Welcome to Hustle, a podcast that explores the business and process of product design, is an incredible feat to build a product that people will want, especially something that helps them in the daily life. But when you do have something special, one of the challenges of keeping its momentum the thing about working on a product is that there is no handbook. What has worked for others before You mean unnecessarily work for your product? Envisions a part of the fun sized uses every day as well as thousands of others. Other companies in today's episode will last. Clark Albert, co founder and CEO of Envision, about his journey as steering the wheel of the problem. Yeah, it's not like we're huge Storm. I'm cleaning up. This

costs no negativity, no frowns own.

Okay, that sounds good. We'll have a queen episode for once. Okay, guys. Uh, yeah. Thanks very much for joining us. This is the hustle podcast. I am Rick Messer. Practice on her at fun size. I'm with Anthony. I guess I'm the CEO. He's a CEO, CEO of fun size Frances product design company here. Mobile project on company here in Austin, Texas.

For those of you who are joining us for the first time. And today we have a very special guest. We have Clark Val Berg. He's the co founder and CEO of Envision A Look, Clark.

Hey, I just wanna know is every guest that comes on a very special guest? Is that what you use? Describe every guest.

I think I've heard that so much like in radio shows.

And it's a thing that is a guest.

I can't even imagine saying something other than we have

a very thin this week. Somewhat average guest. This week, I was available on top. What is your name, by the way again? Remind

us our topic fail that way. Actually, a Z I recall yesterday are the last podcast we had. I introduced the two guests as a strange person or this is an odd fellow or something like

that. So I guess I have you have a letter from his mom? Came two minutes later. Way

were? Yeah, there were many letters. Yeah, but Clark, can you just kind of introduce yourself to our listeners and just tell him who you are?

Oh, sure. So many, Miss Clark. And then one of the co founders of Envision. That's envision app dot com, which is I'm going to the whole product thing, but it's a product, and it's a platform for design, collaboration, communication and prototyping and all that. All that good stuff that practice I don't need to do on a daily basis. Yeah,

that's great. Cool. So we were interested in asking, you know, just a few questions about what it's like, sort of running a product that has a lot of users and, you know, in vision seems to be doing well and we love it. We use it every every day of fun size. But can you maybe give us a little bit of a background of envision? Like how and why did it? Why did it start?

Why did you start it? Sure. So envision is the answer to kind of an evolutionary problem that we had an agency that I ran before in vision. Ah, and that was how do you make prototyping fulfilled the promise of prototyping? Right. So the reason we prototype is so that we can show things faster. We can be more open to feedback. We can be more reactive, responsive to feedback right, and that if you just kind of picture it like a circle right circle of creation presentation, gathering, feedback federation, Right. How do we make the Audi optimize all the different dimensions in the key performance indicators of that circle? All right, So before envision,

we build prototypes we did protect with front end code wrote html CSS these frameworks. And we did basically, you know, philosophically the same thing. We built the front end before we even thought about the back end. We showed it to clients. In that case, you know, we had, you know, all kinds of institutions and different kinds of complex structures of clientele with multiple stakeholders at every level, all of whom, all of whom had something to say, many of whom I didn't know they had something to say that really need to be engaged in some way. So it's called that user testing. So the testing and the engagement feedback process all that need to happen rapidly so that we could end up going into full production with the product that we knew wouldn't change too wildly.

You know, once we had a whole bunch of back end code and like 20 deployed service or something, right? So that's the basic prototyping story. Why do we prototype?

So, yeah. So you're basically that helped you, like, get somewhere a lot faster with the tool that you're building in house. That the company you're working out?

Yes. So we were It was an agency. So we were doing work for, like, all these different clients, right? And the real problem was, the relationship with the clients was what you would expect from an agency, right? Without prototyping, with prototyping. All right, we were able to engage with those clients a lot more holistically. I'm saying, like, kind of really fluffy things. What I really mean.

