A Future Of Faster Output

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let's imagine this. Like, nothing changes. No one loses their jobs. But just output is insanely fast now. And the amount of content and the amount of creation that we make is just exploded. And I like to think that's a better way to do it.

Meet Dan Belke And His Roots

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to another episode of Sell Me This Podcast. Today I am honored and privileged to have with me Den Dan Belke. Um I got the pronunciation correct. You got it right. And um, and Dan, you probably introduced yourself way better than I will. So um quickly putting you on the in the hot seat. Um, who are you? How do people know you? Uh what do people know you for? Oh man, that's that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Let's go with the professional side of it. Is uh my name is Dan Belke. I uh am the founder and owner of Everything Cloud Technologies. Um, I've been in technology since 1994. So you do the math on that one. That makes me an old guy. I got a little bit of the gray. Um, and uh based in Calgary for a majority of my career, except for uh a small stint out in Toronto.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I like it. And so um were you did you start in Toronto or did you come out here? You did something right in the middle, or kind of how did you find your way kind of to and from Calgary?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah, uh born and raised in Calgary. Um and then in my early 20s, I mean, uh, you know, how much detail we go into, you know, we were part of the I was part of the team that launched sportscheck.ca and uh the company that did majority of the development of it uh was based out of Vancouver, Toronto, a company called Blast Radius, and uh just became friends with them. And next thing you know, I'm living in Toronto as a young 20-year-old and did uh two or three years out there, and then decided uh I came home for Christmas and I met my wife and uh and I never went back.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

There you go. And so and so differences between Calgary and Toronto

Calgary Vs Toronto Tech Culture

SPEAKER_01 1:54

and everyone gonna talk about a little bit of apples and oranges, but still in the the Canadian ecosystem. Um you know, from your perspective, the the climate and like obviously not the physical climate, yeah, yeah, yeah but um big differences between the cities.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, um, I think so. And I mean, once again, dating myself here, this is you know 20 something years ago. Um what was so cool is that Toronto like had a tech scene, and Calgary was very much just a full energy company back then. So, you know, I remember even small things about like landing in the airport and seeing like advertisements for like Adobe or or Barracuda like on a billboard, like why are you guys advertising that out here? So um it it really had a cool tech scene and that dot-com feel. Um and then uh but I think Calgary's definitely got up to that and probably even surpassing it.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, it's incredible to see the the progress and kind of what Calgary's tech scene is becoming.

Hating Tech Then Finding The Internet

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Did you always know that you were gonna end up in tech? Like were you the the the kid building computers um in your spare time or like or how did you find yourself in this world?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

So close, man. So um when I was right up into high school, I I had no intention of being in technology. I actually hated hated it. Uh all I did is skateboard and snowboard, like that was my jam. And um, but my parents owned a shop that built computers, and so like even go back into the 80s, they had a shop that they built Apple clones. Oh wow, yeah. I mean, who even know Apple made clones, right? And so um that was in the 80s, and then um I got out of high school and I was uh you know delivery guy for my dad's company, and then you know it didn't interest me at all, but what did interest me was the internet. So around 95, 96, the internet was coming along. If you're from Calgary, you know, the main guys were CAD Vision, and uh so I was just helping them set up modems, just you know, connecting their customers to the internet, and then I I called CAD Vision and I said, you know, hey, we're giving you all our customers for internet access. Can we just work a deal? And then you gotta remember, I'm like a child, right? So I probably I'm like you know, on the phone, and then you're wearing the baggy suits and the not even right, yeah. And and so the so they basically said, Oh no, we we don't really do that. I mean, let's be honest, I didn't get the right person on the phone. I was calling help desk or something, and I think in me, I was like, Oh, that's not cool. So I'm like, you know, dad, we should be an MSP, or not an MSP, sorry, um, an ISP.

Building An ISP With No Map

SPEAKER_00 4:30

And so he's like, I don't know what's involved in that. And so we started doing the research and like totally out of my league, and we built an internet service provider.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Uh that's amazing. So, and there's there's so many stories that you hear sometimes where there's this I'll call like blissful ignorance, yeah. Where where you, you know, if you talk to a lot of different founders, people that have grown companies, if you ask them, you know, knowing what they know now, would they even take in the leaps that they did? A lot of them say no, because like I don't think people understand how hard things would be, um, the roadblocks they would have. Like when you're talking about launching, you know, probably one of the early stage ISPs. Did you, you know, even have a sense of what that would look like?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Not at all. I mean, I didn't even know how to use email, like it was it wasn't even a thing. Um, and and I love that you say that because I think I think back to that, and and what I tell younger people is that like just do it, just do it, and it will like you'll find a path through that maze. Because yeah, like if I look back and would I do it again, oh my gosh, I would say yes. But man, the learning, the learning experiences. I had nights when um uh the the place that we were run out of was like I don't know if you know where the back alley is. Everyone, everyone at Cagrid. Yeah, so we were just down the street from the back alley in this old house that was built in like 19, you know, early 1900s, tiny, tiny thing, and I'd be down there till like two, three in the morning trying to figure stuff out. And we had a guy at a Lethbridge um help us set up a couple servers to get the thing working and authenticating, and uh it worked, and we're happy it launched us, but then that thought goes in your head like what if this thing breaks? Like, who's gonna fix it? And so, literally, because my parents built computers, I literally had built a clone and I'm just looking at configurations here, looking here, looking here, looking here, and you know, one space in the wrong spot and stuff didn't work. So, long story short, yeah, just do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

