Live at Remix Conf with Scott Steinlage and Will De Ath
The FSJam Jam crew records their first-ever in-person episode at Remix Conf, discussing DevRel, nonprofit tech, composability, and startup sales strategy.
Episode Description
The FSJam Jam crew records their first-ever in-person episode at Remix Conf, discussing DevRel, nonprofit tech, composability, and startup sales strategy.
Episode Summary
In this milestone episode of FSJam Jam, recorded in person for the first time at Remix Conf, hosts Anthony Campolo and Christopher Burns are joined by Scott Steinlage from Limelight Networks (formerly Layer0) and Will De Ath, co-founder of Everfound. The conversation opens with the novelty of the hosts finally meeting face-to-face after collaborating remotely, then moves into each guest's background. Scott shares how weekly Clubhouse audio rooms helped him escape tutorial hell, build relationships, and ultimately land a job at Layer0 through community networking. Will and Chris explain how Everfound emerged from their university partnership to become a donation platform that gives modern nonprofits flexible, developer-friendly fundraising tools. The group discusses why they're attending Remix Conf, touching on the framework's potential to push React toward more web-native patterns, before pivoting into a spirited exchange on composable architecture, the ethics of hot takes in tech, and the essential role non-technical co-founders play in startups. The final stretch features Scott and Will riffing on sales psychology, the importance of understanding customer emotions, delivering 10x value, and why building alongside real user feedback is the only sustainable approach to product development.
Chapters
00:00:00 - First In-Person Episode and Introductions
The episode kicks off with the excitement of the FSJam Jam podcast recording its very first in-person episode, as Anthony and Christopher meet face-to-face for the first time after a long remote collaboration. Christopher has been awake for over 23 hours after flying from the UK, adding a layer of comedic exhaustion to the proceedings.
Scott Steinlage introduces himself as the technical community manager at Limelight Networks, and the group encourages him to embrace the DevRel label despite his imposter syndrome around coding. Will De Ath is introduced as co-founder and COO of Everfound, a company he and Chris started after leaving university together eight years earlier. The banter establishes the relaxed, conversational tone for the rest of the recording.
00:04:29 - Scott's Journey from Marketing to DevRel Through Clubhouse
Scott recounts how he pivoted from a marketing career disrupted by COVID into learning web development, only to find himself stuck in tutorial hell watching endless YouTube videos. He discovered Clubhouse, the audio social app, and began attending weekly JavaScript Thursday rooms hosted by Ishan, which became his gateway into the developer community.
Over eight months of consistent participation, Scott built enough trust and relationships to eventually land a role at Layer0, demonstrating the tangible career value of community networking. Anthony draws a parallel between Scott's audio-first approach and his own blog-focused path, while the group jokes about assembling an "Avengers of DevRel" across different media formats.
00:08:24 - Everfound's Mission and the Nonprofit Tech Gap
Will explains the origin story behind Everfound, emphasizing the principle of identifying a problem to solve rather than building technology in search of a use case. He and Chris reflect on their early naive startup attempts before landing on the nonprofit donation space, where COVID and the decline of cash donations exposed a severe lack of modern tooling.
Will describes how most existing platforms force nonprofits into rigid one-size-fits-all solutions, while custom development requires expensive Stripe integrations, servers, and databases. Everfound fills this gap by offering headless, developer-friendly tools alongside low-code and no-code options, empowering nonprofits to shape donation systems to their specific needs. Chris adds a grounding note about their local food bank running dangerously low on supplies, underscoring the real-world stakes of their work.
00:13:26 - Layer0's Value Prop and Why Remix Conf
Scott pitches Layer0 as a platform for dramatically improving web application speed, citing case studies showing load times around 400 milliseconds through edge technology. The conversation then shifts to why each person chose to attend Remix Conf, with Anthony praising Remix's push toward web-native APIs and reduced JavaScript shipping.
Christopher takes a framework-agnostic stance, arguing that any framework can leapfrog another, but acknowledging Remix as the most interesting one gaining momentum at the time. Scott and Will both emphasize networking as their primary motivation, with Will noting that the connections made at conferences often lead to unexpected opportunities down the road. A humorous aside about Chris and Will's budget travel from the UK rounds out the discussion.
00:19:03 - Composable Architecture and the Hot Takes Debate
Scott introduces the Composability Summit and explains its focus on unifying microservices, APIs, and micro frontends under the theme of composable architecture. Anthony pushes back on the terminology, and the group lands on a Lego-block metaphor for snapping reusable, swappable components together to future-proof projects.
Chris adds nuance by questioning whether reusability delivers real speed gains in code versus its value in improving team communication and consistency. The conversation then pivots to whether hot takes in tech are constructive or harmful, with Anthony arguing they should only come from informed perspectives and Chris questioning whether people should weigh in on topics outside their expertise. The group agrees that well-considered hot takes can spark useful debate, while careless ones risk being antagonistic.
00:25:05 - Non-Technical Roles in Tech and Startup Sales Psychology
Will makes the case for non-technical co-founders and operators in tech companies, arguing that passion for technology and a focus on communicating user benefits are far more important than coding ability. Anthony affirms this as a crucial, irreplaceable function that can determine whether a startup succeeds or fails.
Scott and Will then trade insights on sales psychology, discussing the "ask method" of discovering customer needs through targeted questions, the power of emotional resonance in marketing, and the principle of delivering 10x perceived value. They agree that building alongside real users is essential and that fear of missing out is one of the strongest motivators driving purchasing decisions. The episode wraps with Will encouraging anyone, regardless of technical skill, to find their place in the tech industry, while Chris offers a sincere tribute to the indispensable role Will plays at Everfound.