What I mean is when you have three or four different people on the client side, but all have feedback to give you If you're an agency and your model is that your building? Writing a whole bunch of code and showing them stuff right? You're probably avoiding those people at all costs, all right, because you know, they're going to say something like, you know, it would be nice or this is great, but, you know, they're going to say all these things that just gonna like, you know, tear your heart out of your chest, you know? Ah,

Indiana Jones said so, Uh, So instead of doing that, we need to come up with a way to make it okay, that we were showing them things that weren't quote unquote riel, but they could really see and really look at, you know, that looked like the finished version. So we can get the kind of finished version level of feedback that you get, like usually like a day before you alive, where someone tells you to change everything right. How do you get that, like un Day five in the hottie on day six. Come back with some reaction to that feedback. Doesn't mean that you do exactly till you do. Sometimes you you're always invoking the power of interpretation,

coming back and saying, Hey, you mean like this? What do you think about this, or does this solve your problem? Well, hey, let's sit some real users down that haven't used this. And you keep doing that over and over again. We did that with friend code. There was a point. I forget what year it is. I don't know. Maybe, like, you know,

take whatever envision was founded. Subtract like, eight months loving, where the complexity of the software we're building kind shifted from the back. And so, like all the stuff we were trying to avoid, I call, you know, these objects and, you know, crazy back and stuff. In databases like that, complexity start to creep into the front end, where the user experience because of the kind of demands of kind of them the modern form factor of software and what clients have seen in the world and what we've seen in the world, what we want to build, right,

the complexity of the code crept into the front end. So now we're running at the time, like super complex like Jake Worry. And and by the time we were showing them something, you know, that was built out of a super accomplished J Korea at the time. Like we were still, you know, we're back to the point. We were avoiding them, you know, in the hallway, right? Because that's the person, you know, Watch out for Joanne because she,

you know, she always if there was a monkey in the in the earth was a branch of the monkey and other work. But there was a There was a wrench. I was a monkey, so it was no good. And we have to come up with a better way. So, uh, my business partner, Ben in the Dell was our CTO. I kind of had looking, but he said, What if we just took, you know, designs or designs right out of Photoshopped? I just wired them together,

Um, and so, you know, because I'm, uh, plumbing, you know, a typical genius. Ford thinking Futurist CEO Maverick. All right. And so just your average run of the mill. I said no. That's a terrible idea. No, we're never doing that. That's not gonna work.

And that won't load. And Internet speed won't be fast enough. And these things are going to be creeping down. He's like, No, I'll do cashing. And finally, you know, I relented and let him have the better of the of the argument. He did it and he came back with some sort of, you know, crazy like M v P. That really worked. And we put it to work for a client right away. Totally changed. You know,

our life in the form of least, you know, the client's relationship. We went from engaging four people to engage in 10 people and feedback. We were, you know, hands on with them. And the relationship is good and there was no bottles were popped and people were happy. And, uh, we said, How do we take this and make this into a product? You know, how do we make this into something that other people can use because other people were shaking? Is facing the same problems. Yeah, that we're facing And then, you know, kind of Yeah,

right. So, I mean, your product is born out of a necessity, and you sort of like, I wish this existed. So you guys built in and helped you out, and you sort of followed that, right? You didn't just say You know what? I want to build a product, and I'm sure I'll find out what it is. And I'm gonna quit my job and find out what it is you sort of let let it lead. Let the need lead.

No one was. No one in our company was on enough opiates to their job And look for a problem. Wait for, you know, the product vision quest

is we call it dark. I think right around that time is probably when you and I met. I don't remember how we were introduced, but I remember having a conversation with you when I was running my last company about whether we could do design work together are too, like R two shops and then several weeks or some moments later. You're like, Hey, I have this thing. It's really cool like, will you when you check it out? And I think that was the first time that I saw envisioned when I when I guess it was in an Alfa or private Beta

probably flattered me by telling me it was cool

way. Well, I think they know what you were describing earlier in kind of a piggy back off that one of the things that's that's a real improvement and communication, because the typical way of like the big revealed a big Don Draper thing. Here is the finished product. Let give me your feed, your changes right, and instead of doing that, you can really make stakeholders whether their clients, users or colleagues involved in the process for anyone like you sent me a part of that.

