Polo or Snapchat are had a baby with something like Slack or discord. So you can create a space and invite your people to that space, kind of like you can in Slack or like on a Discord server. But then when you get there, it's not a text chat. It's a video chat. It's kind of the connection. So we have people using volley, of course, to collaborate with teams, but also for community and coaching. Because it turns out, it's kind of the killer app for both of those, because it's a flexible face to face conversation. And why is coaching done synchronous? Why is it Thursday at 330? That we're going to like move things forward? Why isn't why don't I have a coach in my pocket? Why don't I have community in my pocket where I can, you know, address my community, ask a question, get feedback, but I can turn my camera on and show my problem, I can record my screen and explain what I'm thinking about. And I don't have to do something that I'm seven times slower at which is type, especially with, you can't see them, but thumbs like mine, which are really big and awkward.
Dave Michels:So the previous companies that you started, or those companies that live their life into the thing you sold them or whatever. Are those related to this company? Or are you reusing some of the technologies in this company in Bali,
Josh Little:totally unrelated, totally separate companies. However, we are building some of the same features I did with BlueFire. Early days, we built like a first screen recording tool and Java webcam recording in Flash. And today there are libraries to do those sorts of things. And but we have actually had handled them here at volley. So new company, new technology, but same bag of tricks, if that makes sense.
Evan Kirstel:Yeah, no, it definitely does. You mentioned slack a couple of times we've had Stuart from slack on the podcast talking heads. I was reading your blog nine research back reasons to Stop slacking and start volleying, which I read found intriguing, but I still love Slack. So I can't
Dave Michels:believe that other than that an article called How To Start flagging I mean, that does not that does not seem like
Evan Kirstel:I also wrote an article How to stop tweeting. And that didn't work either. But do you see yourself as a replacement to Slack or more complimentary?
Josh Little:Well, a replacement. And here's why we thought we were complementary when we came to market. And then we realized, oh, you know what, in order for volley to solve the problem that you wanted to the problems you wanted to solve, which are the top three problems with remote work, our lack of communication, loneliness, and meeting fatigue, and volley hits all of those head on because lack of communication. Now we have the ability to video message I can, like I said, I can say what I need to say move on with my day. And I did that seven times faster, you're going to listen to it on to X when you get it. And then you can give me a rich message back. So we're going to have face to face. I'm actually
Evan Kirstel:gonna listen to Dave Michael's 10x. But that's a feature you go have today. What about zoom? Are you looking to kind of eliminate zoom? And that's being that space between zoom and slack with being volley?
Josh Little:Yeah, yeah. So when you think about why are we using Zoom? Well, we just need to talk well, why do we need to talk? Well, because I have something a little more rich. And I don't want to write a book. And we all know it when we've like written that 10 minute Slack message or that 30 minute email and you're getting your bullet points, right, and you're like, oh, my gosh, we just talk. But I don't want to schedule a meeting. Because that's another thing on my calendar, the instinct to talk is real, especially within teams. And so what teams using volley find is, we kind of don't need to meet as much as we used to, like the team evaluates volley heavy as you can imagine. We meet once a week, and then everything else is done asynchronously. There's one time a week, we just need to get together with the whole engineering team and talk about all the things we're doing and who's on first and what, and there's just a lot of iteration and tight feedback loop need to there and the rest. Most of the things you need to communicate actually can be done asynchronously and actually are better asynchronously. Because of all the factors I mentioned the speed the time to talk the research the I can come up with a more thoughtful response.
Evan Kirstel:Fantastic. In reading your content. I see a number of themes recurring over over again, things like it's not what you say but how you say that matters. He talked about your culture and the communications culture you've created and teamwork and relationships. At work, you seem pretty obsessed with work. So tell us, where did your philosophies kind of come from over the years?
Josh Little:Well as I get some from some rough experiences in Fortune 500 companies being, you know, thrown in the deep end of the pool, trying to learn trying to connect with others and learn and and learn how we work here, and what needs to happen, and how do we make those things happen. So from some of those rough experiences, and then my first company, Maestro, we got to work with dozens of companies and just got to see all of these problems in learning and communication from like a meta level. That's why I created bloom fire in the first place. So yeah, you'd say it's kind of a problem that just I tried to solve, and I keep trying to solve in in some way at work. However, with volley, we started very much in like remote work, and that being our initial go to market plan, but what we've seen is coaches and creators adopt volley for community and for for, like group coaching and Masterminds, and they are just running with it. So that's where my focus over the last few months has been, is just kind of trying to keep up with these users who are inviting 1000s Divali. And just tearing up a community and just really excited. They've got my engineers on their toes, for sure. Which is exciting.