But yeah, well, and I think that that that idea of execution as well. I mean, I I talked to a lot of different folks that are in in various stages in their journey. And I think that there's so many people that have these big bold ideas, yeah. And then they talk about them, yeah. And they talk about them and they talk about them, and then they they look back five, 10 years um in the future and say, like, holy shit, like I wish I would have done that.

unknown 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Have you always been a person that just is the gonna run headfirst into the fire and figure it out?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Um, yeah, I was gonna say if you talk to my wife, but you know, my execution is not always it depends on the project. And and the follow-through is definitely not always there. But yeah, like I'm definitely a learner of like going in and you know, failing fast and then you know, fixing and reiterating. I mean, agile before it was agile.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, I love it. You you quinned it. Um so then, so you start this ISP and so what happens next?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, so doing the ISP, uh, everything's good, and then uh Shaw comes out with cable, right? And now this is a game we can't even play play in, right? Because it's all dial-up back where we were. So the market starts to erode, but you know, where I had is we we had a company called Hosting House as well, and we did website hosting, so you know, ISP hosting, it kind of all works, and then um, you know, but that that industry, once it went to cable, it really started to go down. And I thought, uh, what's next? And it's

Launching Sportscheck.ca And Learning Scale

SPEAKER_00 8:00

funny enough that my sister, um, she was an SAP consultant and she went and did an interview with the Portsani group. And so she interviews there, and they say, Oh, you know, we're launching sportcheck.ca, and she's oh, I know, I know a guy. And uh, so gets me an interview there, and then I joined the team that's that's gonna launch this thing. And it's kind of funny because we both worked there for a small period of time, and she she was married, so she had a different last name. And people are like, You guys are way too friendly, like is something going on with you guys?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

I'd bring keys from my mom to her, and but I'm sure there's some some awkward stories that came from that one. For sure, for sure. And and so you you go through and and and what was it like launching this website? Because at the time, like sportscheck.ca, like that would have been fairly progressive.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

For sure. It was Canada's first um uh like sporting e-commerce site. Um, and uh you used a product called ATG Dynamo, and it was just like it was big, and TELUS did the hosting for it. And where my role was, I came from like being kind of more of an infrastructure type person. Um, you know, my my role was to kind of talk to the developers and talk to the you know the the data centers and then put that all together.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

So I I I love it. And so and so then so you what happened with that experience then? So you kind of parlayed that into what?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, so so basically I was working with you know the developers a lot, the company called Blash Radius, working with TELUS, made a lot of good friendships, a lot of connections, and then um once that site was launched, a couple years go by, we're doing maintenance. Um, Forzani decides to take the e-commerce department and roll it right into IT, which is like makes sense. It should have been probably like that from the get-go. And then Blash Radius reaches out to me and they say, Hey, we're gonna start building a managed services division so people can host the stuff that we build. Um, would you be interested in coming out and helping us with that? And I thought, geez, that's cool, you know. So literally hopped on a plane, went out there, and I mean, like that was the greatest experience, and like that was probably like the most learning I I I've ever done in that short period of time. Like, we we did Nintendo of Europe, we did BMW, we did KitchenAid, Jenny Craig. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

That's amazing. And and so like I feel like that would have been also a little bit of trial by fire. Oh, yeah, but but some really interesting exposure to to how the world works. And so, especially with some of those big global brands, you know, and and I have these conversations a lot with people that have built their whole careers within Canada, yeah, is the world's a really big place. Big. And I think that you know, even the nuance of how we do business in Calgary or even Toronto is very different than you know, the brand headquarters that's

Global Clients And How Big Brands Run

SPEAKER_01 10:45

in the UK or the brand headquarters that's in Paris. Um how did that kind of shape your your perspective in terms of how how the world actually works?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Well, I I think it actually opened it up being like there's business everywhere, right? Um, you know, it's funny you mentioned the UK. We had a uh Dymo, I don't know if you know who they are, but they make the label makers. We went out and we're doing work with them. And I remember, you know, we're going to their data center and they're like, guys, be careful. This is not North America. Like that power will kill you.

unknown 11:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Um, but yeah, it it totally, totally shaped that that, you know, I would say it's it's it's you know, short-sighted to think that you know business doesn't happen all over the world. But when you're young and you grow up in one spot, it's it's hard to know that there's anything outside of those walls. Yeah, and I think that's where where you're going with it. But um yeah, and and the the difference is is that I find that Canada um is is more reserved, right? The US is very like, okay, let's go, just do it. And we find that Europe is also very much like, let's just go, let's just go.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

So do you think, and and this is maybe a little bit of cause and causation, but do you think that comes from um, you know, maybe different density, different competition? Like what what do you think drives some of those different DNAs? Because you're you're not the first person to say that you know decisions get made way quicker in the States, that that we're very conservative in terms of how we the speed we move at and the pace we move at in the Canadian markets. Yeah. Can you kind of hazard a guess as to what maybe some of those causations are?