Transcript
00:00:00 - Will De Ath
It was green. Oh, it's going. It's red. It's red. We're recording. We're recording? Yeah. We got bored of waiting.
00:00:16 - Anthony Campolo
Scott, welcome to the show.
00:00:18 - Scott Steinlage
Thanks, man. What's going on?
00:00:20 - Anthony Campolo
This is an interesting FSJam episode. This is the very first FSJam episode ever recorded in person.
00:00:26 - Christopher Burns
And it's not only that, we also have another guest here. My business co-founder, Will De Ath from Everfound.
00:00:33 - Will De Ath
Hey. I'm here. Nice to be here. Thank you. Yeah.
00:00:35 - Christopher Burns
We're all staring at each other, pupils of each other's eyes, you know, after a long 18-hour flight.
00:00:43 - Anthony Campolo
This is literally the first time Chris and I have ever been in the same physical space together.
00:00:48 - Christopher Burns
So I didn't know Anthony had legs.
00:00:52 - Anthony Campolo
For a long time. Listeners, this is going to be a treat.
00:00:56 - Will De Ath
This is a treat.
00:00:56 - Christopher Burns
Not only are we in the same room, Chris got up at 5:00 in the morning UK time and has taken over 14 hours of flights.
00:01:05 - Will De Ath
24 hours now.
00:01:06 - Christopher Burns
Yeah, it's more like 23 hours of being awake to record this very special episode.
00:01:12 - Will De Ath
And a very special episode.
00:01:12 - Anthony Campolo
Very special it shall be.
00:01:14 - Christopher Burns
Special. And we also got Will, who is just hanging out with us.
00:01:18 - Will De Ath
Yeah, I'm just here, you know. I talk about our experiences. We'll see what happens.
00:01:21 - Christopher Burns
Yeah, we'll see what goes on the road. We have the maestro of the mic deck himself, Scott.
00:01:27 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah. Thank you.
00:01:29 - Anthony Campolo
Scott, why don't you tell us a little about yourself? Where do you work, and what is your job?
00:01:33 - Scott Steinlage
Sure. I work for Limelight Networks, and I'm the technical community manager. To just kind of spell that out, I help to create and manage the community within the development area of engineers and coding and all that, and try to create some relationships with people and grow from there.
00:01:57 - Anthony Campolo
So would you say you do DevRel?
00:01:58 - Scott Steinlage
You know, it's funny you would say that, right? It kind of has those vibes, right? But I don't think I could call myself that because I don't code as much as I should, probably.
00:02:08 - Anthony Campolo
So you feel like you have some imposter syndrome around calling yourself DevRel?
00:02:11 - Scott Steinlage
Oh, heck yeah, for sure.
00:02:12 - Anthony Campolo
I think that you should feel free to let your DevRel flag fly because I do DevRel. I'm the DevRel King over here.
00:02:18 - Will De Ath
You need to.
00:02:19 - Christopher Burns
Align yourself to one true lord: TypeScript.
00:02:23 - Scott Steinlage
The TypeScript.
00:02:24 - Anthony Campolo
DevRel is a huge bucket. And I think what you do is undoubtedly DevRel, and not coding is not a good reason to not call yourself DevRel. I think that a DevRel person should have some sort of technical knowledge. And I know you are not code illiterate. You could write.
00:02:41 - Scott Steinlage
Some HTML, CSS, but yeah.
00:02:43 - Anthony Campolo
You could make a website. You could deploy something to Netlify. Yeah, yeah. Like that's all you really need. If you want to do DevRel, you get a website on Netlify, you're DevRel, bro.
00:02:51 - Scott Steinlage
All right, then I guess we'll call me DevRel, then.
00:02:54 - Christopher Burns
You did get hired at a company, so you must be doing something right.
00:02:57 - Scott Steinlage
That's true.
00:02:58 - Anthony Campolo
Will, what is your title and what do you do?
00:03:02 - Will De Ath
You can call me co-founder of Everfound. Technically, the chief operating officer and co-founder of a firm with Chris a number of years ago. I met Chris about eight years ago now, when we started college, university, whatever you want to call it.
00:03:14 - Anthony Campolo
You're besties.
00:03:15 - Will De Ath
Yeah.
00:03:16 - Christopher Burns
Wouldn't say besties. I think we're partners, acquaintances. We're very tightly bound, but not by love, by passion of a child, of non-biology.
00:03:28 - Anthony Campolo
So, like you and me and FSJam.
00:03:33 - Christopher Burns
What can I say? I'm a father of many, many, many things.
00:03:37 - Will De Ath
The first child we made was after we left university. I thought it was a good idea to just start a startup. Didn't know what the hell we were doing. It ended up being Everfound and we're working on that today. Just a quick intro to Everfound: if nobody knows, we're a donation platform made for modern nonprofits. Yeah, we got this web developer flair to it to give nonprofits a lot more flexibility with our sort of headless tools. And yeah, it's good.
00:04:00 - Christopher Burns
It's great fun.
00:04:01 - Will De Ath
I don't know, we'll get into that.
00:04:02 - Christopher Burns
Maybe we will. We don't know where this episode is going.
00:04:05 - Anthony Campolo
To give some context for listeners, we're all here for Remix Conf. We're going to be recording a couple of episodes here. I'll be recording some Twitter Spaces as well. We're going to be doing all sorts of recording. So this is kind of like our trial run, getting our recording space set up.
