friend farm in that bar, Releases said, are set along the coast is hard. Work is back. Breaking work you're carrying is very heavy cases, and they need to happen. We need to go to the process. If I'm really quickly, the license to this room stinks in a night that crabs come in because a crappy trip when it's harvest time, you empty the pools of your catch of the friend that hold the craft. Is there left for you and we will incredible night, and you need to be able to have everybody out beat and happy and growing in the same direction, even though the job in front of you actually sucks.

That's the voice of Manny Medina, co founder and CEO of Outreach, the leading sales engagement platform. Manny and his team pulled off a death defying pivot as a last ditch effort to save their company, and a day outreach is worth over a $1,000,000,000. This is Mike Maples junior floodgate, and it's go time with Manny Medina. Welcome to starting greatness Podcast dedicated to ambitious founders who want to go from nothing toe awesome super fast. When you're a startup founder, you have to channel your inner James Bond your MacGyver. You're Wonder Woman. I'm gonna help you win by curating the lessons of the super performers, but before they were successful. So without further ado ignition sequence, let's get started from growing up with Communist parents on a shrimp farm in Ecuador, learning to program in college in the United States without knowing English for pulling off an epic pivot away from certain failure toe leading outreach to scalable growth and a highly rated place to work. Manny Medina stories.

Colorful and inspiring outreaches Success demonstrates so many things that make great startup, so motivated determination to beat the odds, desire to always keep learning and growing the willingness to look at problem solving and hiring an unconventional ways. It's been a great joy of work with Manny and see him lead his company on its current trajectory of approaching greatness. Let's catch up with Manny. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for taking the time. I'm excited for this. So, Manny, you know a lot of our guests if come into the traditional startup pedigreed backgrounds. But you grew up in Ecuador. So what was that like? And how did you get exposed to computers

growing up the neck, whether in the seventies and eighties and early nineties, I didn't have access to a computer until I went to college. Once I started writing software once I once I learned See, I couldn't go back. So the computer engineering degree of my college network was fairly new opening. And this is the second half of the second years when I started taking algorithms. And my first lesson algorithms is when you learn about pointers and you learn about sort of this is and things of that nature, that's that's variances. When I learned programming and when their programming, I found myself be very good at it very, very fast I didn't happen off Resource is to continue to do it. So I started talking to opera fascinates of like whether you go with this knowledge, whether you do what job are there out there that looked like this where I get to do this for a living because this is fun and they're really well, you know, here there's not that many jobs. You get lucky,

you get to support some s a P or seyval implementation or oracle implementation, and I'm not gonna hit man like I can't be here. I need to be need to be in the country where this software's been written. And I looked at these four companies and they're all happen to be in the US and that's where I signed it. That's far. So I started asking around some of the professors of my university in Ecuador where, you know, what were they recommend. And it turns out a couple of hot Colter Stevens. And that's how we in the States I actually didn't do much research, actually linked to a Stevenson. Cornell was one of the guns, and I went, and this is visited is like on New York in February. I never being that called in my life. I was wearing everything I own and out still sell cold, and the campus was so big. It's so dark. And then when I got the little stat about the high rate of suicide, that's

why that e that was enough. Yeah, so I've only been to Ecuador. What's But it's hard for me to imagine a place more different between Ecuador and if they could, New York, right, like I can't I can't even imagine two polar opposite extreme different places.

I couldn't either, and I couldn't see myself. I was. I literally, you know, you have to take a bus to go between you know, your arms and in classes. I'm like, I can't go outside, let alone take of us

like this is so after Stevens. Then you went to grad school, a pen and then Harvard Business School, and then you became one of the first people hired by Andy Jassy. Is team in Amazon? What do you think you learned that was really important from Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos?