SPEAKER_00 12:22

I mean, I just I think that the the easiest is just I think it's just cultural, it's just the way the way it is. Like even like economy, if you look at like, you know, when the recessions and you know depressions hit, you know, Canada was a little protected because our banking system even is just like a little more reserved, right? We're not we're just a little more risk adverse. And I we deal with a lot of American companies now, and you know, one guy said to me, and it's kind of true, he said, you know, Canadians, it's

Why Business Moves Differ By Country

SPEAKER_00 12:50

like you guys think that bad news gets better with time, right? And because you know, we're very cautious, I think.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

I I'm gonna steal that line from you, um, because I think it's true, right? And I, you know, even in terms I was on a call um, you know, a couple days ago with someone from the UAE.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

And and I think even the communication differences, you know, I and and from a self-awareness standpoint, I know that I I'll usually talk in a little more flowery language, I'll talk in a big picture. Yeah. Um, and you know, specifics matter, directness really matters, and you know, that's something that even myself, I'm like, oh shit, like I need to probably hone in here for some of these different cultural nuances.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah, 100%. You know, you talk about cultural nuances. We were on a I was on a call with someone from like UAE, and we're talking about like optimization and cost savings, and they're talking about people in like Saudi Arabia, and we're gonna pitch this to this company, whatever. And he's like, But first of all, don't say that you're just gonna save them money because it doesn't matter. Yeah, we have enough money, it's not that we want optimization of stuff. Saving money is not big on our list, and you're like, wow, yeah, like because in the US and Canada, that's like number one.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Well, and I I think that you know it becomes really eye-opening. And you know, the the cost of velocity and the cost of being there first and the cost of um not being the person that innovates in some of those really competitive markets, yeah, is is you know, if I want to save half a million bucks, I can you know do something very short term over here, like cash is not the issue. That's right, that's right. Yep. And and so so then then how does that start to shape kind of your worldview as you're you're going through some of these different experiences? Um, you know, you're working with some of the biggest global brands in the world. Yeah. How does that set you up

Scale Testing And The Pager Life

SPEAKER_01 14:32

for what's next?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah, and I think the the what it taught me is taught me scale. Yeah, everything works really good when it's just like low scale. Yeah. And then you're like, like, you know, prime example is is you know, Nintendo would release a new video game, and they had this thing where you know, you buy this game and then you could come home, and once a day you go on and play this little game to get stars. Yeah, but we saw that that at you know four o'clock in the afternoon in Europe, like the servers just got hammered, right? And and I think that helped me because that translated into the world that we live in in Canada. We were um working with um uh iHeartRadio, yeah, and uh the same thing would happen to them, but in a totally different way is that you know, nine o'clock, eight o'clock in the morning in Newfoundland, the server started getting busy on that side of the globe because people were signing in, they get to work, turn on the radio through the internet, but then it would just kind of go right across Canada, and then you'd kind of get halfway across Canada, and then the old load was too much and it would fall over. So everything's translatable and and I think just it taught me to push the scale, know where things break before you launch things.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

And and so how do you go about doing that?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Oh wow. Um, it it really depends. I mean, I think like it's just adding load, it depends on what you're doing, but um, you know, right now I'd say our world is a bit different from from from that, because now we're maybe purposely stepped away from like being responsible for uptime.

AI Changes Load Patterns And Skills

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Because that's a that's a young man's game. I mean, being tied to the pager, it was never a fun a fun thing. So um, so you know, today obviously there's way more tools and AI can just hammer the websites, and you know, we got yeah, all these models that can do it for us.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

There was a really interesting paper I read the other day that talked about even some of the, and this is me gonna be I'll put on my nerd hat for 10 seconds here, but in terms of just the actual infrastructure load and and networking load that's starting to happen with AI, yeah, a lot of those legacy patterns are actually going out the window. Yeah, because it's just a constant kind of nine out of 10, 10 out of 10 because of the way that people are interacting with AI and just even kind of um upload versus download.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Um, all of those patterns in the last three years like have completely gone out the window.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

I know, and it's it's such a cool world that we live in. Like even after the dot com, it's like it's great because you can jump in the industry at any time. You know, if I said, Oh, I got well, I do, but you know, you say, you know, I got 20 years experience in does that help me in AI? Because it sure doesn't, right? I mean, like literally, if someone's telling you I got like 20 years of AI experience, you know, you're probably a professor or something like that. But like if you really want rubber to hit the road, you probably want someone that's been really keen on it for like 12 months, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

You know, and and what I found even in the AI space, that like the the superpower isn't necessarily the technical skill anymore, it's the the domain expertise. And and so I think that the you know the the trick isn't, you know, I I really understand the inner workings of of how this code is developed and um you know how it all fits together, but rather I I understand the role that AI and technology can play in terms of the information output, yeah, but I really need to be able to validate is it uh true or is it BS. I really need to be able to wrap context around it from a very business specific lens, and I need to be able to translate in a way that it actually makes sense and moves the needle forward and isn't like a make-work project where you just have 400 agents that just are pushing the same paperclip back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yeah, and I mean you talk about creative, right? I think there I think there's two ways to look at that. You can say, well, being you can be more creative because you don't need to be technical, you can actually just use it to shape what you want in natural language and say, do this. But then the other argument is like AI is using data sets, so it's kind of backwards looking. So is it really being creative, or are you just just kind of rehashing the same thing over and over?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, and and so I'm gonna be really far outside of my depth when I make some of these statements, but that there's also some really interesting research on the AI side of things that talks about um learning, and it's essentially learning in the same way that a toddler learns. Yeah. And you know, at what point are is our creativity just the exact same thing? And and we're just finding patterns from things in the past and and creating and kind of forcing new connections together. And how far away is AI from actually doing that? Like I'm one of the people that advocate as well that you know AI is not creative. Um, AI is a synthesizer of past information. Yeah. But from a really theoretical level, you know, it it is a fascinating debate around what actually is creativity.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

100%. And I'm just happy that we're here and we get to we get to have this opportunity just to sit down together.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I I bet you didn't have that on the bingo card for this chat. Is the what is creativity? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um so and and so so you work with, you know, you have this really interesting global exposure. And then so do you jump right into everything, Cloud, at this point, or kind of are are there a couple more steps in the journey?