Evan Kirstel:Excellent, fantastic. You started
Dave Michels:this company during the pandemic, which is kind of interesting, because we were all sitting at home, and we're all trying to figure out how to work. Would you say that was kind of related or just coincidental that you have this planned out years in advance or whatever,
Josh Little:I'd totally related. Yeah, I was kind of looking for my next thing. And I'd taken a bit off after my last company and wanted it to be the right thing. You know, I'm getting up there in years. And, you know, I wanted to create my magnum opus. And so it was really like, having solved this problem, this problem that keeps cropping up that I was solving with bloom fire, as well as technology, coming to the place where it was falling in love with asynchronous video, and all of the tools that have been innovating in that space, and then the pandemic hitting that they came together for me to say, Ah, I know what the world needs and needs, a better way to communicate that is has the richness of talking, the flexibility of texting, all of the benefit, none of the downside, inter volley. And that's why I said it's, you know, it's like discord and Marco Polo had a baby, let's go.
Dave Michels:A lot of these newer forms of communications, they say it's kind of the death of email, do you see email as something that is no longer necessary within your company, when you're using value so much? Or are you trying to replace something? Or is it just something new tool?
Josh Little:New, you email less with volley? For sure. Because a lot of things you're doing email really should be a conversation. And why wouldn't you if you can say it seven times faster with all of the context and empathy, you know, only 7% of our message, or the actual words that we speak in the classic example is, we need to talk, if you write that in a text message or an email, there's 100 ways you can take that so but if I say we need to talk, you saw my you saw it in my eyes, you heard it my tone of voice, you know, I've got something cool. And let's talk. So to your question, volley is a new way to communicate, it's, it is kind of a hybrid between the email and something like zoom, it's more flexible, it's rich, like zoom, but more flexible, like email, and everyone who said that they were going to kill email, well, I still get a lot of emails. So I'm not going to say we kill email, I will say a lot of the things you're doing an email can be, can be done here. But email is, you know, become kind of an API for a person and all the things that are plugged into it are connected, and you know, your account, two, factor auth and everything. So I don't know that anyone's gonna kill email anytime soon. But we can make some of the conversations, you're having an email a lot better.
Dave Michels:Yeah, that's a really good point. I like your examples there. Because text messaging even worse than email, you really get confused. And so much of our verbal communication is not captured in text. I tell people, you know, working so closely with evidence, just great. You know, and I comes across very differently than when I type it.
Evan Kirstel:Oh, yeah. And you know, Dave, I mean, you were around at the invention of the telephone. And you know, at that time, people were saying, No, people were saying, oh, you know, the telephone would be the death of conversation. You know, and so, so that hasn't happened. But fast forward. What do you think Josh? Is tech made us better or worse at communications, all these apps and services features? Well, that's a great
Josh Little:question. It's kind of my beef. Right? Technology has only enabled us to do things we did analog. Now digital, so 1000s of years ago, were either riding on a cave wall or sitting around a fire talking in a cave and zoom is only the modern version of sitting around a fire and email or slack is only the writing on a cave wall. There's nothing that kind of mix that so I think technology can make us better. And that's it. The point of volley is, is what if I can talk without you having to listen at that same time? What if I, you know, the whole benefit of being in an office together is proximity, like, I can tap you on the shoulder, but go tap an engineer on the shoulder? What are you interrupting? What do you have to say? How important is that thing? Were they writing that last line of code that just like squash this ominous bug we've been working on for months? Or were they you know, messing around what you don't know when you tap? That's the problem with synchronicity is we have to stop what we're doing, we have to deal with technical difficulties, we got to get in the same place. And you just don't know what your interrupting. So we've got back to back to back schedules, flow is completely interrupted. And if we can move a lot of that communication asynchronous, we can batch that we can listen on to x, we can stick that in the corners of our day, and just have the richness of that communication in a way that is serves us we're only becoming a more and more on demand world. We want a car to show up. When we snap our fingers or push a button in an app, we want our meal to show up because I pushed a button in an app, you know, minutes later, why wouldn't we want our communication to kind of follow that same on demand structure?