It's about it's about socializing the product design process. You know, there's the there's us, right? Like the production side. There's the client, and then there's a little thin pipe pipe. Ways is little pathways between us, right in the form of these moments of engagement. The first kickoff meeting and the, you know, six months Check in depending how epic your time tables are in your check. Sizes are right, but these little moments of engagement So, you know, one of initial on the premises. How do we remove that?

How do you flatten those humps of engagement and say, Hey, this is the product. It's happening. It's happening. It's gonna happen together, right? And it's gonna happen a synchronously, right, instead of like, these moments of engagement like this thing is going to be out there. It lives here at this address for you. People who think, Think fast on your feet and you're in a meeting, and you, like,

shoot off five things you want to see change, like right now go nuts, right? We could do that right now in this meeting for the people who don't people who usually way more thoughtful, have a lot more interesting things to say, but usually get over talked at at the meeting, right? Or because they just haven't collected thought yet. You can log in tonight or tomorrow or whenever you can go and jump in here. You can leave your feedback

that whenever it's convenient, you can leave it. It's gonna be an equally feedback that is more useful and less subjective, like when you can see it in play with it and touch it and it feels like a working product. You could get feedback that actually helps it get across the finish line instead of stuff that's gonna pull it step

backwards. I think meetings, by the way, do crazy things that people's brains in their feedback models, right? Like when you're in that meeting and it's like I have 30 minutes to be a hero and get feedback that makes me look like I'm not an idiot and I've been doing something right. It's like you have people who are really good at that who could just, like start shooting off stuff because they're just they're smart or whatever right thing about being smart. It's about being having thoughts you already came in with, right? Yeah. And then you have, like, like everyone else. Let's call that, like, the 99% of all people who really need some time to at least think about it.

If not, like you said, play with it. And it's not like you said, Like, asked somebody else, right? And get some feedback from somebody else that they can interpret.

Right? Okay, so let me get to my next question. I think that that that we kind of cover what what envision does and clearly, you know, we like it. We like to use it. But one question to you that I have I honestly want to know the answer to this because a vision, You know, you guys have got a pretty good, you know, a social community on the web. You know, Twitter. If somebody says something about a vision that you know, usually you guys respond really, really quickly and really well, and I'm just curious You probably have a lot of feature requests all the time. Like I wish you would do this and do

this. How do you choose your future requests? Right now? This is That's totally inappropriate thing is wondering if you would do the one thing that importing from fax

and I can get you doing committing to this feature are right now. No, no, no. I'm just asking. How do you choose? Like you have a lot of lattes coming at you all the time. Everybody at the product does. And how do you make the choice? Is it like the most common feature requests get get sort of answered? Or do you know, is there is there more to it than that,

Usually in the form of Bitcoin? Whoever Bitcoins me, the right amount of, uh, gets the future and s So I'll tell you, it's it's less Democratic thing. I think. I think that, um I think that that's the way things should be for certain kinds of products, Right? Our goal is to hurt. A famous statement of her famous quote at one point says, Listen to everyone make decisions alone, Right? Okay. I can't credit that prop. It's somebody,

right? So we have great channels that, you know, open up the floodgates to feedback. Everything gets separated to basically probably three piles, loss of service, right? I think that's the tag. We call it right. There is some problem with this that I'm having an issue with. Let's call that bugs for lack of a better way to put it right. But it's a little bit more expensive than bugs deals with, You know, speed issues and whatever integration issues, you know, that are a little bit more than just bucks,

right? Loesser's right. Then there's the, you know, refinement category like this would be great if only it would. Right? So you're dealing with a feature that they wish worked in a different way or better way or, you know, some some enhancement to some existing thing, right? And then there's the I wish envision did right, and that's the totally. Greenfield doesn't connect with any other feature in the app hold of the thing right. We have channels that collect all of those things collapse, you know, catalogue all of them and get them in front of the right people.