The Career Steps Toward Everything Cloud

SPEAKER_00 19:39

There's a couple more steps, and I'll I'll rip through them pretty quick for you. So um I worked remotely for Blast Radius and uh in Calgary and you know, spent a couple of years doing that. And then uh I I was young, right? You know, you're buying a house, you're doing things. So money was was a big thing, and yeah, I was paid well, but my fear was is that if there's ever downsizing on the team, who's the first person to go? Not the guy who it's the guy who's not in the office. And remember, this is before working from home was even a thing, right? So I thought, you know, I should probably go get a job uh locally in Calgary. So um I got a job at a company called Centra, which was a uh a VAR, like a value audited reseller. We sold a whole lot of storage. Um, you know, obviously, you know Vosberg. Yeah, so like that's Did you guys work together there? Oh, yeah, when he no, uh not as that well, yes, because he was at NetApp. Yeah, and uh so we uh I did that um for for a long time and was uh VP of uh services, so all the technical implementations of NetApp um was my team, and then um that company was sold to the Herjivak group. So if you know Robert Herjive, so um we did that, did that for a couple of years, was uh director of data center there, and then um decided to leave and start uh my own company called Shelter Six, and Shelter Six was doing cloud migrations, and this was about 15 to 17 years ago, 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

So you were before the big like cloud migration boom.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, it was totally premature. Yeah, like it hurt. So, and especially in Calgary, you know how we're talking about, you know, Toronto was a little more progressive, so that's where you know I talk about iHeartRadio and things like that. So that's where we were able to to kind of stay afloat doing that. Um, then we were acquired, and um, we were acquired and by a company that that uh liked to sell that app and because they they knew who we were. Me and the the VP from from HergeVec actually also left, and um, they knew we had the ability to sell that app, and so we did that for a little while. And then um when we were done there, we that got shut down, or the office in Calgary got shut down, and then I started um everything cloud. And the reason I called it everything cloud was because I didn't want to go back to selling hardware. So that was like that was.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Now.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah, I'm I'm on the island, I'm burning the boats, but we're never going back to selling hardware. So that was when that started.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

It it sounds like we have a little bit of a similar story. Like obviously, you have uh you know different paths to get there, but you know, we had a little bit of inflection point where we're both in kind of that var MSP space. Yeah. And I had that, you know, after I left um where I was previously, you know, I had that same realization, which is like I'm gonna draw the line in the sand and here's some of the things that I don't want to get back into. Totally. And and it really formed, I'd say, the initial narrative of what we were building with Deliver Digital. Yep. And and so, you know, obviously you you've matured in the same way the the narrative of everything cloud. Um I haven't matured. Yeah, you haven't, but maybe the narrative is mature. For sure. So if you were to like, so what does everything cloud do today?

Cloud Optimization Becomes The Mission

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah. So everything cloud does uh cloud cost optimization, and I like to maybe sometimes drop the cost. We do cloud optimization. Um and uh why that's so important is because I go back, you know, 15 years ago, 12 years ago, doing cloud migrations, and cost wasn't a KPI. The KPI that we had was uh this better be as good or better than it was on-prem because I'm putting my my job on the line. So we would move people there, and and you know, people would move from a you know capital expense to an operational expense, and they thought, oh, this is great. And I'll be quite honest, I've been in the cloud like a long time. Yeah, I still don't understand that, right? Is that like I get it, money's money, but I think at larger scale, um, operational expenses or expenditures are just easier, yeah. But regardless, not not my concern. Um, and then what happened is part of our engineering is that three years later, people are like, whoa, this is expensive. Um, and then cost quickly became a KPI for us. So what we did is we started building our own internal tools to um help our team manage our customers and reduce their costs and do things more efficiently. Uh, and then so we ran that for probably a good seven years. And then about three years ago, we decided, hey, let's shine this thing up, make it into a SaaS offering. And uh and so we did. And so then we compete with the likes of you know the Aptios and those guys of the world and um Canada-based companies. There's not a whole lot of FinOps uh SaaS platforms in in Canada.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

So incredible. So I I have infinity questions uh about that in general, but you know, I I think that that I don't say the the rush for everyone to move to the cloud, right? Um was a really interesting one. So I was on the service provider side during we'll call it that boom. Yep, cool. And and you saw so many people that just essentially tried to replicate what they'd built in the past, yeah, and and tr essentially treated as a different server. Yep, exactly. And so, you know, I I know that the the listeners of the show aren't overly technical, so I'm not gonna get too much into the weeds, and I feel like you and I can have a beer and share a whole bunch of war stories, yep. Um, you know, about what that world looked like. But but for the customers that are coming across your desk right now, what are the main problems that they're having?