Evan Kirstel:antastic. So just speaking personally, here, selfishly, I have a lot of clients, and they can sometimes be rather annoying. And it's really hard to communicate by email, you know, one on one meetings at scale. So I assume volley can help here as kind of a coach or with clients. Give us some other use cases.
Josh Little:Yeah, the one too many thing is really challenging. You know, I had an executive coach for years. Suzanne, she's amazing. We would meet Thursdays at 330. And some weeks, I would have content at 330. Some weeks, this is the last thing I want to do right now I have, we always have a great conversation. We always get somewhere, right? But I needed her Tuesday at seven, I needed a Wednesday at 9am. And by Thursday, it's already kind of blown up in my face. And yeah, I sent her an email, but email lag time and inbox is just and it's gonna take me 20 minutes to write out what I could say in just two. And that's the point. So anything that you can think about being solved by that form of communication? The the one too many, or the many, too many. So yeah, group coaching, or mastermind groups are great. All that kind of has this heart as a video messaging app. But this flare for groups, it's really good. We've got conversations of hundreds of people that are chiming in, there was like a dance party on Friday, that just kind of randomly happened, just because we can kind of I'm going off topic a little bit, I guess, but bring it back to like the use cases, like the group thing is somehow really special in volume because it's face to face. But flexible. We have really creative things happening and people like joking and and taking the time to do things that you wouldn't have written in a Slack message or would you would never taken the time to do in the email. But in zoom, because there's a time box. You know, it's kind of the if you've ever heard of people having happy hours on Zoom, well, have you ever attended a happy hours on Zoom? Is that? Is that really how we made a relationship better?
Evan Kirstel:Yeah, I'm done with? Yes, I would agree. Yeah, what you're describing are features of many social media platforms, messaging and asynchronous. How are you better than or different or complementary to a social media platform?
Josh Little:Yeah, you know, I wouldn't even put us in that category. I am saying there is social behavior happening on volley. But it is closed, because there's no public directory of spaces you could join. It is a messaging app at its heart that because of its visual nature, some of the social and connectedness things are happening, which is the kind of core thesis of Alia is if we have a new way to communicate, we're going to bring a heck of a lot more connection and community into the world. And it seems to be happening. I don't know, we just had a user this morning. And one of one of the spaces, say, you know, a couple months ago, I just totally got wrapped up in tic tock because I felt like it was a more authentic way to communicate, then all of these these others, like it's a way to express myself. But now that I'm on volley, I can't even go back to tick tock because that feels so inauthentic. You know, I thought it was way more authentic than text or email. But now volley feels like an even more authentic version of those because because you can't put stickers or funny unicorn face on yourself and you can't do some of those things. It's it's just you with a camera in your hand hitting record and saying what you want to say,
Dave Michels:you know, it's really interesting because I think about the evolution of how we communicate and when speech to text kind of came out and people started talking to their phones to dictate text. I thought it was really silly, but of course I do it by myself now more and more when you're driving or whatever. But it's been half the time correcting the typos because it picks up the wrong word and says something very different than what you dictated and it just much more natural, really that what you're describing, it's just kind of as evolutionary we've gone from typing text to speaking text to just just recording, speak, recording to speaking. And I think it's a really natural thing makes sense.
Josh Little:It does. Yeah, if you think about the ultimate communication tool for the future of work for the future of community, it's not one or the other. Because we're all in different places all throughout the day, the ultimate communication tool is something more like a shapeshifter, like, I can talk, but you can read and she can listen, but she can type, and then I can listen, you can read write, like, we're all moving, or I'm in a coffee shop, then you're in an office, then then I'm driving like dropping the kids off at school, then etc, etc. And so that's what we're trying to do with volley is like, let you say, however, it's most convenient to whether you record a video message or an audio message, and then we transcribe it, you can read the transcript, you can listen to the audio, you can watch the video. So it's kind of input the way that's convenient for you output the way that's convenient for them. Does that make sense? That makes
Dave Michels:a lot of sense. I really appreciate what you're doing there. So tell me about how are you selling this? Is it it's not an intuitive or logical thing? And you can't walk into somebody say it's just like some other app? I mean, so how is work getting out? How do you explain the value to potential clients?