And yeah, you know, I used to be a musician. I used to sit in rooms with microphones and cables and recording stuff. So this is just fun.
00:04:27 - Christopher Burns
Normal for you.
00:04:27 - Anthony Campolo
Yeah.
00:04:27 - Christopher Burns
It's a little nostalgic.
00:04:29 - Anthony Campolo
Yeah. This is very nostalgic for me, actually. How did you get involved with Limelight?
00:04:34 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah, that's a good story. I'll try to make it as good as possible, at least.
00:04:40 - Christopher Burns
Add some flair.
00:04:41 - Scott Steinlage
Let's add some flair to that. I had my own business for a little bit. My main background is marketing and sales. Okay, so that's kind of what I've always done and gone back to, is marketing more than anything.
I had my own business for a while, and then COVID happened. I lost a couple of big clients and, well, turned into, maybe I'll just take a hiatus from this marketing thing. So then I was like, you know what? I like coding. I've messed with it in the past. Maybe I should learn more of that. Right? So I started digging in and really just relearning everything because I hadn't messed with it in so long. I did the HTML and CSS, and then I was like, what's the next step after that? Probably JavaScript.
00:05:15 - Anthony Campolo
React, obviously.
00:05:16 - Scott Steinlage
Or React, right? I mean, which is JavaScript, right? So either.
00:05:19 - Anthony Campolo
Wait.
00:05:20 - Christopher Burns
More like.
00:05:20 - Scott Steinlage
Or jQuery. Oh, wow. We're getting heated.
00:05:23 - Anthony Campolo
Wait. We skipped right over jQuery.
00:05:25 - Christopher Burns
Everyone's got to go jQuery first before they know how bad it is.
00:05:29 - Anthony Campolo
Now, if you get into a bootcamp these days, you will not learn jQuery. If you learn coding in the last two or three years, you have never once touched jQuery.
00:05:38 - Scott Steinlage
I was doing a lot of research and I went through some short classes and YouTube videos and things like that online, and I was just kind of in this, like, what do we call that? That hell of...
00:05:49 - Anthony Campolo
Oh, tutorial.
00:05:50 - Scott Steinlage
Tutorial.
00:05:51 - Anthony Campolo
Hell yeah. Yeah, I've been in tutorial hell. It's a real thing.
00:05:53 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah. And so I just felt like I wasn't really getting anywhere, right? So I was like, well, maybe I just need to network with some people about this. I had just recently gotten onto Clubhouse, the app.
00:06:02 - Anthony Campolo
Clubhouse?
00:06:03 - Scott Steinlage
Yes.
00:06:03 - Anthony Campolo
Not the work management platform, no. Now known as Shortcut.
00:06:08 - Scott Steinlage
No, Clubhouse, the social app.
00:06:10 - Christopher Burns
Oh, yeah.
00:06:11 - Will De Ath
No one remembers it was iPhone only.
00:06:12 - Christopher Burns
So luckily you are on Android.
00:06:14 - Anthony Campolo
Correct. And this is how you and I got to know each other, is I hung out on these Clubhouses, which was JavaScript Thursday with Ishan and yourself, which were awesome and very fun and are now transitioning into Twitter Spaces. True. Based on me constantly badgering you to do Twitter Spaces.
00:06:30 - Scott Steinlage
And we did a poll, and many people were for it for sure. Yes. Okay. 100%.
00:06:34 - Anthony Campolo
Yeah. And it was a great weekly conversation with experts and beginners and people who can come and ask questions. And it was very much like a live version of FSJam Jam or a live version of JavaScript Jam, your own podcast. And so I love that. I highly recommend people listen to those. I show up to all of them, or most of them as much as I can. Yes.
And so, yeah. What do you find has been the value you've gotten out of doing those? And what have you learned throughout this wide array of episodes you've done on Clubhouse and now with Twitter?
00:07:03 - Scott Steinlage
Well, I'd say there's several things, but the main big thing is the fact that over eight months' time, I did this on Clubhouse pretty much every week except for when my dad had heart surgery. Then I wasn't on.
00:07:16 - Christopher Burns
That is a very good reason not to.
00:07:18 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah, I flew up to Cleveland for his surgery. Anyway, I was very much involved. And even when, say, like Ishan or some of the guys couldn't do it because they had meetings come up or something, I actually kind of ran it for a little bit, you know, got to that point where I had trust built with them and all that, and I was not working for the company at that time either.
So one of the biggest things that I got out of it is the fact that I was able to build this relationship with Ishan and Daniel and a few other people, and you, and then therefore step foot into Layer0. At the time, the company that I was working with was called Layer0.
00:07:49 - Anthony Campolo
So do you think that the Clubhouses themselves were the venue for you to actually get a job at this company?
00:07:55 - Scott Steinlage
Absolutely. So yeah, the building community piece of it, right, the networking piece of it that enabled me to do that.
00:08:01 - Anthony Campolo
That's awesome. I would love to have the ability to just hang out in a Clubhouse for a couple of months and then get a job. That's super cool.
00:08:06 - Christopher Burns
You say that, but Scott is your reverse. You hang out in blogs and Scott hangs out in audio.
00:08:12 - Scott Steinlage
Oh, there you go.
00:08:13 - Anthony Campolo
He does.
00:08:13 - Christopher Burns
We just need a third person to do video.
00:08:15 - Anthony Campolo
That's true. And Will does video.
00:08:18 - Will De Ath
I've done video.
00:08:20 - Christopher Burns
Right. Then we've got the Avengers of DevRel.