I learned the art of the detail that you have to master the details to really understand the whole. So there's not enough to be a strategic. You actually have to know how things work. I also learned that no decision is a decision, and you got a little bit of insight into Jesse's. Fine because he came from the shawl, which is a trading house, and you're either buying or selling, and a decision to not do anything is a decision by so whenever you are in front of a decision that you have to either taken action taken action, the not thinking in action, meaning you're doubling down on the status quo. You have to explain that to what on acceptable answer was was. I didn't have time to think through this or I didn't have time to do the job that we that was just not an option. The framework for making decisions was very important to me because I was very important to that and making sure that all the managers still that discipline, off decision making and the consequences of it in the second thing. So I, I think I mentioned is an interview a long time ago and that the Amazon is incredibly good with numbers.

Everybody was good with numbers, and pulling out a calculator in the middle in the middle of a meeting was a sign of weakness, so I couldn't get into the mental mass really quickly. So I ended up buying a book of Minto laughing, and it's interesting because you don't have to get a feel for numbers, right? A feel for size. I feel for like, you know, sit coat as to whether you're coming in and the rising good or not, and that became very useful to again to the art of decision making because they if you're allowing in their and roughly the right sicko, then you're at least I know you're heading in the right direction. But if you're completely off, then you got guys is about to,

and then you went to Microsoft to lead their mobile division. Why did you do that?

Frankly, if there was when I moved to Seattle, there was, ah, play that was playing here, the Paramount called dog years, anyone or even Amazonian because that's exactly what he felt. The work that I was owned in those days, you felt every every year with a girl in about three or four and human human years. So there was never It was a relentless pursue of whatever is that we were doing. I was committed to the vision, but my first boss and I was It wasn't it wasn't that inspiring. So after grinding it out for about a year and 1/2 I started looking and one of my classmates actually pulled me out and said, Hey, when you comment and help, you sold so some thorny issues. Microphone.

I didn't I didn't start in Mobile actually started in the online services for back when they have a miss sanding and message Jarrett Centre. They didn't run with the urgency of Amazon, but they also have some gnarly issues to sort out themselves. I eventually ended up in the mobile division trying to launch with this violin, trying to get market share away from you. You know, it was starting with BlackBerry and then eventually became on during Apple, and it wasn't fun challenge. But you didn't feel the alignment across the company as to what he had to get done. And he was warned about, you know, so small of devastations, of each of us as sellers or each of us as business owners to try to get this phone up the hill and eventually after after the seven point release. I mean, I've been there for three or four releases, and I just I just couldn't see the light of day on this one, and I had one of those. I call it a Jerry Maguire moment when I just could not see myself doing this again, and I didn't have a Plan B I just didn't see myself doing, and I pull over when they go into work and I called my boss,

but And did he try toe talk you into staying a little longer or was at

it? It's all need to take a sabbatical. He's like, When you take us about think I'm on stuff and he called

me back during that month. Is that when you decided to start a startup?

So that's when I started going with different ideas. Eventually got a coal from from kids or Mackowiak, who was trying to teach me his idea to come and help him to do it. And I had a different idea, and I pitched him on that. And he said, When we will work in your area,

Okay, so so that I guess that's the beginning of group talent.

That's it again after account. That's when we met Court of the West because they were working on group talent and they couldn't get traction and that they dropped a Via and Chris DeVore runs a small seats on here in Seattle. The true this is and you say, Hey, you know this air to private developers. Maybe something could go out and we sort of riff on a couple of ideas including trying to spend one night all night coding a flower website. But by the time we were done quoting entire thing, we realized that this is also don't Maybe it'll show. So we truck around and we went back to the group talents.

So you get you get going with group talent, and I suppose you raise a little bit of of money behind that

idea. Yeah. So we started racing from angels. We got I think we eventually got to a $1,000,000 given tens and twenties. Yeah, we started trying to make it, you know, to try to make it go, give the original, and every college was a marketplace for for talent, right? It was originally a marketplace for proofs of talents, of groups of people want to get hired 13 and then eventually, when I guess right, let's just make it a recruiting website for people and see if we can if we can be hired to it. And we all thought that this was a product problem, meaning that we can solve the problem hiring building better profiles and I read it and then quickly and it turns out that was not the problem the problem is the market first, while one of liquidity and we're just not good at generating equity.

