Scale Like a CEO
Join host Justin Reinert as he sits down with founders who’ve navigated the jump from do-it-all entrepreneur to strategic CEO. Each episode uncovers the key milestones, hard-won insights, and practical tactics you need to build a high-performing leadership team, overcome decision fatigue, and scale your business with confidence. Tune in weekly for quick, actionable conversations designed to accelerate your path to CEO mastery.
Scale Like a CEO
Scaling Smart: Insights on Custom Software Development & AI with Six Summit's Cory Silva
The software development landscape is shifting dramatically as AI tools make coding more accessible to entrepreneurs without technical backgrounds. But what happens when your AI-built MVP succeeds and suddenly needs to scale?
Corey Silva, co-founder of SICK Summit, reveals a growing trend in the custom software world: the replatforming challenge. Entrepreneurs increasingly start with "vibe coding" (using AI to build applications) or low-code platforms to validate their ideas quickly. This approach works beautifully for testing concepts and securing initial users. The problems emerge when these businesses find success and need to scale.
"What we're seeing now is a lot of people coming to us saying, 'I built this on this platform, can you replatform it so it actually works the way I want it to work now?'" Silva explains. These businesses discover their infrastructure can't handle growth, or they can't implement specific user-requested features because they're "stuck inside the sandbox" of whatever tool they used initially.
While Silva advocates for AI-assisted development, he emphasizes the continued importance of expertise: "There's so many horror stories of major security breaches in applications that could easily be avoided if developers just knew the foundations." This reflects a broader reality in the AI era – tools can accelerate work, but understanding fundamentals remains critical.
Beyond technical insights, Silva shares valuable lessons on entrepreneurial growth, including delegation strategies based on energy and business value, hiring decisions for bootstrapped companies, and the journey from agency work to product development. For founders building software solutions, this conversation offers crucial guidance on balancing rapid development with sustainable architecture.
Want to avoid costly replatforming down the road? Learn when to leverage AI tools and when to invest in proper development by connecting with Corey on LinkedIn or visiting sixsummit.io.
And the one thing I noticed because it was a pattern I started seeing as projects started coming in replatforming and vibe coding. So so many businesses are vibe coding to start right, which we also agree with. You think, if you want to prototype, mvp, super quick vibe code your way. And for those that don't know what vibe coding, one, search it up. But two, it's just any, using AI to basically build your applications, right. So of course, we leverage AI ourselves.
Speaker 1:One thing we're seeing a lot of is people coming to us hey, we've encoded a platform or we built it on a low-code, no-code platform bubble or something like that, and now they found validation, they're getting users there, they have clients on and they're starting to make some money off of it. But now they're trying to scale to a certain degree and they realize that their infrastructure is not good, their tech stack is not good enough for it. Or they're trying to build now very specific features that users are asking for and they don't know how, because it's too complicated, because they're stuck inside the sandbox of whatever tool they use.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Scale Like a CEO, where we dive into fascinating conversations with entrepreneurs who are changing the game in their industries. Today, we're sitting down with Corey Silva, co-founder of SICK Summit, to explore the challenges and opportunities in custom software development. Get ready for valuable insights on scaling businesses, leveraging AI and navigating the entrepreneurial journey. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 3:Corey, thank you so much for joining me on Scale Like a CEO. Just to get us started, if you wouldn't mind give us a 90 second intro to yourself and your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be on the quick 90 second pitch of who I am, and so I am the CRO and co-founder of a business called Sick Summit. I've been an entrepreneur full-time for like two years. It's been a light, little experience.
Speaker 1:But prior to that I spent about a decade in corporate, went through leadership, I was in corporate retail for a bit, but of course we all get that itch and want to go out on my own, do my own thing. And, luckily enough, my best friend and also business partner, amazing developer, and he had this little software agency that he was freelancing out of and he was doing small projects and then the project started getting bigger and he was like Corey, I need some help scaling this business. So I was like awesome, I can do sales marketing operations. I might not know much about code, but I love technology, and so that's kind of where we started Six Summit and decided to fully scale it into a custom software agency that does mostly now a lot of AI solutions for small, medium-sized enterprises. That's the 90 seconds of what we do and who I am.