Visibility Versus Execution In FinOps

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Visibility. Yeah. So number one, it's visibility. There's two things. It's it's visibility and execution is actually the problem because you can go out and you can get a tool to to monitor your cloud. Great. So that tool is telling you that these servers are over provisioned, these servers are under provisioned, you've got disks that aren't attached to things, you have load balancers with no compute behind them. I know I'm getting super nervous. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Well, how about Vesaurus just bottom of the screen here?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, all these things are wasting money is basically basically the number one thing. But but the problem is we've taken the responsibility of that cost and we've moved it down to like the developers because they're like, hold on, my job is to make these things fast and up all the time. Now I have to worry about fast, up, but balanced with cost. Not really my job. So what we find is a lot of these tools came out, and the visibility is great, but it's like having a fitness watch to say, hey, you haven't got enough steps today. Okay. So so am I am I gonna do something about it or I am I not? And that's what makes us a little bit different. I know that sounds a little bit salesy, but you know, number one, we show you what's wrong. But number two, we're actually spawning like tickets to say, like, here are the things that you have to execute on. And if you're not gonna execute on them, we can do it for you.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

So so do you still have that services back end kind of built into the business then? Yeah. Okay, so so perfect. So just to kind of make sure I fully distill this properly, you're you're kind of the lighthouse within um their cloud infrastructure to be able to say, you know, here's all the things that are going on, here's the five alarm fires, here's the um burning brush fire over here, here's something not to worry about. Oh yeah. Um, and then you're kind of doing air traffic control to say here's where the planes are gonna land. And if you need someone to hop in the plane, I'm trying to carry this analogy forward. No, I love it. I love it. If you need someone to hop in the plane and and land it like the the celly guy that landed in the Hudson River, um you know, that's where you step in as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Absolutely. And then one step further, because we're talking about MSPs

Selling FinOps Through MSPs

SPEAKER_00 27:00

and CSPs, because I came from that var world, yeah, I love it. Like I honestly I love that. So, what we did is we changed um our model from from an enterprise model, where we're actually doing this for MSPs. So basically, they use our search. So our customers are actually MSPs and CSPs. We're like FinOps in a box for them. And when I talk about like creating those tickets, like here's what's happening in your customer's environment. Here are 15 tickets that are gonna save your customer $10,000. Like, go execute on those.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

And and so I I I love that and I think that it's much needed in the space, but but uh you know, there is a little bit of friction there sometimes, especially if these MSPs are the ones that are billing some of those cloud things. Yeah. And so is there a specific type of MSP that's using your your platform or product? Um, or kind of what's the driving force for them to want to um create that change for their customers?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Well, sometimes they're they're pulled into it. Yeah, uh, so they're pulled into it because uh I understand 100% what you're saying. It's like as an MSP, I make you know my my 15 points or whatever offselling Azure to my customer. So if their bull bill is lower, then I'm making less money. The truth of the matter is that only works for like 12 months. And then the someone else reaches into that customer and says, Hey, listen, Mr. Customer, I can save you a bunch of money, blah, blah, blah. And so um, we're seeing that our customers are MSPs that are a little bit more progressive. They're saying, Yeah, we have to get ahead of this because our customers are going to ask for it or they are asking for it. But then um also we see people that are just more like I want to add another revenue stream or another thing into the the working. And I I'm trying to think through this, but but um if you're familiar with like managed sock, right? So that there was uh a lot of MSPs will sell that service, right? It's a managed sock. We're a man managed financial operations. So I gotta think of a better name, but that would be a managed sock.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

There we go. Yeah, I feel like we're gonna have to bleep that one out. But um no, so so that makes sense though, because I I think that you know, sometimes the misconception, especially with the MSPs, is that they're all things to everyone, and they just you know, especially with some of the kind of smaller mid-market ones, you just don't have the bandwidth to be able to pull in the that expertise, that knowledge. Um so it sounds like you can fill a really interesting gap for them to add value to their customers.

AI Spend Is Just Cloud Spend

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yeah, and you know, jumping ahead, what the next thing that's happening is AI spend.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Right. And and let's be honest, like in our world, AI spend is just cloud spend. Yeah, we're taking payroll costs and we're moving them to tokens. Yeah. But that's cloud. So that's that's the next thing that that that's coming that these MSPs got to get ahead of.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Well, and that was one of the things that I was really curious about because like for for all intents and purposes, there's some you know, specific stories where um someone building their own um kingdom internally makes sense, but I would say for the most part, people want to consume the services that they um they purchase, um, and that they're mostly by de facto on the cloud now.

SPEAKER_03 30:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Um, you see a lot of organizations that are at varying levels of maturity starting to deploy some of these AI workloads, some of these AI platforms and tools. But even when you start to get to a scenario where you start to talk about augmenting those developers with AI uh development, if you start to think about some of those purchase decisions um starting to go even further down downstream away from a human, yeah, you know, and I'm sure you see this as well, but that whole ecosystem really becomes in the cloud, and that whole ecosystem needs line of sight in a way that probably becomes more important, not less.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Yeah. 100% agree with you. And even even with our own stuff, we talk about you know, our engineering team that you know creates these tickets and all that, you know, very AI handled now, right? So now we're we're really doing a lot of that review and fine-tuning the you know, the the the AI agents that are actually doing all this work, you know. So now, and we know full circle, yeah, is like can it be done at scale? Heck yeah. Now scale is a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