And so did you start to experience any pressure? I mean, you had some revenue, so things maybe not growing as fast, you hope, But you're still doing ok

now. So we're making a few placements were attracted. Some people feel that they were able to place it. And then in reality, whenever something new springs up like this, the first developers did you attract that? People wanna work and those jobs that just, you know, far and few between. So we attracted a few, he's gonna get traction. Then we attracted a few you know we'll be doing. Then we develop a constable like that trying for your mind is not developing constipated because it's actually cold contractor higher. But we decided that we're gonna make a big deal of this driving for you by that. This is the era of talent, and that talent is supposed to rule it all. And of course you want to try for you buy it.

And we became to me a year for that, so that was a little bit of a pop and Then in December 2013 we miss our revenue target and we need it to get that money that we're running out of cash. We need to make that revenue target for us to become self sustaining and we could make it. And that's when it became really, really that that we used to have the chops for this particular business like that. You know, might Michael. Farmers like the company could have run on this Frenchie because the profiles were a nice to have none of them were a necessity. If that was the case, we didn't have the attraction from from inbounding up from from inbound flows for people looking for jobs and players looking for developers that this that this was stopped at work when we miss the target that my family was make Obama's had a ha moment like this is this is not for me. This not work

out. So you're everybody's like, Okay, this isn't working. What do you do? Like, how did you How did you turn this into outreach?

Everybody had in the back of the head. And now and now imagine that has happened that nobody wants to go back to work for Microsoft. So we all go toe, Accordance apartment and we say, What can we do to actually really drive volume like way didn't know anything about advertising or were buying ads? So what we decided to do instead is to figure out while we have conversion, funnel look like So how many people do we need to email in coal for those people to turn into into appointments for those people to turn into viable candidates and the same thing for the employer site? How many players that need to call for us to get a conversation, going with a head of recruiting or have been getting hearing and therefore not to turn into a real buyer? And then we just work the math and we decided that there was There was a possibility here for us if we drive it off, if we drive enough activities that we can actually generate revenue I that there was exponential to the number of people that we had, so we built shoe solutions, one that would that would take a name and it's great that weapon get whatever information could from you. For me, they're like then, or blog's or if you have an open face and profile from that and it will create a little a little composed box and they compose box, they would create in the back of that.

We've created a marketplace for writers. So it's turns out the U. S. Has a lot of underpaid and unemployed English majors and lit majors that are available for sale number for higher brother and you can pay them. And we were paying that. We're offering 50 cents an email, and the evil was literally a one liner. So they one liner would mean that you would take a look at the left side of the screen. Look at this versus names and anything, any interesting fact. And then, on the right hand side, you could write a one liner that would catch people's attention. And that liner would be part of an email that said, Hey, Mike,

then one liner and then our pitch. So we built that engine that would allow us to half of the in the back end old his writers that will compose for us and the alcohol be a personalizing. So we built that Indian and then we and then the second part of the know that it was that many will follow up meeting If you don't reply to that email did that. And then we'll go back and say, Hey, Mike, your Busia was that engine started generating 40% replies on cold means we're generating oldest traffic. We actually don't have this one were given in the happened matter power to take all these meetings. So you know what to do with this with this incredible meeting generation. And so what we decided to do is that instead of selling placements are full time people that work for a full time. What we would do is we will sell the traffic. So we started going to those agents, Rikers, and being like, Hey, I know you have old is,

well, these contracts for staffing. What if I drive how into you how the quality that you want? And they were like, Well, are you gonna do that? And we're like, Well, you give me that respects and I'm able to drive traffic because I have his engine that personalizes his emails and reaches out. People are really interested in Go back and engage and that feeling that that the ages Incredibly. Don't know. Stop, Stop. I want to buy the engine. How much for you and this one? Really running out of cash?