Speaker 3:That's great. And within your industry, what's the biggest problem that you see and how are you solving it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is an interesting question. So we obviously, being in custom software, we see a lot of problems from other different industries. But I tried to think about it like what's the problem I'm seeing from the software, custom software industry itself? And the one thing I noticed because it was a pattern I started seeing as projects started coming in replatforming and vibe coding. So so many businesses are vibe coding to start right, which we also agree with. You think if you want to prototype, mvp, super quick vibe code your way, and for those that don't know a vibe coding, one, search it up, but two, it's just any using AI to basically build your applications, right. So of course, we leverage AI ourselves.
Speaker 1:One thing we're seeing a lot of is people coming to us hey, we've encoded a platform or we built it on a low code, no code, platform bubble or something like that, and now they found validation, they're getting users there, they have clients on and they're starting to make some money off of it. But now they're trying to scale to a certain degree and they realize that their infrastructure is not good, their tech stack is not good enough for it, or they're trying to build now very specific features that users are asking for and they don't know how, because it's too complicated, because they're stuck inside this sandbox of whatever tool they use. What we're seeing now is a lot of people coming to us and being, hey, I built this on this, can tool they use? What we're seeing now is a lot of people coming to us and being, hey, I built this on this, can you replatform it? So it actually works the way I want it to work now.
Speaker 1:So I think that's a big problem that we're seeing quite often is people building something and it's great for validation, but it's not great for scalability and we ended up coming in and replatforming basically the whole thing from scratch. Cool for us, it's great. It means that there's always, always work to be done and we're happy to help people that have validated MVPs and stuff. But that's just something that's kind of come up in the last year, as much more of these vibe coding tools, ai assistants, coding assistants have kind of popped up into the market, right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I can totally see that. I was actually just having a conversation with someone this morning and he said that there was a research paper that just came out. He was more the expert in this, so I'm probably going to slaughter the research, but the basis of it was that this research project found that people who use AI to code actually spend more time than if you were to just code yourself because of the rework and the AI instructions and whatnot. And so there's a lot of hype around using AI to code, but actually it's still not quite there yet, and I think what you're describing is, in a way, hey, we can get somewhere to minimum viable product, but that MVP is not scalable.
Speaker 1:No, it's not.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting one.
Speaker 1:I feel like I've heard results like that before as well, and I'll have to go back and dive into that paper itself, because I'm curious to see if it's just based on people that didn't know how to code who use this, or if it's both people that did know how to code did use AI, but it would still be faster if they just coded themselves, at least for us.
Speaker 1:We use AI as well to assist our developers, but the thing is, our developers are also quite experienced, quite experienced, and so there's something to say, I think, for anyone out there that is using AI to code still learn the foundations, because when you're going into lines of code, if you just use AI, you're looking at it, maybe off the hop, it might look good, but if you don't understand the foundations, you might miss some really crucial aspects. There's so many horror stories of just major security breaches of some of these applications that people are building which could easily be known if they just knew a bit of the foundations, right. So I think there's something to say with using AI to code. I would still highly recommend it for people, but I would say don't stop learning the basics so that when you do get there, at least you can still see what's wrong, how it should actually look, all this sort of stuff. It'll help immensely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's the case in a lot of domains where expertise is still required. Ai will only get you so far, and if you're relying on AI to give you the finished product, you're not going to be differentiated, you're not going to be high quality, you're getting average output. Yeah, the expertise is definitely still needed. I'm curious to hear a little bit about the business and, as you've been scaling your business now, what are some of the challenges you've faced in growing?
Speaker 1:through people. Yeah, so this has been an interesting one. I luckily, prior to starting this business, had some experience being a leader in a bigger environment. Great in the sense that I got to learn how to not be a leader as well in that environment. So that's the one thing. If you had an opportunity to be a leader within a huge organization, just use all the resources available to you. Use it as a moment to learn and make mistakes about your own leadership and management style. Right. So I was able to work through that for several years in corporate.
Speaker 1:So when I moved off onto my own, I actually went through a weird transition of going a little bit backwards where I then became both a leader and an individual contributor, but, like, mostly an individual contributor because I was doing everything between me and my business partner on our own.