So all the first category, all the books that go directly into engineering and it's triaged. And hopefully if there's some sort of bug in our app, somebody's working on it right now, right away, right? And we have actually an engineering team called a quick turn team. That is like a collection of, like, 45 people or something that just work on things like that and other small development projects that we think we can turn around really quickly that are less like initiative or end it right. It's quick turn team, um, the refinement stuff go into the product team. And so the product team, which is, you know,

a k a. The design team. Because all of our designers envision our product managers wouldn't really have product managers for say, Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah, so, you know, we understand that we're building a product for designers, right? So it's It's much harder, I think, to get a product manager who really deeply understands the vision for the product and how it's used, especially across the different market segments, that we have startups, agencies and corporations and,

like, really get that and understand the visceral components of that both the aesthetic and the kind of practical and transactional. So the people who really get that out of the designers right, because they live the product, they know the product the intimately,

right? Well, I of course, agree with you being a decider. Clark hates asking the question with a question, but that's really interesting to me. Is there a certain part, like certain features or that are you know, that have designer owns and it's divided up, or do they decide who's gonna work on what? And are they able to rotate around like, how do you keep your designers fresher? They always focused on, like, one thing. Yeah,

we just work until they're pretty much stagnant, and then we just wait. So the way it works is we have a product meeting every day, like 12 30 Eastern time in a way that's relevant. But that study time every day that was my

reaction. What time is your

meeting? 3 to 12. 30 every day. So it's Ah, it's a standup meeting. All the product people, you know, all the designers and we actually have a few little peripheral roles. We have a head of research. Um, you don't does a lot of the coordination of a lot of this stuff in some of the deeper studies, and we all get into call, and so I'm actually on that call, so I actually lead product. Envision as well, you know, And that's one of my main focus is here.

We're on that call every day. We do like a round table kind of thing. Everybody shows off. You know what they're working on, right? And, you know, we discuss it, we socialize it right, and and we just go, you know, kind of sprint style to the next day, right? And we make a lot of problems day today. So in terms of ownership, there's two kinds of ownership.

There's project level ownership in their schematic ownership. Um, so a designer could condone any number of either of those categories. So a design of my own, for example, our enterprise product right there is a person owns that product, and they my own a few other things, but they're always thinking of ways to improve that product. They're collaborating with our head of research to pull in interesting data directly from customers and also kind of general kind of market. Uh, you know, sweetie cents. Yeah. So that data comes in and they're constantly working on evolving facets of that product all the time, and they're also connecting in with sales and the other stakeholder to have somebody say about that that person might also own. You know,

some other thematic part of the app would say Sink right, which is this different person in sync. But so somebody owned, Sink and sink includes a photo shop, integration and our sketch integration and the desktop sync with envision sink. Right? And they not only do they own that idea from a product design and kind of evolving the product design part of that, but they also own it from the engineering resource part of that we have, you know, entering manager and VP. And and we have our CTO. But in terms of like being on the ground with those engineers as they're working through those problems that fulfill the promises of the broader strategy of that category right there, there, the whole way through. So some designer owns an idea all the way from initial inception. Like of you and I Right now,

we have an idea right now for envision right. Somebody will own that. Some design will have that, and they will own that all the way through. And tomorrow, you know, to production, engineering, marketing, release like those blood that we put out an APB notifications in the email blast. Sorry. All that stuff? Yeah, all the way to any future, anything. The feedback that we get.

You know, right now, somebody is focused a ton of their time on feedback that we're getting about our sketch integration, right? Or some of the stuff that working on with in collaboration with slack or something, right? These are things, and somebody's were here the whole time. And it's a designer that's

at the helm all the time. So let me see if I understand you have you have designers that sort of or product owners, individuals that own certain aspects of products they own that part of the product of that proud of the product. But then you said something about the thematic, a thematic role. What do you mean by that, by the

way? Yeah. So thematic might be, for example, communication. Right? That means everything in our aft that deals with communication An example would be commenting, right? The places where it comes, you know, company mail, notifications for comments, the email digest modifications. Right. So, like that whole bundle, we're calling that the general theme of the communications facet or dimension of the app,

right? And then there's kind of project oriented stuff, and then sometimes we have one off things that don't necessarily wrap up into some sort of general broad theme that persists over time. They're just, like one off things like we need to just, you know, whatever it is, it

s so dramatic

it hook into this ap I whatever.