Where I'm about this is really, really, really close. Borders Birds who runs version one ventures asking for a meeting and he takes it for a walk and see how things are going. You know, they're not going great. We're running out of cash. I don't want to do, but we have this over insight. He comes more, will tell the story you stole you. Hes I That sounds incredible. Come sell that. I'm like I'm getting I'm getting asked to see that there is a semblance of a fit. I think that we should we should We should look into like this, you know,

once when close, close And he said, Okay, let's do it. And now I'll give you a fund it And anyway, he funds It means, you know, $70,000 check. This is not a picture. So after the conversation was I remember this clearly because it was a night of the crunchies, so I and I got an invite to the country, so I drove. I got there early because I don't want to pay for parking. So I got there so I can get a parking spot on the street. And I called my father's family. So it's going to do.

And I was to tell the story of Boris and asked, Hey, guys, how're we doing? And he's like, worrying about during the computers. Why, like we all look at the back account and we know that we don't have the cash and you haven't told us anything about the visit so or something were going out of this. And then I hear out in the back of saying, you know, and I am Go that low years old is watching that, you know, if we subtracted well, the lawyers were actually lawyers in another house. Him like he's not a freaking out, and I was like,

None of that. But, you know, we just I just had this conversation with boards and and and I think that there's a really good chance that we have that we actually have a problem. This is a team to actually build product and sell it because we're good at that. We're not good at creating marketplaces, but we're really good at building product and selling the hell out. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I out of my entire experience of raising 200 some $1,000,000 getting the company to build in elevation, that is it. The moment that I'm most proud is the fact that over this all I can convince my families were freaking out to give it another go from scratch. But this is not like building upon our success. This is literally very everything away. Get rebuilding a scratch and I was a

eso and you convince him to throw away everything. Now, were they Did they decide to do it Because you convince him that the thing you're running too was gonna be something or were they just tired of the old idea? You know, what do you think was the thing that got him over the

hump? I convinced him I made the following point. I made the point that the only thing we have was probably the most important thing. Any founding deacon cop is that all of us went through hell and back and that we s a t are pretty much invincible. But we already run out of money. There's not neocon killers, and we have the perfect team. We had very literally a designer affront and engineer back of engineer in a cell. Scott doesn't get any more perfect on that. And now you have a team of the four who trust each other implicitly. And that is an asset off innumerable proportions.

That's as anti fragile team

Exactly. And all we have to do is point ourselves to the right problem. And I think I found and we picked shot to Where was the board? About time. It was Boris and Chris and where it was like, Yeah, I buy it here 75 k and Chris was like, Dude, like, I already get you a lot of money, like I work full and know what to do and he's looking at me like what you're in or you're not increases. I got all right, We're in for 75 we started selling it to recruiters because that was the original market. We build a prototype on this $150,000 of racial Chris ivories, and that prototype did not work. So now where we're back to square one, but what we did have is a lot of elevation of people who were pissed because it wasn't working.

So the reason we thought that it wasn't working was a few people that sold it to were actually using it. Very So I decided to make one day a week on dating, which I'm going to fundraise. So I go get busy. I go and make profiles of people in Angelis of people who have invested in a similar area off work productivity. And I started getting these like crazy and out of the meetings. I wouldn't either again, a referral. Wait a check when I get a check. I mean wiring instructions. I don't mean a so circling. I am being wiring instructions and fresh ink on a convertible. Note. Which valuation got higher every time somebody side. I got either that or I got an interest to our potential customers and or and an interest, a potential investor,

all those three things. So I got really good at both at demand Gen. And fundraising, and that's that's none of that part of the Bennett said the 1st 2 customer that came through that those conversations where dynamic Sinclair and we sold the really regretting to that so many seats, But they're recording Team eventually said, Hey, I think that this is much better fit for the for the Celestine because that's a lot of what sells people want it. So they truces to themselves in years, and then that's when everything took off, because we got incredible amount of feedback from those cells leaders as to how to fit the product into their exact workflow, we would decisions in that way pointed product, sir Father, using it Go back Tonight co. That this between, you know, great user experience and what we sow deployed overnight,