00:08:23 - Scott Steinlage
Yes.
00:08:24 - Anthony Campolo
Yeah. So why don't we get your origin story? Well, you already mentioned it just briefly, but how did you get involved in Everfound and obviously getting involved in Everfound was you creating Everfound. Like why Everfound versus any other startup you could have created?
00:08:38 - Will De Ath
That's the thing, right? I think you've always got to ask the question, who should I serve, rather than what product should I build? And I think that always comes down to, okay, there's a problem that exists in the world and you've got to solve it rather than the other way around. Like, I've got a product. What problem do I need to solve? It's not a good way to do it.
And I think that's the definition of probably our first two startups. We found cool tech and we thought it could fit into someone's problem fit, and it didn't work. We left university kind of naive, but really adventurous. I'm happy we did that. We didn't go into tech jobs. We just went. We went hard into it, didn't we, Chris? Yeah.
00:09:10 - Christopher Burns
You know, I don't want to bring this down to the hashtag humble podcast, but for two grifters out of university, I think we've done pretty well to even get halfway across the world to America without even making it, technically. You know, we've not been bought by Vercel or Netlify yet, so it's still a bit of time to go halfway. Yeah, well, maybe. Maybe.
But you know, when we talk about what we do, the more we work on it, the more we figure out that it actually is affecting real people's lives. And I don't want to bring it all down with economic recession and all these kinds of things that are affecting the world.
00:09:44 - Anthony Campolo
We're in a recession.
00:09:45 - Christopher Burns
Not yet, not yet.
00:09:45 - Anthony Campolo
It's fine.
00:09:46 - Christopher Burns
It depends on who you ask.
00:09:47 - Will De Ath
You look.
00:09:47 - Christopher Burns
Yeah, yeah, and who you look to.
00:09:49 - Anthony Campolo
Bitcoin's down.
00:09:50 - Christopher Burns
Well, in the UK, food banks are having a big uptake, and our local food bank is one of the charities that we've helped out. And over the last month, they're down to only like three days of food inside the food bank. So it's really validating what we're doing.
And the biggest reason why this is so important, and this is a factor for everybody, is that when you donate to food banks, money is worth so much more than food because they can do so much more with it. And this is a stereotype of the whole industry. And there's a lot of areas that we're working on making better, but I'm sure that's a conversation for another day and further down the timeline.
But obviously we're here to speak about Remix Conf from what we're doing here. And when we're talking about hashtag humble, we decided to come across to the United States of America. We didn't fly business. We flew what we would classify cattle class.
00:10:41 - Christopher Burns
Yeah, that's your basic, you know, basic as anything. And from where we live, we took the train down to London, where we took the connecting flights. And what you're going to find really funny about this is that we upgraded our seats to first class. So business trains in the UK have standard class, and then they have first class. Ching. Exactly. Hey, it was only 10 pounds per person, so it was not exactly expensive.
00:11:07 - Will De Ath
We didn't. We didn't pay full price.
00:11:09 - Christopher Burns
We bid for it as well. We were hashtag cheap. So we upgraded to first class. We were sitting in first class talking about what we've done in the past, what we've done to get here.
And obviously I'm a very enthusiastic person. And obviously I was speaking about how humble we've been to even get here, and on this trip that we're on and this journey. And I was projecting my voice a bit too loud and in harsh British culture, somebody shouted on the train, "Shut up!" And the whole carriage stood still. And then they went, "Thank you." And if that doesn't describe British humor and my role in this podcast, I don't know what will.
But obviously there's a lot I could talk about with everyone. But have you got any more thoughts about that?
00:11:52 - Will De Ath
Well, Anthony, you asked, why did we start Everfound? And obviously nonprofits are quite worthy. But, you know, there's a lot of donation platforms out there. Why are we different to the others? I guess is the biggest thing.
But things like COVID, the loss of cash, it's really changed how nonprofits are operating. In reality, there's just not the tools, not the technology to support them in this modern day. What we find is really that a lot of the big platforms, unfortunately, are one-size-fits-all. Really, what happens is you're making a big compromise on what you're able to do as a nonprofit: how you automate your processes, how the UI looks in your donation portal, how you're going to trigger an email campaign when someone donates, or whatever it may be.
Today, you're kind of commissioning a developer, maybe in-house or an agency. You've got to build that thing from scratch, and that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of budget, it takes experience. You're working with things like Stripe. Not every sort of front-end web developer knows how to work with Stripe's API and everything, and you've got to run a server, you've got to run a database, you've got to do maintenance, and there's so much on top.
And what we're doing with Everfound is providing sort of a new ecosystem of tools for nonprofits to really thrive in this day and age by empowering the web developer to really get their fundraising, their donation systems in exactly the shape that a nonprofit needs, no matter what sort of challenges they're facing.
And, you know, we're working on sort of low-code tools, some no-code tools for nonprofits to work with after Everfound is sort of implemented into their websites, their donation systems. And we're also working on a donation system, you know, to the best of our knowledge, it's kind of the first in the world. And yeah, we've got some nice funding to kick us off this year based on that idea.
00:13:23 - Will De Ath
We've had some fantastic pilots and are looking forward to the rest of the year.
00:13:26 - Christopher Burns
I think you're not meant to pre-announce products. You're meant to have a flashy Twitter launch and nick ideas from other companies and take the shots fired.