So is this a pattern? Like, I'm always the person that likes to find patterns and things. And so if we think about the the you know, and I'm sure we can take it back a you know, variety of different iterations where you know the internet was was one thing, but if we think about you know the the cloud boom where everyone moves their workloads to the cloud, you have a whole bunch of uh you know CIOs, boards, CFOs saying we need we need to move to the cloud. Yeah um, you know, there there's probably some humorous stories in there in terms of do they understand what they're getting into? Um but so they they move all the stuff to the cloud, they have this like holy crap moment, we're spending a ton of money, we don't really know what's going on. You start to see a little bit of a pullback. For sure. And and then it starts to mature kind of five, 10 years down the line. Yeah. Is that the stage we're at with AI right now where we're still in the um excitement, everyone kind of you know, run uh full steam into the burning building and just like let's deploy uh AI everywhere and then we'll figure it out later, phase?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

I think so. I think I think there's a lot of like let's AI everything. And the I don't want to say it's a correction, like we we will see uh a maturing of it, right? Because it's like, okay, maybe this is not a candidate for AI, maybe this is. So yeah, I think we'll see it fine-tuned, but uh it's everything, though. That's the thing. There's very

Dot Com Parallels And The Coming Maturity

SPEAKER_00 32:30

few things in my mind. I'm trying to think of an example of something you can't leverage it for today. It'll touch every piece, I think.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

It's true, but I I think that the interesting part of that discussion, um, and I was having this with someone the other day, is the actual true cost of AI as well. Because AI right now is, you know, um, for lack of a better word, heavily subsidized.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

And it's it's for you know, it's subsidized by VCs right now, hoping to get more and more users. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

And and so you you're starting to hear a little bit, like I don't know if you saw the Uber story where Uber, you know, burned, I think, half a million dollars in a month on AI tokens, and we're like, okay, well, like let's just put pause on this for 13 seconds. Yeah, for sure. Um, but I think you're starting to see some of the realities of what that cost story actually looks like for these workloads. And in some cases, you know, you're hearing the almost humorous narrative of we're gonna bring in junior developers down to support our AI.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

100%. And this is and this is exactly you you nailed it. This is exactly where when I mentioned like it's a cloud cost to us, right? So now we're actually, you know, doing reporting on okay, you know, if you take you know, Sally, who's making $70,000, $75,000 a year coding invoices, and we replace that with AI, but if it costs us $200,000 worth of tokens to do it, it doesn't make sense. So we have to be able to report on that and give the true cost analysis.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

So going back to that that patterns conversation, are there patterns from your experience through some of those different cloud iterations that that you would kind of offer as words of wisdom, points of context? Like what are the similarities that you can draw if you're you're talking to some of these executives to say, here's the the framework and lens to evaluate everything through?

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Oh man, I I I don't know if I can give points of wisdom, but I think I think we've seen this before. I think I think we've seen the internet, right? Like, like the internet totally changed the way we work. And and if I want to jump over the little things that happen in the middle of that, this is that again. And this feels also to me very dot-com boomy, right? Like it's very funded, no one's making money. It's kind of like a snake eating its tail, they're just moving the money around. And then, you know, are we gonna see a bit of a bust? I mean, probably with some corrections, but I mean, I think we get excited about all these things is that you know, first it was internet changed the way we worked, then it was like virtualization, which was like, wow, this is amazing. Then it was cloud, right? And I told myself after cloud, I'm done. And now we're in AI. So I mean, I don't know if you can look at it through a specific lens or a framework to say, hey, this is where you should go. But I think you can just look at history and probably that's gonna tell you, you know, it'll mature and there'll be some got guidelines have to put on it. And you know, to stop babbling on this, let's go back to the dot-com. Same thing. Everything was so exciting, and then there was that bust, and then people are like, Oh, okay, so the business plan has to make money. Okay, I get it. And so I think we'll probably see that more with AI, is that it'll have to make sense.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Yeah, well, what's the quote? Uh, those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Yeah, and and yeah, exactly. And I think you know, AI, um, we'll see it get more cost effective. Yeah. And then that might help, that may fix everything.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah, well, and I think, you know, once again, very theoretical. And I I feel like we keep getting pulled into the, you know, what is the world conversation? But you know, especially as AI starts to develop its own AI. Like I think there was a recent um, you know, release that came out from Anthropic, and they said, you know, most of this is now written by AI itself. Yeah. We're we're just kind of the bumpers in the bowling alley a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Yep. Yep. And and I and I think that we're also, you know, people are like vibe coding things. Like, I'm like, I'm vibe coding features and then passing them to our developers to say, hey, what do you think of something like this? Which is great because it gives me actually more of a concept, right? And so I think that um uh we talk about putting the the bumpers in place. Uh we're see seeing people vibe code things and it's acceptable. It's like before rebooting your your Windows machine was acceptable. Now rebooting your Windows machine is not acceptable, but now having like code with bugs in it, it's acceptable.

Everyone Becomes A Tech Team

SPEAKER_01 36:40

So does this does this change the role of technology teams then? Because you know, there used to be this, like I don't even want to say thinly veiled, like it was almost like just a you know four-inch curtain or four-inch thick curtain that just went across and it's like this is IT, please don't touch it. Totally. Um we'll we'll say yes or no, and then like you'll deal with those consequences. You know, I love to tell the story. We we have a customer, and you know, we we have done the you know a whole bunch of different projects for them, but their their biggest power user of AI in their organization right now is probably their CFO.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Yeah, totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

And you know, our conversations have evolved from when when him and I first sat down together to okay, well, how do we pick the right service partners? How do we you know align some of these fundamental pieces of the organization to you know, we're talking about different cloud releases, we're talking about different tools we're using, how we're integrating workflows. You know, he's doing he's doing stuff that I would say far exceeds what I do. Yeah. And and he's their CFO with with zero technical training. Yeah. And I think that democratization of what is technology becomes a really interesting conversation. And it especially when you think about the role of some of those traditional technology teams, traditional MSPs. Yeah like do you have a perspective on kind of how that's how that's shifting?