This being in charge of a theme of, you know, a thematic responsibility is almost like being in charge of a feature across all platforms. Sort of That

is absolutely okay, Absolutely. And it's important because if you want the feature itself to be holistically, consider that's a great and grew into and end trade. It also want absolutely. And you want somebody to be developing deeper understanding and kind of, you know, just kind of growing. The i q of this thing over time,

Clark, as the as the product and team has grown, how easier difficult has it been for you to be able to go from Seoul product owner, if you will, to letting these designer slash product managers owned these components or themes over time? And how are you look ng about your your future within the organization. Because I know it for me, isn't It was hard for me at first to let go, but started to learn and how to do it. And there's certain things that I still don't want to let go. But I'm really curious to like, if you could share a little bit of that

any, um, eight years, we use the word leader. And the end of another word. Any main main dude, um, you know, worth his or her salt, right? Is that like, they're people using that phrase anymore? All right, Anybody who's worth it knows that the day that you wish for right that you strive for from day one, you know, add infinite item into the future, right?

You wait for the day where somebody enters into that company, right? That can make a decision that you were not involved in. That's good. That's good. That's great. That is so like, that s so the power move, right. If someone says I you weren't around, I decided to do X. And you're like, I don't hate that I like that a lot, actually. Right. Like so you know,

I welcome that so much. And I'll tell you, this is why I think so. We get, um we get a crazy number of applications for a design department, and like, every week, I think we'll get some, like, 800 a month or something crazy like that, Right? Which is a lot to do. Look after parse, right. But like, we hire very,

very few designs. We actually had a very few divine designers, I think. Surprisingly few for a company. It's very design oriented just because the kind of person that we need really it's very demanding. You know, we're asking you to be kind of like a manager, right? And the designer, right? And you know, both you. I am U ex like we don't have, like, a wire frame people. Right?

And you why people are product designer, which is kind of like our What I think is the evolving, you know, universal definition of product designer is somebody who even it doesn't need to like like, just do a wire frame at some point, like they can go right in the high fidelity because they're really comfortable there, right? Or they have no problem taking it all the way from from sketch to ever increasingly sophisticated work product, you know, all the way to something, and they're thinking about everything all the time. They're hold their whole minded in their approach, right? Um, when I say all that s o that person and having to be able to manage stuff and have having to be able to communicate with engineers Super, super rare,

it not necessarily rare to find people who like doing that stuff for want to do it are sorry. It's not rare to find people who are capable of doing it. I think it's more rare to find people who are willing or interests in doing it. So anybody was on this call, right? He'll be listening to this right now. Who likes that kind of stuff? Please. You are way late in calling me because

that's really you know, that's that's inspiring to me, too, because at our company we only have two roles. We have product designer and we have P M slash agile coach and the those two individuals work together on products. But we're trying to train our product designers to get stronger a product management and train our product managers to get stronger at design, that we have maximum flexibility to use. Interesting resource is an interesting ways and have people thinking about not only the short term sprint, but what's the long term strategy and and growth plan or be able to move people around. That's really cool. Clark. I've haven't quite heard of anyone that has, you know, it's like structure just like yours. And I think that's very unique.

Could be a terrible idea is probably leave. Things just blow

up on me. It's working for you guys. Yeah. So Okay, let me get on to the next question. I'm very curious about this. Uh, been using envision for a while now. Like it? They're things that come up over the horizon that are like we do this thing that envision does they're going to be your competitors. I suppose So. How much attention does envision pay to not pay, But how much attention? How much time did you spend thinking about your competitors? Is it a big deal when there's a new competitors? Is it a we're just focused on Envision? How do you like? How do you guys deal with competitors?