go back and chest with the users again and do this every day. Don't stop in one of the things that I think was my secret sauce on it. Is that all my customers wearing this off so I could walk from place to place, and when I got a meeting, people have you have to see because I'm already there, and when you go to see you in person, not only you can get the picture, you can also get the feedback. I still like what's missing with pitch and they want, so you make him a customer was missing with a cup with a product. And then what's the product is working with? What else would they like to see it to? The problem. And that would allow us to have rabbit reiterations into the product into something that was scale when and and easy results everybody. But the funny thing is, we were using a product of set. You just didn't occur to us. It's those people

who want. Okay, so then so then you start selling to sales. How long was it before you just said, OK, that's the company. We're not doing recruiting anymore. It's all about safe.

Uh, so they one of the things that we didn't really also early honest. I didn't sell the company since older individuals. So I would get I would get with you and your 4% started backs. I didn't have to go, but I didn't want to convince you for you to buy the entire thinking. That was risky. I was, like, once used by it. Give me your credit card. Oh, you know, I'll charge you for months and you don't like you to stop it. And we got on a like 1000 of those and buy. And that wasn't clear a signal to me that that that that was brought work if it because the individual and paying with their own cracker and they were not sure. So after that,

we actually accident. You know, when one once competence individuals went to the cross and we should buy this for the company. They were called to me. And I think, you know, we like to make a purchase. I didn't even having to say you're a purchase agreement, anything. I actually went to the related acute website. Wait and I went to the terms. My copy. That entire thing put in a word document. Replace really like you without reaching any came

so that how long was it between? So you do this pivot to sales. So how long was it between you make that pivot and you realize, Oh, my gosh, all hell's breaking loose like we got it. Now we have product market fit. It's up to us to execute

grow now. So the next thing that I did is I tried to I tried to start selling to anybody that would do sales like I wanted to really test the edges of the town. So I would prospect that night I would I would exchange product licences for accesses to data sources. So I will go into us a small operation. I will go to a so self manager and be like, Hey, I'll give you I will give you, you know, our rich afraid if you give me access to your whatever wa sou more youthful USA or whatever you had that was creating conflict for you, I would I would still do a trade. And so then I will get those contacts and I would I would look for not adjacent markets like automotive and retail. And, you know, people who are selling to a lot of people were selling to retail and pitch outreach and see what would take her. It was just working like every everybody would have the problem of How do I make my cells into a process that I can follow? And I can automate the majority of my my follow ups and I could get predictable, increasing results when I pray you human unit off work.

And that's when I realized that hard work. If it is one of those things that you use feeling in your gut, you know, I mean, like, you're constantly telling you the seat back and every you feel every balance of code that you put out gets used. And after a few of those, you realize that you are swimming with it with it. With the current you're not you're not swimming against it s so that's that's the first instance she ation from work. If it the second says, you know, bomb work. If it is when you have customers that started staring you in their own direction eso for It's a symbol that couple features early on that we have to shut down because they were just, you know, they were used in the wrong way. So,

for instance, people would ask us to especially start ups where he started to have to people, and they want to look like you have 100. So they hate. Can you create that? You create a feature that will allow us to send emails from multiple boxes and on the job, of course. So you know, one long night of eating go curry in and wine You know which other feature that they after. And then once people realise of that feature this stop buying seats because they can just find one seed and enable team of like whatever but on the back of 11 iris license. And we're like, OK, so that's stupid. That's not the kind of behavior everyone. So we stop. It's I don't think that with this we way we came out there was to suit not competitive.

But they to a strong offering south during the marketing people were using yes, were in town, and we realize that they was far easier to flip by. Yes, were taught customer then to educate a new one. So he sort of made it our business to go after those customers so literally our 1st 100 calls. I went to the customer pages rather and just call, you know, started top of work. The way the vile and the second thing that with it, is that we use pricing as a signal for quality, so immediately took their whatever the highest package wasn't. We made it twice. It's offensive, I would say. Yeah,

this is more offensive because he's not. So these are things that I just work for you step with this there and you know, we're getting business and people were paying. I think you know the original price of 60 bucks a seat. We're like, All right, so how much work of a charge? So we would started going up in price like almost every quarter will try. All right, let's go another 10 bucks and we only started getting resistance. We when we came up with a good cell schools when we were just inspect themselves, were going Wait, Here's the test myself. Why? So we have to go out with this story. Don't come back from.