00:13:36 - Anthony Campolo
Well, the great thing about these recordings is they never go out until two months after we record them. It takes you forever to edit them. But now that we got a good pitch on Everfound, why don't we give Scott a chance to pitch? Layer0. Limelight. Now, we've had episodes about both of these already. So for listeners who want to go back into the backlog, we have a lot of conversations about both. But Scott, how would you make the value prop for your own company?
00:14:04 - Scott Steinlage
I would say that Layer0, if you're looking to develop anything on the web, if you're looking to build an application, whatever it might be, and you're really looking to increase your speed, which is going to affect a majority of things, many different variables to help you increase your bottom line, really more than anything, you know, Layer0 is the platform and the software that you want to be utilizing for that.
Because traditionally, from past case studies that you can check out on our website or wherever, you'll see that we get people down to like 400 milliseconds load time, which is like the blink of an eye, right? So it's pretty quick, and it's really amazing, using edge technology.
00:14:42 - Anthony Campolo
Since we're all here for Remix Conf, when we all go around and say why, why Remix Conf, why are we here at this conference? A conference we could be at? I have been to now one other in-person conference. I went to Ethereum Amsterdam just a month ago. It was a blast. This is my second in-person conference and I am here because I think Remix is a very interesting framework.
I think that it has the potential to push React-style frameworks more into an area where they are using web native APIs and less JavaScript than you would normally get shipped to React. So I find it to be an interesting project and I think the team is solid. I think they get a little aggro on Twitter sometimes. I don't know how I feel about that, but overall I think they're great dudes. I'm in support of them.
00:15:30 - Christopher Burns
Why are we here? I do not believe in dying on any hill when it comes to a JavaScript framework. I think that every single framework has the potential to leapfrog another framework, and then that framework that came before it will leapfrog the framework that leapfrogged it.
And I think that Remix is the most interesting framework out there today that is gaining traction fast. I do want to put out my feels for other frameworks existing right now, like Hydrogen and Marko and Qwik, but right now Remix is the one. That one is gaining traction fast and has real potential to make everlasting effects on the JavaScript ecosystem. So that's why I'm here. I'm really excited to learn more about Remix. And I didn't get a workshop ticket, only a conference ticket.
00:16:24 - Scott Steinlage
I swear I was waiting for that to come up.
00:16:26 - Christopher Burns
You know, I got a transatlantic flight, so this could go to one or two other days.
00:16:31 - Scott Steinlage
I guess I can go next. Really, to be honest with you, my main reason for coming here, based on what you guys have heard about me already, just from earlier in the talk here, is the networking, right? Getting involved with more people. Maybe learning a bit more about coding. This framework in particular, but also networking, right? That's a big piece of it for me, growing and building that community and, you know, kind of shameless plug stuff like wearing some composability dev.
00:16:56 - Anthony Campolo
Or some It's Monday, baby T-shirts.
00:16:59 - Scott Steinlage
It's Monday, baby T-shirts. Yeah, absolutely. We have the Summit coming up and you can go to composability dev to check it out, but it's based on composable architecture.
00:17:08 - Anthony Campolo
So what does that mean?
00:17:09 - Scott Steinlage
Oh, you have to go to composability dev to check it out.
00:17:11 - Anthony Campolo
Well, we'll let him do his thing, and then let's get back to what the frick composability means. Because that is such a word. That means a billion things. I'm curious to get into that, but let's continue on this.
00:17:23 - Will De Ath
Building on that too. Okay. Pretty much the same as Scott, honestly. Probably about the same technical level as Scott. Yeah, I have a computer science degree, but do I code? No. You know, those days are gone.
00:17:33 - Anthony Campolo
That's absurd.
00:17:34 - Will De Ath
It is, isn't it?
00:17:35 - Anthony Campolo
How do you get a computer science degree without coding?
00:17:37 - Will De Ath
Because I focused on the business side. I did business information systems.
00:17:42 - Christopher Burns
The funny part is that we both came out of the School of Computer Science, and Will got a better grade than me.
00:17:46 - Will De Ath
Yeah, it's like that. I mean, like, it's a lie.
00:17:49 - Anthony Campolo
It's almost like.
00:17:49 - Will De Ath
Degrees are useless. You do not need one. But okay, right, back to the question. I mean, you know, the networking is what I'm here for.
We're in the US for another trip, for another part of the trip, another half of the trip. We're off to San Francisco, but we had to stop off for Remix first. I think just growing that network is really important. Everyone we've met on this journey has been really cool. You never know where they're going to leapfrog you to next, and it doesn't matter if they're relevant to you. Just get out there, meet new people. Everyone here is like-minded and they're always looking to speak to new people. I mean, that's just the type of people that are here. You never know who you're going to meet. That's why I'm here.
00:18:22 - Scott Steinlage
It's so true.
00:18:23 - Christopher Burns
Well, I met Scott a few hours ago, and now I'm in his hotel room sharing a podcast recording with him. So I guess this is intimate.
00:18:30 - Anthony Campolo
The most intimate of activities is podcasting.
00:18:33 - Christopher Burns
Wow. Your partner went to bed and he was like, babe, I need to go.
00:18:38 - Anthony Campolo
She's waiting. She'll be there.
00:18:42 - Christopher Burns
I'm going to go read a book while you go podcast with your mates.
00:18:45 - Will De Ath
We're going to be here for hours. We planned three hours already.
00:18:48 - Anthony Campolo
But listener beware. There's a 17-hour podcast.
00:18:53 - Scott Steinlage
We had only 16 hours available. Come on.
00:18:56 - short split/interjection
Okay. I drove the last hour. Yeah.