There's two kinds of competitors right on. And I think for most any product there's there's there's market competitors, right? And then they're So let's call this category of better words category competitors, right? Yeah. And then there's, um, direct competitors, right? So that's the way I kind of separate them, right? They're people for whom who compete, Um, for your for the dollars for your customers dollars, right? But don't offer the same solution,

right? If you use Joe's product right, then you will be committed to that direction, and you won't probably won't buy. Envision, right, because you'll be committed to that direction. That makes sense right there. Category committed. They're competing for the same dollars in generally the same category, right? There's a bunch of examples out amid any particular names. All right, we're not really doing the division does. They're solving the problem, maybe in a different way,

but they are solving the problem to an extent in which it probably would be redundant for somebody to buy both right. And then there's direct competitors. People who you know want to do exactly what envision does right. And maybe they have a different twist. Um, whatever. Okay, So our attitude is their job is to try to beat us right there. Job. Mr. Try to be better than us in every way. Right. And if I were them, I would look for my weaknesses, right? Whether it's,

you know, some part of the practice, it doesn't work very well or some part of project. Maybe he was neglected, for whatever reason, right? Or some new insight on how some piece of the, you know, whole puzzle could be done much better, right? And so their job in life should be too, you know, too ambitiously, You know, with blood, guts,

steel and oatmeal. Right? Like, go after me. All right. Do it. Um, in my job, right is tow. Watch what you're doing and to learn from the ways that you solve these problems, right? You

know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you're you're studying?

That's the job of the incumbent, right? So you know, we watch what you d'oh. That's being day. Very particular, right? And, uh, you know, and we take full license to be able to, you know, ah, to learn from that also, right. As you learn as your entire business model is basically learned from Mars, right?

And that and that. That's the partnership, right? It's your job to drive. It's the pigeons job to jump out of the way it's It's a sign to

Seinfeld I don't envision is definitely not the first prototyping solution that has been available. There's always been a lot of different things, but it was one of the first that does it in the way that you do it online

and people came before us. There's probably at least one company that I can think of that did come before us, and that works the same way, right? I think I think they were released about the same time. Um, but that is Ah,

there would be no market need unless there were a series of companies that were creating that market need

Absolutely right. So, uh, you know, I looked generally positively towards the ecosystem of competitors. There are a lot of people who, you know who I think understand the business at a very service for a surface level. And I think that's Ah, that's okay.

Okay. Cool. All right. So next question can you describe a misstep that you think envision may have made to this point. Can you think of

it? I don't think so. Many cushions. Which ones? I wanted it in public. Um, so I think scale, right. I think that we weren't ready at all For the is going to sound like one of those self congratulating Think we loved too much and we tried too hard. We worked to now eso we think we weren't that infrastructure wise. I don't think we're ready. It'll for for the kind of load that we that we saw over time in the kind of growth. So we went down on Monday, but he's using vision consistently is known that we probably have gone down epically, um, you know, three times in our history,

right? But those three times were, like, so destructive, disruptive and destructive right to people who use the project because it isn't. It's kind of like I mean, I mean the product all day kind of product, right that ended with all those times with the exception, maybe one. We're just because we just hit some crazy critical point of overload capacity and the infrastructure we had set up wasn't like we didn't start envisioned at a time when, like being totally Amazon cloud, you know, booted up in, like, three seconds and experience your, you know,

totally elastic, right? Was fashionable. Definitely not right. We started vision. It's like, four and 1/2 years ago. That was, like a thing that a few people did. But the whole ecosystem around that hadn't involved, right? And so we started envisioned, like on one server, right? It's in your house, huh?

I'm sitting on, actually server bench. Um, so it was It was like a one server for awhile. Until then, we just kept it was like a virtual server, like we could add. Resource is to it, but it really was one, not physical machine, but it was one logical machine, and we just had enough to the point where we were like, like, terabytes and terabytes of data and like, the data storage technology, like,

we just couldn't get whatever we had. We look at mass or whatever. It was right that you just couldn't add any more to that. All right? And we had to, like, start with a different like offshoot. I'm talking outside of my comfort zone here. But technology wise, we didn't set this up for something that would grow to, like, you know, 600. I think, like now, like 600,000 users,

right, which is just Ah, you know, you know. So it's not like the kind of user like where it's a Web site visit, if you like, you know, whatever techcrunch or something, right? Like there's really super easy ways for you to deal with that kind of load right the primary way, being cashing right and, like geographical distribution where they call that CD ends and things like that, right? Right, Because most of your often that most like all of your load is people reading stuff, right?