Sam Liang:Well,
Josh Little:that is the billion dollar question. It seems I've given you some of the swatches on the mood board and shared some of the messages we've we've shared, but it depends on those users and how they're communicating messaging, this has been honestly really challenging. That's why I started in the beginning with something like video texting, as dumb as that may seem, that that's not actually a thing. For some reason people understand texting, the flexibility of it, and then the richness of the video. And somehow that seems to work, right. And for that reason, that's why the products free, we're just trying to figure out the free product at this point and who our ideal users are, and who's going to carry that into the world. It does seem that it's these coaches and creators are using it for community or coaching or is a discussion group for the courses, it seems that they're pretty hot with volley right now. So we're, we're kind of listening to them and building the feature set for them. And we will have a monetized version of the product someday probably where you could create a space and have these premium features. But my promise to the world is what's free will remain free. And if you can use it today in Bali, you'll be able to use it tomorrow. In Bali, we have hundreds of ideas for all kinds of cool features we're going to build that you'll want to pay for. So we're not worried about that. Neither our investors talk
Dave Michels:about burying the lede. So this is a free product right now. Yeah, totally free. Yeah. What are you seeing from your customers that use it? What are you learning? As you know, you talked about you have new ideas, new app, so So what is the usage patterns and feedback actually telling you, I'll share
Josh Little:an interesting one that you may seem, it may seem like a weird thing for me to say. But we're seeing a version two video be really, really strong, especially at work. You know, we've got 1000s of teams using volley. And that's interesting. But the the use case has been really hard to reproduce because of the challenges with psychology, even though apps like Snapchat, or Marco Polo, are very well known in the world, especially in tech circles. I can't believe how few people have actually use those. And I'm staring at users because all of our users get a conversation with a member of the team. So and I jump in there, and I'm active, sometimes, I'm staring at users every day, who are recording the very first video they ever recorded of themselves. And yes, they've turned the camera around, they've recorded someone else on vacation, or whatever. But they've never actually recorded like a selfie video of them themselves. And they're not saying, Oh, this is the first video I've ever recorded. They don't. They don't say that. But I can tell because they're saying, Oh, this is this is weird. I feel like I'm talking to myself. Could I have the camera off? Could I look at someone else, you can just tell they're uncomfortable. So this is a new thing. I can't believe how big the percentage of the world that of people that have never done this before, right is a kid who grew up with a camcorder in my hand and been recording videos, you know, myself and friends and whatever for my whole life. It seems second nature and especially to a younger generation. It does. This is the way that we communicate with our friends, right? I just send them a quick video message, and it disappears. But there's a big massive audience, especially those in the corporate world who have never done this. So you could say well, why why in the heck is the CEO of video messaging company talking about this? Well, on one side of the coin, I'm kind of freaked out like whoa, I thought the world was more ready for asynchronous video on the other side. But whoa, here's a huge opportunity to bring a new form of Communication into a world that hasn't even contemplated why you would communicate this way and to share an educate the benefits of those things, all part of the creating beautiful things all part of the the life's mission to like to challenge the norm and to bring something beautiful into the world, which I think we're doing.
Dave Michels:So So you mentioned earlier, you can do audio and so your choices are basically to send a video of yourself, I guess you could put on the other camera and record a video when you're looking at
Sam Liang:what Yeah,
Josh Little:so you in Valley we take turns just like this conversation we've taken turns back and forth, and you take your turn by sending a volley. Volley can be a video, it can be an audio message, it can be a recording of your screen, it can be a file, a document, an image, a GIF, any digital asset that would would be able to communicate your return in that conversation your message, right, so sometimes video makes sense 60% of volley sent or video volleys. 7% are image volleys and then smaller percentages of the rest of the things that I mentioned. So video is the hero in volley people come to Divali because of that video first mentality, and that's kind of what I mentioned earlier is like in volley, there's not a textbox at the bottom, there's a record button. And right below that there is a little button that does say text and you can tap that button and write a text message and volley that's only used about 17% of the time. So it is
Evan Kirstel:Josh, you posted on your profile, you recently lost 100 pounds. Congratulations and I have a spare 100 I need to lose. So will you be my my weight loss? Coach Nichols? Is that really the secret? Or is there something else?