00:18:58 - Anthony Campolo
All right. 15 hours. There you go. Okay. Scott, what is composability?
00:19:03 - Scott Steinlage
The Composability Summit is an online conference that unifies the common trends of microservices, APIs, and micro frontends under the universal theme of composability.
00:19:14 - Anthony Campolo
Microservices and micro frontends and APIs.
00:19:19 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah.
00:19:20 - Anthony Campolo
So if I wanted to have a project with microservices and micro frontends, I would need to have a multi-lattice connection.
00:19:28 - Scott Steinlage
Multifaceted.
00:19:29 - Anthony Campolo
Different front and back ends that all connect together into one project. Why would I ever want to do that?
00:19:37 - Scott Steinlage
You know, I like where you're going with this, but to be honest with you, Ishan might be your guy to talk to.
00:19:44 - Anthony Campolo
I'll ask Ishan why we should bring this up. Tomorrow night is a good time for that, so continue.
00:19:52 - Scott Steinlage
Yep. Here's the other thing. Like, you can reference some other people that really use composable, you know, the word, the verbiage composable architecture, like Gartner, Forrester, MACH Alliance. You know, everybody's got their name for it, right?
00:20:04 - Anthony Campolo
I've been told I should listen to those people and their people-centric approach.
00:20:08 - Scott Steinlage
Right. There's the API First Architecture by Forrester and Gartner. They talk about the future of business being composable. So those are some. And RedMonk is like smokestack, right? That's their thing.
00:20:21 - Anthony Campolo
I think composability makes a ton of sense. I think that is a great thing to fall under. I think that combining microservices and micro frontends is the opposite of composability because that is not easy to compose together. So I think there's a certain amount of honing the verbiage around what this thing is that needs to be figured out.
But I think I get the point. The point is that you want different components that can slot together in a way that makes them easy to work with to create a unified product. Correct?
00:20:51 - Scott Steinlage
Absolutely. Yeah. And not just that. It's more about, so it's like Lego blocks, right? It's like taking Lego blocks and putting them together to give you kind of a visual, but also it's to potentially future-proof things because you can kind of take this Lego block out in the future and put a Lego block in. It's almost like malleable.
00:21:07 - Anthony Campolo
So it's about reusability.
00:21:09 - Scott Steinlage
Absolutely too, yeah.
00:21:10 - Anthony Campolo
What do you think about that, Chris?
00:21:11 - Christopher Burns
Well, I think about reusability. It's a great one. I think that reusability really depends on the size of the company and the speed you're moving at. What I mean by that is that, you know, when we think about your core reusability when it comes to Storybook and all these other things like that, how fast does it actually make you is a great question.
You know, not even a hot take, but like how fast does writing a button component in Storybook actually get you? Well, actually, I don't think it's going to be the dividend in code. It's actually going to be the dividend in communication between the team and making sure components are reused more easily instead of building it yourself.
But how does that come into composability and building into bigger blocks? I think that we all do it, and we can't do it until we have replicated the same pattern of code multiple times to know how to do it in a repeatable way, because we always try to make something repeatable straight away.
00:22:11 - Christopher Burns
It's just you normally make mistakes and you will then need to recode it later because that first use case won't be the use case of multiple iterations, is what I feel.
00:22:21 - Anthony Campolo
Good stuff. Do you have any thoughts on composability? Well, no. I see Will shaking his head over here. Or is that kind of it?
00:22:27 - Will De Ath
It's not my area. I'm sorry, I cannot comment. It sounds good.
00:22:30 - Christopher Burns
Sounds.
00:22:30 - Will De Ath
Good. Usability, you know.
00:22:32 - Anthony Campolo
Yeah. Are there any other big topic areas people want to talk about, or kind of it?
00:22:36 - Will De Ath
Do you want to go a bit more in, like, sales, marketing, startups?
00:22:39 - Scott Steinlage
That could be a whole other podcast.
00:22:40 - Will De Ath
I think it probably could.
00:22:41 - Christopher Burns
Yeah.
00:22:42 - Will De Ath
Like the top-line startups.
00:22:44 - Christopher Burns
I think we should speak about hot takes first.
00:22:47 - Anthony Campolo
Hot takes?
00:22:48 - Christopher Burns
Not necessarily.
00:22:49 - Anthony Campolo
Hot takes. On what?
00:22:50 - Christopher Burns
Not necessarily a hot take.
00:22:52 - Scott Steinlage
Vegan food.
00:22:53 - Christopher Burns
Vegan food is great. I'm not vegan.
00:22:56 - Will De Ath
That will get heated.
00:22:58 - Anthony Campolo
Yes.
00:22:58 - Christopher Burns
We went to a vegan diner tonight, and it was very good. But we're not going to speak about that. I mean, hot takes, are they constructive criticism for the better or for the worse in technology such as JavaScript?
00:23:12 - Anthony Campolo
Well, it depends on the hot take. That's the thing is, a hot take is in the eye of the beholder. A hot take, I think, can be something that can spur the imagination and get people thinking. It can get them maybe questioning certain assumptions that they've had. To me, that is the best thing that a hot take can do.
And I've told you many times, like, I love hot takes. I like having hot takes on podcasts, but I think that a hot take can be antagonistic. A hot take can be attacking someone for no reason, or it could be assuming that someone has certain authority that maybe they don't even have. And I think that a hot take needs to be delivered carefully. So I think hot takes should not be taken lightly. And so a hot take needs to be something carefully considered.
00:23:58 - Christopher Burns
Do you think you should hot take things that you have no right to hot take, i.e., hot taking vegan food when you're not vegan?