But pricing wasn't he Wasn't way. Wasn't a way for us early on to figure out what the you know, value pricing. Have you extract out of 10? It was literally a shot, doctor. That's right. Higher memory. Alison. See that works and stuff so you get on

with. But you know what's interesting is I and I remember these discussions where we would keep raising the price. And there's kind of this dual benefit, right? Obviously, it's good to get more money for customer, but we were I also finding if my memory serves me that the customers that would pay more, which earn less because they had bigger organizations and more commitment. So, you know, you kind of got this double multiplier effect positive trade off where you're getting more money per customer, you're getting less turn per customer. And so your customers getting evermore attractive each core

that's exactly right. And it is that they were really cemented that wheel was the fact that the customers that we're paying a lot will come up with this request that were actually pretty common among older, larger customers. It looked like that. So not only they would feel that we have a true partnership because we would implement those requests. You know, we have this particular feature, that is we call the conflict resolution sear. I'm sick in which we before we sink anything, we look at a number of things in terms of the day that a stab was of us written frequency writing etcetera to figure out whether the direction in which they don't you need to be moving and we build it for up for custom. I think it was there and they were so blown away by it. They just trust you at this point. Yeah. I mean, like, they know that you're gonna be a

part for Yeah, we have this saying that the valid definition growth at a start up is not just growth. It's the accelerated accumulation of attractive customers. And if your customers are getting ever more attractive and you're accumulating them an accelerated rate, that's what victory really looks like.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know it needs a good gets easier over time. To track this cost, you have to have a couple of Valley, the M plus minus.

So now you're probably shifting from sort of 0 to 1. Get product market fit mode, toe 12 x get more predictable growth. Start to fill positions of the company with experience. Folks who've done the job before Like, what was that like? What was it like to go from kind of zero? 1212 x mode.

It was really interesting because you read all this, all this stuff on the Internet, about hole. You need to hire the top talent and and you need to, you know, bring people have done it before and gold this talented in reality, the people you can attract and the people you want Our It's a very small intersection where you really solving for is the next 24 months Because everything is gonna be different in 12 months of 24. So the the part that Waas that was hard for me is is trying to follow this advising hire people from central central casting. But really, people said you're asking The one common work for a company is, you know, finally knows revenue and you know barely anyone, you know, working on the company. So you have to make some some bold decisions. So you have to make some, you know,

we brought into higher dollar outside of central casting. So first of all was our memory. I don't know if you remember this conversation. I remember clearly when I call you this one time and you ask me how things are going and I tell you, this is the first quarter that feels hard and yes, but what will you be? Well, you know the number Qiming hot came in at 11th hour and it wasn't a deal that would assign it if the deal would come in a week a week ago and you said, Well, you're about to miss an export. What? You mean like I get to see it all the time? It comes in hot and there's something missing something broken and you go to market used in the one, etc. So you need to go figure

it out. It's like getting lapped

in arrest. Yeah, I freaked out like right, what's broke and like knowing everybody here was celebrating, we make the number was a big number. And I'm freaking out because my tells me that we're about to have ultimate. I don't even know why we're gonna miss what you tell me. So I started digging into this and I realized that we didn't have Ah, a problem And the problem Waas we haven't str team that was run by the same person was running ourselves date And if that person were running on a cycle so he brought in a CEO or manager and that s er manager came in with a big heavy hat around personalization. He wanted his team to spend a lot of time personalizing, researching. And what that means, in real words, is that they're gonna spend a lot of time linked in like you know, Bruce and profiles. And he didn't hold that team accountable for production meeting, meeting,

performance, meeting, meeting, generation performance and in our media swing through went down, and we didn't have this orientation to seal that happening. And once you lose pipe, lamentably 1/4 it bites you, then exporter. And they were thing that could happen to us. A small started selling yourself. People will lose self. So I started looking for somebody who could help me. And I remember I woke into I walk into a meeting with our largest potential customers to steam mobile. And then I sit down with it for the VP of sales and having a great conversation. He's dropping all this knowledge, and I'm like,