SPEAKER_00 37:54

I well, you know what? I would say that everyone's in technology, period. Like it's it's like there's no more of that veil to say this is the ID IT department. And you know, here's where I think in my mind where everything totally shifted is you know, um, nest. Remember like the you know, the thermostats. So you got like Honeywell, you know, built thermostats for your house for years, and then all of a sudden someone leaves Apple or Google and they make like a Wi-Fi connected thermostat, and then all of a sudden, like Honeywell's like oh man. Now we have to get in technology. We have to have a team of developers, we have to build an app, right? And they got dragged into this technology world. And so I would say there's it's it's table stakes to be in technology now. Everyone's in technology.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

So, what does that mean for the technologists then? Like, I what what does that role become?

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Oh wow. Um, I would say it's it's emerging technology, so it's probably where it is. And once again, you're looking at what's happened in the past, maybe applying some of those to the future, but I also think we're gonna see some like real big bold moves to say you can't do that. And you can maybe Elon, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Like you can't do that. Well, even if you think about that, uh, you know, that idea of almost you know, we talked about when you you started your first MSP, you know. Sometimes when you don't understand the risk of what you're doing, you can make some really incredible leaps. You can also expose a ton of risk, which I think is a whole other probably a whole other podcast episode. For sure. Um but I think what gets unlocked by by not having some of these traditional mindsets and some of these traditional if this then that and then this then that um constraints be becomes a really interesting accelerator.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

100%. And I'm I'm gonna screw this up. I love the quote. I think it was Henry Ford. It's you know, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Yeah. And that's it.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah, I like that I like that. And like it definitely it definitely makes sense in the in this context. So I I feel like we've been cruising through a whole bunch of different topics, and I do want to spend a little bit of time understanding, you know, not necessarily the the business of everything cloud itself, but your your your journey in terms of of building it.

Bootstrapping A SaaS With Offshore Help

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

And and so it's not an easy journey being an entrepreneur. Sure. Um, you know, I I think for the right people, it can be the most rewarding and fun journey alive. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the story of how you you've been building everything uh cloud.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Yeah, uh how I built everything cloud. Um, well, essentially, I think you know, we're very fortunate to to be able to work with a lot of those brands, build my network, um, and you know, be I think responsible with with the with the finances is probably the number one thing because I never wanted to go out and borrow any money. I wanted to to bootstrap it. Um, and because I had some, I maybe call them seed customers, that that really helped. But um, you know, everything cloud is one of the times that the first time I didn't just get my hands dirty, I decided I'm getting older, I gotta make sure that like the real people, the smart people are doing this. So um, you know, what we did is we've been through you know a couple iterations of of development cycles. Um, and we met uh uh uh an organization out of the Ukraine. This is pre-war, um, that helped us get this off the ground. And what's crazy is the sales guy that started that um I met him like online in the Ukraine, and now he lives in Toronto and he's our operations manager. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. So um, you know, a lot of offshore at first, um, kind of get the proof of concept that MVP off the ground, and then you know, bringing it, you know, internal. Yeah. But we still have a mix of uh internal now and external.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

What are some of the biggest things that as you were building the company that you didn't, you know, that that came true, but you didn't quite realize they'd be the the mountains you had to climb?

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Um I think I think just like anything, you think everyone's just gonna love this, right? Like every oh everyone's just gonna eat this up. And I think that would be the number one thing that would tell people is that that um you know, technology aside, um any businesses, I believe, all about sales. You need a sales channel because if without sales, there's no company. Right. And I think Cuban said that one. So I like to quote it, I guess. But um, yeah, I mean the hurdles for us, um, it's they're not they're not huge because it's it's moving so fast that even if you miss a hurdle, there's always another one to fix, like and I talk about AI, right? 12 months ago, we weren't thinking about optimizing AI. Now we're like, oh my gosh, we have to optimize AI. But now we have to go back to our developers and say, listen, our model needs to be able to iterate fast.

SPEAKER_03 42:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

So now we have to go back and fix all the stuff we did in the past so that when the next cool thing comes along, we can deploy in weeks, not months.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

So do you think some of that that legacy, um, and I'll call it legacy, but some of that legacy learning. So if you think about the you know, your your first stories of having to um, you know, have the standby uh Apple clone sitting beside the old one and some of the um, you know, the actual physical elements of starting to pull some of these things together, do you think that's that's kind of shaped your understanding of of how you need to re-architect some of these things? Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Because the world's changed also. Um, the world's changed because, you know, before, you know, even in early in my career, when we'd have a project come down from the organization, you know, you lived in this world too, I'm sure. Is that they say, well, what do we need for servers? And you'd be like sizing them. And so you'd size it like pick as big as we can and then double it. And then you know, those servers would be ordered, and then two months later they show up and it'd be this huge thing. But now I can go spin up a server in you know 20 minutes. And so um, I I think that's that's changed the industry a lot, and it's allowing us to to fail fast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

If if you were to kind of look back and maybe talk to Dan from um, you know, we'll say you know, the the weeks and months before you launched everything cloud. Is there any specific advice you give to yourself or any words of wisdom or a pat on the back? Like what what would you you say to Dan of of that time?