Josh Little:And you guys are in the east coast. So there are some excellent pickles out there. Oh, no, not
Dave Michels:on the East Coast. At least not yet. But I love a good Deli. And we walked into a deli. Oh, so point wife and she doesn't know that the billions. And they serve a basket of pickles. Right? When you sat down. They said this is a good Deli. I mean, that's like the first test right? You know, yeah, if
Josh Little:you throw pickles down and you got some full sours and some half sours in there and some new pickles may be mixed in Yes, now we're talking, you know, pickles, my family, they didn't have money. So I didn't inherit it money, but they had some pretty good pickle recipes that my great great grandfather wrote down and a leather bound notebook. And I keep that notebook in my safe today and I make pickles from that book. And when I moved to Utah, I started sharing them with friends and then friends of friends, friends and friends and then it got to be an expensive proposition to make pickles for my friends or friends of friends. So then I started charging and then it became a hipster hobby of mine and just a total side business. And so I do that every year I it's just limited to what I can grow here I'm acre and a half, I grow pickles everything I put in the jar, and they're just a craft pickle built with old world standards. It's a refrigerator pickles. So it's it's got that crunch you know that you're you're looking for but with fresh, fully flowered dill with the pollen on it, which makes it a unique flavor. I think that's part of what makes us unique flavor profile with you know, fresh garlic that that's grown. So I mean, it's, it's unlike any other I've never seen a group of people so fanatical about a product and I've ever created, then pickles. I even thought that was going to be my next business. Built a pickle lab in my garage, I hired a pickle scientists only to find out that what I wanted to do was scientifically impossible at scale. And so passed on that as a business to build but it's our family business and my kids are involved in I cut them into the business a few years ago.
Dave Michels:Ah, that's a great story. There was a movie it's really old now the crossing the lancy whether it's a romantic movie, in the end, the main hero or one of the heroes is indeed a pickle man and I I love the idea of the idea the other buckets out on the street and and he was you know, making the first batch all the time. I don't remember it was a great movie or not. But I love that I love the purple guy.
Josh Little:That's me. Yeah, yeah, that's just the pickles. That's all. Nothing else. It's part of the secret that's my afternoon snack that has they that salty, crunchy thing that you kind of need that has very low calories. I'm trying to
Dave Michels:figure out, you know, we talked about how you go to market. But right now, I think the biggest complaint in the enterprise. While I shouldn't say that, who knows what the biggest complaint is? There's a lot of complaints about too many apps, right? You got you got your email, you got your, your social tools you've got we have more inboxes that we've ever had before. And so why is it that a customer what is the value prop? What is the logic that one of our listeners should go out to your website, which is you have to explain your website here just a second and sign up for Bali and start using Why do they need another tool?
Josh Little:Because all of those other tools are the old way to commute Make a digital versions volleys a new way to communicate that helps you communicate more faster, more flexibly and better. And if your time is important, then I think you should give it a shot. And what is the website? Website is volley? app.com
Dave Michels:Well, thank you, Josh. It's really interesting. I'm gonna go get a pickle and in fantastic conversation. Yeah. Likewise,
Evan Kirstel:Josh, I've downloaded the app in the meantime, and look forward to giving it a try. Thanks so much for being with us on the show.
Josh Little:You bet. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Evan. It's been pleasure.
Dave Michels:Well, that was interesting conversation. async is all that matters these days. I'm sure if that's 100% Positive. No one is listening to this podcast,
Evan Kirstel:or listening to it at all. I must admit I really don't enjoy talking with you synchronously. So yeah, async I mean might be the the future of our communications. What do you think
Dave Michels:Josh said it everything is becoming a snake the idea of live television or watching a show on Tuesday night primetime. It's just ridiculous now we just watch it when we want to watch it we go to the app and hit play and so everything is going that way including enterprise communications including video I mean it's I think he's right in the right spot like to see him successful This is great.
Evan Kirstel:I'm sure he will be and those pickles I'm gonna go find me some pickles now cuz I'm really feeling hungry after that chat about pickles but All right, let's chat next time.
Unknown:You make a conversation Oh, man. I gotta get on the phone no man knows me.