Speaker 1:But it hasn't been more until more recently that we've started hiring more people on Like now we're a team of six, which is great. It was that I already knew a little bit on how to hire people. I already knew a little bit on how to delegate, and I'm totally understanding of buying back your time and delegating and empowering people to get stuff done, but it's still a struggle. Giving up control of things that you have just come accustomed to doing yourself, I feel, is always the biggest thing. But after you hire people on and they start doing the work themselves, there is a sigh of relief off your shoulders and you can start doing more valuable stuff for you that can help grow the business, because it is so easy as a founder to just get stuck in the weeds, and usually at the beginning it's necessary, but it's not necessary to stay there. That's what I always think.
Speaker 3:So yeah, what was it? What was kind of the tipping point when you decided, okay, it's time to start hiring, because I think that's a question that founders often face is when's the right time to start adding to the team. So how did you know?
Speaker 1:So I feel like it's a balance between so we're fully bootstrapped company ourselves. It's a balance between revenue and profits to pay. But then the real tipping point, I think, was when we just had no time at all, when we had zero time in our calendars to do whatever we feel like we needed to do. That was usually the point where, okay, we got to look at what's taking up the most time on our calendar and what is maybe not the most valuable that could be passed off to someone else that is excellent at doing that thing. So that was a tipping point for us. So it's both a mix between, I would say, business performance and then our calendar availability.
Speaker 1:I will call it but I think it was mostly the calendar one that when I felt like I had no time left and I felt like it was being detrimental to the growth of the business, that's when I was like, okay, we need to hire, but then that's for me at least, on the sales marketing side. I know, on the development side of our business, where we have a bunch of devs that are fulfilling the actual service of building software For us, that one's usually an easy one. Once we had a bunch of projects piled up and there was physically not enough time to get projects done, it was a very, very clear signal that we needed more. So I say from that end, it was the demand for service that required us to hire, versus, on my end, it was more demand on time, which was the you know, the lever to go hire someone else.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, that's how I would explain it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And the easy one is, you know, when you've got more work that is paid work, that's an easy one to add people. But when it's not you know, definitely on the sales side, where it's not a guarantee that more revenue is going to come when we add people, that becomes a little more, a little more risky. But I think your formula is right. You know it's that it's. Do we have more work than hands? You know, is my calendar too full and do we have the revenue to pay for it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think there's one thing also when we started hiring people especially on my team we tried to. It's really hard, but we did try commission only roles first, especially in a sales one. I will say, though, it's a hard sell, and then I don't blame them, right, I'm asking you to do a ton of work and you only you know get paid if we win. Essentially, Some people love that. We've had some people that are just fantastic in that regard. But if, when we were in a pretty scrappy spot where its budget was very tight for us and we maybe could not afford to bring someone on, but we needed to bring someone on, that was one lever that we tried to pull, I would say it's a temporary one. I would never want to leave anyone in that spot.
Speaker 2:I always wanted to move them to a base plus commission.
Speaker 1:Type of vibe because I personally wouldn't always want to work on commission. I feel like it's just not as motivating as people think it might be. That was just one tactic that we use on our more front facing side of the business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then one of the things that you brought up already was was delegation, and that's something that comes up as founders are building their teams and it's hard to let go of things. How do you decide what you delegate and what you keep?
Speaker 1:That's really good. So there is a book that you may or may not have heard of, but it's called Buy Back your Time by Dan Martell, and phenomenal book, and it's a great way to explain on like when to delegate, when not to delegate. You basically can map out everything. It's the very typical importance versus time, urgency sorry, importance and urgency matrix and placing them in those quadrants. And basically, if something gives you a ton of energy and it's also super valuable to the business, then likely keep that for yourself. But if something is taking away your energy but it's still very valuable to the business, you should absolutely delegate that. And then anything that just takes away your energy is not that valuable to the business, you should consider even why you have it. Those are also stuff that can probably be delegated, or even there might even be an agentic solution for it. Now, that's a little bit more monotonous, right. So that's how we we at least how I think about delegation is figuring out really what's what lights me up and then is it valuable to the business? I want to keep those and what doesn't light me up but it's still very valuable to the business, then we got to delegate that. So I'll give a good example, like for me.