SPEAKER_00 44:00

I'd I'd I'd probably say, Don't worry about it. Like it's it's gonna be it's gonna be good. Like don't don't fear it. And then I would have also told myself, like, you should have done this a couple of years earlier. Right. Um, because uh you know, I I had to be responsible. I wanted to, you know, get into that corporate world. And looking back, some of my best successes were not in the corporate world. It was when I ventured out. So I would have told myself to quit my job earlier and go for it.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

I I you know, I've given myself the same kind of words of uh previous wisdom. I I wish I'd done this sooner, but I'm also you know, to your point, really grateful for the experiences like I I get asked by a lot of you know 20-something year old people that are looking at starting their own businesses. And and you know, I think you can learn a ton from it, but it is really nice to kind of learn on someone else's time

Sales Channels And Shipping Faster

SPEAKER_01 44:45

sometimes. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

But it makes me wonder, right? I know we keep bringing this back to AI, but I mean, when AI is doing the junior's job, what does the junior do? Yeah, right. How do you how do you get that experience?

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Well, and and you know, once again, I feel like we're we're teetering to the theoretical, but you know, we we compete quite heavily with traditional consulting firms that are built on leverage models, no different than a um accounting firm, no different than a legal firm, and and their whole model is built on I hire MBA with a fancy degree, I I give them a playbook. Yeah, and and they execute on the the vision from up above and and you know, by kind of process of promotion and um kind of self-selection, that that hundred juniors turns into you know uh 50 seniors, which turns into four senior partners, which turns into one manager, like and so there's a full arithmetic. And so if if you get rid of that lower layer, you know, not only does the economic model just fall in the garbage, yeah. But but also that whole I don't want to say the like the whole context model, but your whole delivery model changes. And so I I think that the thing that AI really democratizes is that entry-level knowledge. Um but you know, to your point, what I get really concerned about is the the context that you earn by having things go really well, by having things like falling on your face. And and I think that you can only learn that sometimes through trial and error.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

And so I I do get a little bit concerned around what happens to the world in 15 years when you don't have anyone that has any practical experience.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Tell me about it, man. Claude was offline this morning. Yeah. I was like, I almost didn't get my presentation out.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Right? My whole day was almost ruined.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

Yeah, absolutely. But uh yeah, I I I I agree with you. And I think you know, we're kind of doing the juniors a disservice. However, I think that maybe we're also having the same conversations that our parents had and our grandparents had, you know. I'm like, oh my gosh, this these can, you know, we're gonna get we're having ATMs now. Yeah, all the people the bank are gonna lose their money, right? Or all the people at the bank are gonna lose their jobs. Um, self-checkout. Oh my gosh, self-checkout, what happens to the cashiers? We're doing them in a service, but it's just a shift, right? Because now self-checkout, well, how someone has to develop the software, someone has to put in the hardware, someone has to so I think yeah, I think everyone's gonna be okay. I they'll just find it, it's gonna be different than we think it'll be, though.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

I think so. And and I think that if you were to ask even some of the people, like you know, and I I feel like I've I've used ourselves maybe too many times the reference in this in this episode here, but you know, we we have uh a couple full-time employees on our team, yeah. And and they're both in their early 20s. Yeah. And I we use an incredible amount of AI to run our operations. Yeah. But I think what that also enables is an incredible acceleration of the work that they're actually doing versus um, you know, I I remember, you know, some of my first jobs where it's like, you know, move widget A from like A to A to B over and over and over again. Yeah, and you kind of get rid of some of that mundane. And so maybe there's you know, there's less of those opportunities, but they're um accelerated. Who knows? Like, I think there's there's two sides to every narrative.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

I'm glad you brought that up because I think that's the truth. I think that let's imagine this like nothing changes, no one loses their jobs, but just output is insanely fast now. And the amount of content and the amount of creation that we make is just exploded. And I like to think that's a better way to look at it.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

I'm I'm always the eternal optimist, so I think I think you and I might be wired similarly on that front. Um Dan, I I've loved this conversation. I feel like there's probably you know another full episode of conversation that we could have. But yeah, um, if if you wanted to leave our listeners with any kind of last words of uh of wisdom, of of things that they should think about, is there anything you wanted to leave our

Career Risk And A Final Push

SPEAKER_01 48:51

listeners with?

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Yeah, I you know, I would just say like you know, you know, if you're in Canada, the and this is one of my decisions, is that you know, when I you know you have this fear of going out and doing your own thing and and like the fear of the unknown. But you know what? You're born here, you like you're you've already won. Yeah, right. Like you like your risk to actually go out and do something big is so much like less than if you were born somewhere else in the world that didn't have the opportunities that that you have. So number one, I would just say like go out and just go out and do what you want to do and add add your mark on the world. That's I know that sounds so fluffy, but I think just as you get older, it's like, man, I just people are doing such cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

So I love it. Well, I feel like that's a phenomenal way to wrap up the episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to to spend uh a few minutes chatting today.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Anytime.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

And um, I hope you enjoy the rest of your uh Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Yeah, get it.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

All right, all right, talk to you soon. Thanks. If you've made it this far, like and subscribe on YouTube or follow and leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform so you don't miss any future episodes.