I'm taking note of this meeting. I'm supposed to be selling to this guy. So we had the meeting and I, in a shaky time, very firmly is like, you know, really enjoy this conversation. You don't love to see you again. He said, Yeah, yeah, enjoys conversation. And the guy wasn't thrilled with black fur, right? Because he wasn't throwing with the fact that he had reply to a meeting request that having automate and and we show them the sequence of events happened and, like,

you know, Yeah, this was an automated Is this an automated note? And he just happened to be encircled by my link. It touches and calls and emails that has happened to answer this particular email. And the guy was really, really taken by that. So you know what? To lunch. And we started talking. And after a long, long dinner, I convince it to co workers. So this did cultural from Telco, and he transform our culture as a company and has, ah ss else organization because having sold something that is so hard,

such as, you know, phones that is completely undifferentiated. So it gives you a different level of grit that that stuck with the company for a long time sells. Much of this important salesmanship is about your demeanor, your energy, state, your mental state, how you call it a conversation. How curious you there's this bottomless number of actually is that makes a great sales person, and that's what we needed at the time needed to elevate ourselves. And that's what the guys this guy brought, and there's no better Selves. People that somebody can tell you something that is completely undifferentiated.

You know, I've also heard you suggest recruiting immigrants is under estimated opportunity. It's start up, and and, you know, I think outreach is more inbred friendly than most companies. I know. So do you think that was because of your background from Ecuador? Just how did you How did you get interested in recruiting immigrants?

So when I was, um, Bill, I couldn't see myself working on this more company because I always fear that was not supposed to make my green card. You know, when I showed up a bell, they told me, Oh, you need to stay here for a year before we kind of supposed to you. In every card that was not out of US policy, that was their fault. I immediately assumed I was calm a policy for every every other, every other company. And that is that isn't that common posture here in the U. S. Or reason companies off making a sort of difficult for immigrants And, you know,

because we work in recording, there's a lot of jobs. I just have you need to be a US citizen in the job description and I wonder why the you know you're not working with sensitive U. S. Government material just just started on the corner of the summer. Why do you need this? This requirement? There's a lot of apprehension about people who were in U. S. Citizens. And there was a lot of misunderstanding about how the immigration system work. And then you saw the opportunity, especially for to start right, like it's really hard to hire. Experienced people are start ups, So I notice that there was an opportunity and being he maker and friendly that you can attract people who want to live to start dream.

And if you make it easy for them to join you, you will have a competitive advantage. So there's two things that we did right away. The first thing Waas. We eliminated the question off. Whether you are us, anything, we're not out of the conversation out of the injury period. So not only you didn't have to be a US citizen work here, but we think asked let your immigration status was doing nature because he didn't really matter. And then after we gave you the offer, then we figure out what was your action status. And then we will work through the mechanics of transferring or whatever response during for here. And then the second thing that with it is we made a very public that any immigrant that we join outreach will be the apply for a green card if they wanted to with, you know, the moment they showed out leading the way that manifested itself When I started hiring the scientist but then assigned this,

you know, two years ago, they needed now are really hard to come by, especially the good ones and the good ones. I mean, maybe I broke a bit like the great majority of the one that I talked to are are not from this country. Are you from from Eastern Europe? China, India in the great majority of them are in some kind of immigration status. So for his vocal being like ours and I'm competing, mind you with obviously Microsoft, like right here in their backyard, I have a disproportionately large flows into come in an injury with us because a is, you know, we're attractive, small company, growing fast being. We just make it easy for them and make it comfortable for joints. So I think that that's one of the secrets for us to be able to build our machine or anything so quickly. Way took the stand on immigration that was very immigrant