Speaker 1:I love, I do love sales and marketing. I'm part of our business, but the operation side of our business, which I also take care of, not so much of a fan. I don't really love the project management side of the business, right, like the fulfillment side, like I love bringing stuff in, handing it off and then letting the fulfillment team work on that, but I still I'm still living on the customer success portion, part of that business, and so that's a great example of something that it doesn't light me up but it's super valuable to the business and so that's something I need to delegate, which I still haven't but I still need to delegate. But it's just a great example. But whereas sales, for instance, it lights me up, super valuable to the business. For now I'm gonna keep it until, for whatever reason, I don't have enough time to or I feel like I want to move on to, you know, to focus on other things in the business.
Speaker 3:But yeah, that's how I think about delegation. Yeah, I like the, I like the component there of does it give you energy or joy? You know that I think that's an important, an important piece that I can get rid of the things that I don't, that don't give me energy or joy, and someone else can get them done with quality, then absolutely, let's get that off my plate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause I think there's a quote. It's like anything like that that just doesn't give you energy, but super valuable, the best thing I can think about it. You might not find the perfect person for it, but if it's 80, if they get it 80% done, that's pretty freaking awesome that for it. But if it's 80, if they get it 80% done, that's pretty freaking awesome. That's how. That's how I think about it too, and I think there's another popping through all these frameworks in my head too.
Speaker 1:But there's something called a replacement ladder and it's how you hire. But it ties really closely to how you delegate and I always remember the first hire that's always recommended is an executive assistant, right, an EA or VA or something like that. And it's because a lot of the admin work, which is emails, responding, taking care of your calendar, all these things. They're super important to the business because they keep the conversation moving forward, they help deliver your priorities, but they also take up a ton of your time. I know EAs are one of the most important hires and paths to delegation that I think almost any founder could benefit from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that. So what's the future look like at Sixth Summit?
Speaker 1:Yeah, super exciting. So Sixth Summit, we're split into two types of business. One is the agency side, which is where we build all the custom software. We do a lot of client agency relationship. Then there's the studio side of our business where we actually develop the custom software. We do a lot of client agency relationship. Then there's the studio side of our business where we actually develop a lot of our own in-house products. So very similar to like Venture Studio, where they incubate their own products, build it from scratch.
Speaker 1:We've done that as well too, the two parts of our business that we have. But super exciting is we do have a couple partnerships that we are currently in the works that I wish I could scream to the top of the mountains about it, but partnerships with some very high profile entrepreneurs and their own businesses as well too. That I think will be super useful for Six Summits in terms of getting more business in the door, working with more AI related projects, and so I think that's kind of exciting. But truthfully, jade and I business partner. Our whole goal with Six Summit was always use the custom software side of the business to basically be our seed money to eventually lean into a single product.
Speaker 2:We don't know what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Yet we were hoping, as we go through different projects, different incubations, that something might click with us. We love technology, we love business, we love working with awesome people and working on awesome things, but we never really knew necessarily what we want to dive into. So we're like, hey, this is an agnostic enough business that can give us some runway and also give us some experience in working in different industries. And so, yeah, the future of Sixth Summit, it might turn eventually into a single tech SaaS product, but what that looks like right now we don't know. And then I'm sure maybe by the time this episode's out, we might be able to share a little bit more about what that partnership looks like and who it's with, because there are just some exciting talks, so yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, that's great, that's exciting. Well, corey, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, best way to do it is definitely on LinkedIn. That has become my home for my personal brand and everything about Sixth Summit. So if you go to LinkedIn and you search either at the Corey Silva or just search Corey Silva, you'll find me there. But you could also reach me at Corey at SixSummitio or go to our website at SixSummitio, and those are all the best ways to connect with me.
Speaker 3:Great Well. Thank you so much, corey. It was a really great conversation.
Speaker 1:No thanks for having me, justin. I appreciate being here and always happy to chat with anyone about entrepreneurship, tech, ai, whatever it might be. I am an open book.
Speaker 3:Awesome, thank you.