00:24:07 - Anthony Campolo
No. Absolutely not. That's why I think it needs to be carefully considered. If you have no right to talk about a subject, you have no right to make a hot take on because your hot take is probably going to be ill-informed.
00:24:16 - Will De Ath
But if you have the experience, the knowledge behind it.
00:24:19 - Anthony Campolo
Then hot take away.
00:24:20 - Will De Ath
Taken. Yeah, but maybe a disclaimer is going to help.
00:24:23 - Christopher Burns
Yeah. Anything that makes another action happen in a multibillion-dollar company means that your hot take went down well.
00:24:31 - Will De Ath
I think so.
00:24:32 - Anthony Campolo
I feel like you have a hot take in mind with this?
00:24:34 - Christopher Burns
Do I have a hot take?
00:24:36 - Scott Steinlage
Don't want to get the burn. Well, I think.
00:24:38 - Will De Ath
We were just hot taking hot takes.
00:24:40 - Christopher Burns
I'm hot taking hot takes. I'm hot taking that. You know, I've been up for a very long time. Oh.
00:24:48 - Scott Steinlage
He's crashing.
00:24:48 - Christopher Burns
I feel like you could just dribble on the podcast about anything at this point. And I would come back in the morning and be like, no, no, no, I'm not drunk. I'm just very tired. I think at this point.
00:24:59 - Anthony Campolo
Will, you had a thought. You had a topic. Yes, I want you to run with that.
00:25:05 - Will De Ath
I don't know how often you have sort of sales, marketing, operations, business startup people on the podcast.
00:25:10 - Anthony Campolo
But we have people who run startups frequently on the podcast who are multidisciplinary, may do dev and marketing, but you have people who are specialists in that area, though, and I respect that specialty. I would love to hear someone pontificate on that.
00:25:24 - Will De Ath
I think, I don't know, we could probably point towards sort of a non-technical co-founder, non-technical role, non-technical manager, whatever you want to call them in a tech company. How does that kind of look? What are you going to do? How does your role sort of fall in now?
I think from my point of view, what I've got to do is really understand benefits, focus on the benefits.
00:25:43 - Anthony Campolo
Versus cost.
00:25:44 - Will De Ath
Versus cost versus features versus what the hell is this tech doing? What does this code do? Although, you know, I think at least from my computer science course, maybe you can just call it a computing course. Whatever, I can read code. I know what it does. I used to write in years one and two, but dropped it in third.
00:26:00 - Anthony Campolo
So you're saying you could fizzbuzz? I could.
00:26:03 - Christopher Burns
Is it buzz? Fizz?
00:26:04 - Anthony Campolo
Fizz? Buzz? It's definitely fizz buzz because fizz is three and buzz is five and fizz buzz is 15.
00:26:09 - Christopher Burns
Would that get you through an interview at Google?
00:26:11 - Anthony Campolo
Incorrect.
00:26:13 - Will De Ath
But I think as long as you have, like, I think this is probably the right word, passion for technology and just understanding the benefits of what it's actually going to deliver to a developer or the business that's the end user, you absolutely have a place in a tech company.
00:26:28 - Anthony Campolo
Not only do you have a place, you have a crucial.
00:26:31 - Will De Ath
Crucial, crucial.
00:26:31 - Anthony Campolo
Irreplaceable function that will define whether the business succeeds or fails.
00:26:38 - Will De Ath
100%. I think there's a lot of talk in the startup world where you sell before you build, and I think that's again critical.
00:26:45 - Anthony Campolo
I would say you sell and you build together simultaneously.
00:26:48 - Will De Ath
I think that's probably.
00:26:49 - Anthony Campolo
I don't think you can put one or the other.
00:26:51 - Will De Ath
Yeah. But I mean, yeah, it is the worst thing to do to build then sell. You will create the wrong thing. The value is in the mind of that end user, and that's what's going to shape that product, 100%.
00:27:04 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah. No, I'm totally on par with what you're saying. I mean, great book, The Ask Method, that's about getting out there and almost like market research but not quite. But basically you go to where your avatar, the person you are serving, would be, and then you would ask certain questions that kind of pry out some answers towards what you're trying to deliver.
At the same time, you know, there's a problem, you have a solution you can create, but you want to be able to really deliver what they want, right? That's how you kind of grab it, is through this ask method. Essentially, that's partially what you could do. Right.
00:27:40 - Will De Ath
Yeah, yeah. Look at a simple sort of a sales call you make, you know, at Everfound. I ask nonprofits, you know, what do you do for fundraising? How's it doing? What are your plans? Take that into any other context. But that just pries out what is most important and what's most valuable to that business. That really affects their bottom line, that affects the performance of their company or nonprofit, whatever. That's where you can deliver true value just by asking those simple questions.
00:28:03 - Scott Steinlage
Really, it's going to do another thing for you too, is not only are you delivering what they're asking and what they're wanting, right? Whether it's nonprofit, whether it's an end user, whatever it might be, you're also taking into account their emotion. So now you have their emotions that you can use within your marketing to be able to deliver the solution that they will understand.
Sometimes it's the hardest thing. You have this amazing solution and you know it's going to do well, and you've already kind of poked around the market and understood your market, but it's like, how do I best show the market now that this is the best solution for them? And they've given you that if you listen well, and if you really read between the lines and a lot of these answers or things that they're giving you, you can really deliver on meeting and exceeding their emotional expectation.