friendly. And so Manny is you is the company grew from sort of being a startup toe. Now it's start to become a company. What did you have to learn and unlearn as a leader, like, what kind of mistakes did you make and

what do you think you got right? So I was. I was very involved in every decision I was I wanted to be part of. I wanted to drive initiatives and because I had the context. I feel like both times I was steering things and or groups of people in a particular direction. There's a couple hires that that came to us that were a bit ahead of the curve. One of them is Mike City. Mike said he used to run success for sentence before he joined My My money. My rubric for hiring executives is I have executives that have who need a win, like I don't hire seasoned executive seen the movie before, and they, you know, they're competent I have executive who almost got there. He never got there because he my mind, energy and passion in this chip on the shoulder overcomes anything else. Usually more more powerful force on experience. But my team.

He was the only one that we hired that getting that handled that drive but didn't need the win. But he already he took send this still looking before then. He took right out public and he got apartments by article. In that old times, he's been running successes, support, and yet I'm hiring to run successes were here outbreak yet again. So my guess is one of the few that are sort of like he just let it because it's a student of the game. But this is this craft that he's here to do it again. But there and when I hire him, I was running, I was wearing this success, and so I was running. Supporting my my co founder case was 16 a for effort, but I don't remember. It's explain,

but what was running one and the other was one of the other and then he should happen. We have it and it was hard for me to peel away from the day today of the operation that I was running. And it was even harder for me to understand that he was such a superior master. He had gotten more about running a success ing that I would ever learn is like Yoda have to let go. Things wholesale was with heart. And the single part of the story is the following is that you know, he thinks the team he runs and he you know, he says killing a different a different level that you can't. But now I'm able to engage with them on a more strategic level, you say? I mean, where, how when she's gone from being the workflow for any kind of organization. So if we come in and make yourself shop and you have a name now based workflow for so nebesar counties, whatever, we gotta work well for you.

Doesn't matter if your stuff is all screwed up, you should never use it to begin with. You know, we have no pigment. Well, well, well. Empower you. And now we have gotten to a point in which we're big enough were well known enough that people come to us and say, Hey, what is the right workflow to do for my organization, for trying to get done? So how that we have elevated the conversation I'm able to engage again, but not at the same level where I was before, where I was criticizing every single aspect of what it sees it. Thus,

I'm worried about like how we how do we elevate the message? Probably change or offering from being old workers for all people to be the white row forceful for you. Yeah, it's been an evolution of the job, which I have to learn what I did in the past and have to learn the trade and able T able to re engage in a value to the particular organization.

You know, there's a lot of super ambitious founders out there listening. What's the most support piece of advice you'd

give him? When, when in doubt go go talk to go solve a customer pain, you will find many times that you'll you'll be sitting around when you call farmers trying to figure out what to actually do next. What should I coat? What your way. What's the next big feature was the next big thing and many times is not that many times you're either barking up the wrong tree or the product is just, you know, the user experience is wrong and there's something wrong with it. So in absence off clarity, go through something a customer complaint about or a customer actually explicitly say this salt. So this is great and this works on both sides. If a customer said this is great, bring it up. But make it even easier to use, making even more powerful in the you know, the punch that is the literacy,

maybe something salts that make it go away and find something else that it found just get really good. Especially the good ones. They really they really got inspecting, you know? I mean that you sort of start with a problem you got, You got his finances. Something's wrong. You think they think they you got to the bottom of things. But you should know inspection of things that are working and things that are working to. So don't don't forget to pursue both.

Well, Manny, for what it's worth, it's been a pleasure working with you. Congrats on all your success. I mean, you guys have done incredible job. I know there's a lot of headbutt, man, You've covered a lot of ground quickly. We're just

getting started is being fun. These people like you that make make this this journey so so much fun. And so everyone

Thanks for listening to starting greatness. You could follow me on Twitter at M two Jr it Please shoot me an email with any comments or questions to greatness. A floodgate dot com I hope youll subscribe on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like the show, I'd be grateful if you could leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Never let go of your inner power to do great things in whatever matters to you. And until we meet again, remember, greatness is a decision.