Like, Oh, I'm looking at this page and pulling it down. Here is the page, and that's it, right? Everything in half Israel time, like the primary user that's behind the steering wheel that's causing all of the the load on the site. Is somebody uploading designs, and those designs have been extracted. It was Photoshopped files of being like chopped up. You know, there's a huge you know, 500 gigabyte files are now sitting over here and you know it's something he's able to access him instantly and people are jumping in and commenting and all that stuff, right? So it's Ah Thanh of Read and write,

right? Okay. And it's persistent and its throughout the day. So if you're a vision and you're using envision Sink, for example, or dropbox whatever and you're in photo shop like every time you hit save, you're talking to the vision server, right? That file's uploading and long story short. It was a beast. It's a beast in a beast. It's something that we've got her head straight on in the last year or so and, you know, things were a lot better, but it makes

a lot of sense. I mean, for that to be, you know, a problem. I'm I'm sure it's some, like some some products are going to weigh over preparing Spend way too much time, you know, preparing for, like, this epic, you know, surge of users, I think. What can you've done? No, really. I mean oh, well, I'm sure

it's something, but right. This is a karmic. You should know the karmic punishment. Because when I was working in the agency and clients that you were just meat and they have some cockamamie scheme like I want to build a Facebook for cats, but only adult cats over 50 like they would have some sort of crazy scheme and like they would want to have, like, 30 minutes of the, like, 45 minute initial consultation. They would want to talk about how many servers like, we're going to host this thing. How much is hosting gonna be? And like, I would always laugh at them and tell them like I had the same line. Do you wish you had those problems? Yeah. Now I realize that the world is a place of justice, and you should not say things like that.

Well, it is a It is a good problem to have, I'd say. And so having a problem like that, I think is some indication of something that a lot of product donors that are trying to get something off the ground would consider successful, or at least in in a position that is very hard to get to. What would you say is, if you can if you can, um, if you could If you could make it in one point. Basic point, I guess. Could you tell us why you think envision has been had had the success it has up to this point. Like what's making successful successful?

That's hard because, you know, any anything that you think it is, it probably is something else, right? Um, and all the things you do deliberately are Usually things continue for very different reasons. They begin right. So people often you look at the cause for a phenomenon. Um, by looking at what happens today and those air usually totally different generations area of cause and effect that

make sense. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think, Yeah. Today I could tell you why I think we're successful today. I think we have an incredible team, and I think that the team was extremely passionate and, you know, the practice that was evolving. And we know how to take care of our customers. And we engage your customers the right way. And, you know, our marketing is totally set up, you know, and I think a way that's super effective and or c. P. M's are low in all this,

right? So I think Well, how it got to the critical mass to begin with, this is one of the reasons why you know the competitive questions. Interesting, right? You sometimes with a certain with some products, right. You have to be, um, first, to market right with some products, you have to be second to market or third to market. Okay, because you have to learn from the previous players in the market. You have to you have to let them airy the ground so that you can plant the right seeds in the right place.

Right? So like a MySpace Facebook example would be probably pretty universal for sure. All right, and sometimes, like the convergence of factors, have to be right. And the product itself has to be able to ride on those factors and so that you can reach critical mass because ones there's critical mass. It becomes kind of like the steam roller that makes sense, right? So, for example, um, I think with envision, uh, the need, the desire to prototype right,

the literacy around the importance of prototyping the er and the proud of the way the product was set up to get more and more people inside of a company on board, right? The speed of growth, I think, was ableto to ride that evolutionary curves.

That makes it, I think I think I think I hear what you're saying. Honestly, you know what? What? I'm here from you. Is that you? You had a a great idea of something that what people wanted. But when the challenge came to really ride through making the product survive when when it was wanted, they had a team that was good enough to get through it and get it.