00:28:54 - Will De Ath
Yeah, totally. So I think this is the stage we're at with Everfound now. You know, we've built the product alongside talking to users. We're at a stage where it's like, okay, we've built this product. We've delivered on what the value is that they needed, and it's all about communicating that value back to them. You know, I think it's probably the hardest stage we're kind of going through.
00:29:12 - Scott Steinlage
It's probably now, are you discussing right now the stage you're in, or is this more future-based since you've already kind of got your solution and people, you know what they want already? Or is it more still, let's go back to square one and reassess where we're at now?
00:29:25 - Will De Ath
I think it's healthy to go back to square one because I think you develop a lot of biases when you're talking. And often you find users tell you they want something in a certain way. But because there's a lot of different companies where, you know, it's kind of this thing, people didn't know they wanted the iPhone before the iPhone, right? Without the phone, what we're building, it's incomprehensible.
00:29:45 - Scott Steinlage
So you definitely have to innovate.
00:29:46 - Will De Ath
Yeah, right. Totally have to. Yeah. And you know, the value they see is like, you know, it's like, oh, it's like 10% better. But really what you're going to deliver is 10x better. And I think they can't comprehend 10x better until you communicate that back to them. Yes. Because it's such a leap. It's hard sometimes. I think, oh yeah, got to overcome that, I think.
00:30:03 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah, 10x. The value is really, I think that's a big number that everybody goes to, whether it's for a direct sale, product, or service, whether it's something that you guys are doing with this nonprofit to be able to tell somebody, okay. And it's just that's part of psychology. It's part of the human mind. We all want value. We all want a deal, really. And whether we know it or not.
00:30:24 - Anthony Campolo
Returns want returns.
00:30:25 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah. Well, that too, returns, obviously, right? But it's like if this product costs $100 and they just say, okay, this is 100 bucks, here's what you get, you're going to be less inclined to purchase it. Whereas if it's like, okay, here's what you're going to get: you're going to get this, this, this, and this, and this is worth that, and this is the value of that. But really, so that's $1,000 worth of value, but I'm going to sell it to you for only 100 bucks today. You're going to buy that because it's 10x, right? Or more likely to buy it. So either way.
00:30:52 - Will De Ath
Which obviously leads us back to development. Having that mindset in your development team or your developers, or if you're a solo founder or whatever, to just focus on that ROI when you're building. Nothing else really matters other than the things that affect the bottom line of your customers because really, it's this classic thing: you're saving your customers time or you're saving them money, sometimes making them money. But if it's fundamentally affecting those three things, that's what you should be working on.
00:31:16 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah.
00:31:16 - Will De Ath
And probably nothing else.
00:31:18 - Scott Steinlage
Well, one other thing I might add to that. One of the biggest triggers to make somebody actually make a decision is fear. If they have the fear of losing, potentially losing out on something, they're more likely to make that decision than if they're actually going to gain something. FOMO, fear of missing out. Absolutely huge.
00:31:35 - Will De Ath
This new trend is coming. This is where you got to jump on. Other people in your industry are going to grab this first.
00:31:41 - Scott Steinlage
Sure. Yeah. I mean, that could definitely be a piece of it.
00:31:43 - Will De Ath
Totally. So I hope that's helpful.
00:31:45 - Anthony Campolo
That was great. Yeah. No, that was awesome. I'm glad you guys got a chance to talk about that kind of stuff.
00:31:51 - Christopher Burns
It's the start of their own podcast.
00:31:53 - Anthony Campolo
That's true. Yeah. Do you have anything else you want to kind of wrap that up with before we close this episode out?
00:31:58 - Will De Ath
I don't know. I just want to emphasize, like, no matter your technical ability, again, there's always a place for you in tech. Don't be afraid. You know, even if you can't code, at least make some attempt to understand what the product is or why coding in a certain way or using a certain framework over another one is important. You can add value to a tech company. I think that's probably my final comment.
00:32:21 - Christopher Burns
I think that it's so obvious that the over-charismatic characters can stand out very easily and always project their voice without a problem and never wonder why. But also, as a co-founder, I would not be able to do what I do every day without Will. And I took a big, yeah, I'm just saying I'm talking a big game. Oh well, it's not that big of a game. But you know, if Will wasn't in this company, it wouldn't be a company. It wouldn't be here right now.
So it's all part of the journey. And I think co-founders are very much a great thing to have that are very much specialized in their own area. But this is the first Jam podcast, and we've not even spoken about TypeScript on this episode.
00:33:02 - Anthony Campolo
What's even the point? Why are you even listening? No, no TypeScript.
00:33:07 - Christopher Burns
I know, I feel like this is a dream right now. I'm laying in bed making an episode of my own podcast.
00:33:13 - short split/interjection
I'm getting tired.
00:33:15 - Will De Ath
I'm 24 hours up. I don't know.
00:33:16 - Christopher Burns
Yeah.
00:33:17 - Anthony Campolo
Well, listeners, thank you for listening to this highly self-indulgent episode of Jam.
00:33:24 - Christopher Burns
I'm sure he'll get, like, 20 listens and that'll be it.
00:33:27 - Anthony Campolo
But no, thank you, Scott. Thank you. Will. I thought there was a lot of great stuff in there. And then we're going to be doing a whole suite of Remix in-person interviews with some other people, Austin Crimm, Ishan. Thank you all for listening and we will catch you next time.
00:33:45 - Will De Ath
Thanks.
00:33:46 - Scott Steinlage
Yeah, awesome. Thank you.
00:34:18 - Christopher Burns
Thank you for listening to this episode. We're done.