Get it way better than I said. I think you're right. Place, right Time, right, which was good. And then, you know, and that kind of it, uh it multiplies, Right. So, like, I remember when in the first early days of envision, even like after we had raised them, you know, a little bit of money,

like some sort of a seed round. It was, like, super impressive when we had, like, a you know, a 400 or 500 persons signed up day, right? Like 500 people sign up for the app that was like mind blowing right. And now it's like when it's thousands and thousands of people every day, right? It's but you can't. It's very difficult to go right there. right we had. It's all a factor of organic growth, you know,

kind of as a as a fairly even slope overtime. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Yeah. Yeah, It's like the age of the product. And when it hooked into that original kind of customer base and how that flowered out, right, I think that's what allowed us to be at the scale that we are today.

Okay. I mean, to me, it's kind of just become like a household name, like you think about it like the earlier doctors. And this is just how I envision it. Like the agencies that were using it got all their employees signed up. Everyone has a delightful experience since rally around using this tool. This makes our life great. Yea. And then you have all the clients using it, and then you multiply that by X many clients a year, and then they remember having a delightful experience using that. So when they decide to do something internally, it's they, you know, it's a known.

It's just like where you go, you know, and I think maybe you guys, I don't know if I'm completely off, but it seems like you guys have done a really good job of achieving that, like when someone is looking is thinking about. I'm need to create a prototype that I need contextual commenting and other things like that envision is the tool that they've had the most experience doing that with Probably, Yeah, they're rather product companies or other agencies. That's been that's been my experience. Yeah, so, yeah, I would say I would say, That makes a lot of sense. And Clark,

I know it's a little bit of Ah, I don't know the kind of question that you get asked on. I want a product that successful. How do I make a product? That success That's not, you know, just kind of wanting Thio. I think it's very telling, you know, to hear from, you know, leadership in a product. Um, just what their impression has been and, you know, it's almost always that not only is it the team,

but there's this sort of there's not really a formula, right. It's not. There's not really a handbook on. If you listen to what Clark just said and you have a product idea, you follow those exact steps. Your your product will make the exact scene, you know, numbers or whatever. So you know, there is no handbook. There is no sort of thing set forth. I think it's just good Thio here. Ah, reflection, you know,

to a lot of people that are wondering these types of questions, I think wanting to get their own product to market, wanting to get their own M v p out, I don't think. And honestly, the whole reason I wanted to talk to you was that M v P. Is is so, like, huge in people that have this idea that want to bring a product to market. And, you know, what about after M v P? You know, um, there's there's a whole you know, a lot of thought that I think would be would be good to thio.

Good mentality tohave when you're going into building a product, not only how you know what, what's the next step? And so I think it was good to you. Just kind of hear from you on being on the next step. Cool. Um, well, we are actually about at a time, Clark, if somebody wants to know more about envisioned or just Clark Thalberg in general. Where should they go? What

should they give a straight straight up Google? Um, vision app dot com. Okay, Clark at division at dot com.

You just want him to email. You

just I mean, you just don't know what is just and I will personally, on board every person that listens to this call. That's awesome. Maybe that's the secret

of the success that Clark actually

helps things that don't scale. I send you. I send you a T shirt. And then I said 25 e mails on the course of the next year. I was I was, like, some sort of panel, um, discussion. And, like, I figured, how am I gonna introduce myself to all these people? Right. So I decided, like, Hey,

I'm Clark from envision. You might know me from your inbox on like and everyone laughed and they got it. Yep. And, uh, and that's just the

clark from my box. Just check your email. That's how you you can find Clark. I'm just curious. How big is the envision team right now? In total.

Oh, division team is something like 40 people. Um, it's a lot of people, but I mean, there's a lot of

mostly engineers, mostly or mostly designers or

no, um, spread out pretty good. You know, Thio have a customer base, you know, like at this scale. So you have to have a lot of support people. So we have, like, a bump to support people. We have, you know, a pretty sizable sales team. We have, you know, a bunch of engineers and and,

you know, a pretty solid, uh, close knit, tight core of designers we are hiring. Um, it was every department. So if you're good at doing any of those things and you're like is excited about, um, life and design is the three of us are We'd love

to have you. Awesome. That's awesome, man. Well, thank you very much. I think we're about out of time. Um, we'll just call it, but thanks very much. Clark's very, very kind of you to give us in your time today. Um Hey, everybody, please subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. If you care about that sort of thing, raid us,

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