278 - Best of 2025! Decoding the Tech Stack: What Every Business Owner Needs to Know with Ellie Daw

0:00There is a lot of anxiety. I don't do AI right now. My business is going to fail. My family's going to go hungry because I went bankrupt. You've got a business. You're providing value to customers. This is like a French 101. We're learning a new language here. Let's start teaching the language around this stuff.

0:14all right ellie da i'm excited to talk to you founder of an agency called unstuck where she for lack of a better term is a fractional cto and then the founder of yala which is a tech company you are a multiple time founder you've had multiple tech companies you started in theoretical cryptography so you are technically a crypto billionaire and it's the billionaire yes And I think the most interesting thing that you've done is over 40 zero to one product builds in your career. So a ton of tech experience, a ton of knowledge. And what we're talking about today is very simple, very caveman stuff like for me.

0:57I contacted you because I want to understand there's a lot of people right now who are like, oh, I got to get AI in my business. I got to implement. I got to integrate, blah, blah, blah. And they're like me and they're like, I don't even know where to start. Is AI IT? is ai something different and so this conversation is going to be for those founders and those owners who are trying to figure this out and even just build a vernacular and understanding of what exactly this is the first part we're going to discuss is what's the difference between it and real technical help right like a cto isn't a part of the it team wait a second i don't know what these words mean the second part is going to be us talking about okay you're getting real technical help?

1:35What do you need to know in order to not be taken advantage of? And then the third part, I'm really curious to see your new company that you're spinning up called Yala, where you're actually architecting softwares within companies. So that's, that's the three part arc to this. If you're a founder, you want to listen to this conversation, especially if you don't have a ton of tech experience. So here's my very, very first question. Ellie, what's the difference between IT and like a CTO? Yes, great question. They are similar. They have a lot of overlapping pieces. And I think maybe one thing just to kind of calm everyone's nerves at the top of this, I know it feels like AI is moving really fast.

2:14And I know a lot of people are like, how do I bring it in? Oh my gosh. But I think even sort of speaking from someone deep in the tech world, I think what a lot of the folks even on the front edge are learning is that the value to the customer is still the top priority. So everyone listening to this, like you already have a story, you already have customers that are getting value from you. Don't like, don't, you know, blow that up just because AI. So that's a great point. Cause there is a lot of anxiety. You're like, well, if I don't do AI right now, my business is going to fail. And then my family is going to go hungry.

2:44Cause I went bankrupt. But to your point, you've got a business, you're providing value to customers. That's the number one priority. This conversation is just about walking them through like, okay, What's the language? This is like a French 101. We're learning a new language here. Let's start teaching the language around this stuff. Yeah, love it. Okay, so difference between IT and like CTO. Like how would I know the difference between an IT person, a CIO, and then a CTO? So let's start with the IT person. If you need an IT person, this might be like hooking stuff up in the office. Let me make sure that all of my systems talk together.

3:22Let me be sure that my customers can call me. Let me make sure that everything can operate very smoothly, but I don't need strategic help. When it turns to CIO, that's the same kind of operational side of the business, but now you need strategic help or strategic partnership, right? You might be in a vertical where cybersecurity really matters or you're handling sensitive data. Just think about it as the operating pieces of the business. You're in healthcare and you need to protect patient information. Yes. CIO would be someone. Totally. A hundred percent. And CIO would be chief informatics or information officer.

3:59Yep. Chief information officer usually. Yep. And then CTO, chief technology officer. This is usually when you have a software as a service company or maybe your e-commerce or fintech. Your company is software enabled. The value that you are providing is sometimes the software itself, if not just software enabled in some major way. So you're building. There's custom builds there. Yeah. Yeah, I really like that definition, IT versus CIO versus CTO. I think many people that are listening own small businesses and maybe they've got an IT department, quote unquote, and they usually call off like, oh, I've got the blue screen of death.

4:36If you have a Windows computer or, oh, typically that's IT to them. And then the only other real techie thing that they've ever done is they've built a website and they went and outsourced it and maybe their cousin did it or whatever. And then maybe they're doing paid ads, but that doesn't feel techie. That feels like marketing. It just seems like tech is becoming more and more ingrained because now with AI, now it's like, okay, I built the website. Now I got to put AI agents in my business. Like it's bleeding into other things. Like how do you kind of draw the line and delineation for a small business owner?

5:12Yeah, that's a really good question. And I, a lot of times the marketing side of the business, like that website can kind of morph into like, oh, now I'm a software enabled company because maybe it started just as, you know, a website advertising your services and then turned into like, wait, to make the experience better for my customers. Now I want a customer portal. Okay. Now all of a sudden the website needs a way for the customers to log in and maybe they can see the status of their order or whatever it is. Right. That's, that's kind of the, like the customer. Or there's a lead form on my website and somebody fills out the lead form.

5:45Well, now the lead form has to go somewhere. So now I've got to get HubSpot so that I have a CRM that's tracking these leads. And all of a sudden I've got integrations and I'm like, is that a CTO or is that the IT department? You know what I mean? They're just kind of in this no man's land of trying to figure out what do they do? Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good question too. I think a lot of this comes down to where your long-term goal is on the tech enable side, Right. Because if it's a lot of systems integrating together, but you don't necessarily need custom like glue between them or custom software to deliver the services, then maybe CIO is the right role.

6:25Right. It's like, let me make sure everything hooks together. I have a strategic partner to make sure the data is protected. If it's genuinely like, okay, five years from now, I want my entire company to be running as if it were an automation. And I want me and the knowledge in my head and my team to just be able to plug into the software and do our work faster. That might be CTO territory, right? The entire kind of business is transforming and it will have a software component to delivering the services. Interesting. In both of those scenarios, are those both tech-enabled businesses? That's another good question.

7:01Yeah, I think this is another like fuzzy term where people kind of throw it around without there necessarily being like a strict definition. June 26th, 1 p.m. Eastern, you, me, live webinar with my friend Connor Gross, who I asked to come on and talk about all thing franchises. We're going to talk about how much franchises really make, how to find the right one, what to avoid. It's totally free, but seats are limited because I'm trying to get it really intimate so you can ask as many questions as possible. I've got a ton of questions from you about franchises, so I thought, why not bring on an expert?

7:30I'll see you then. link in bio. It feels like to me, there are two types of businesses. There are tech companies, Google, Facebook. Those are tech companies. They have a software that's their service. And then there are healthcare companies. Those are tech enabled businesses. Like they use technology tech quote unquote software bits to operate their business, but they're not tech companies. They are tech enabled. So like in my mind, it feels like every business is tech enabled at this point. A hundred percent. To your point though, like it sounds like the delineation between when I bring on a technical expert is when the service that I'm providing is actually something that software enables or delivers as opposed to it just being a part of my business.

8:17So healthcare might be, I need a CIO because it's not tech that's delivering the product, but maybe I have a consulting agency and I'm going to build a chat bot or something. And this way, customers can actually log in and have chats and get questions answered. That feels to me like, oh, there's now a component of the business that is tech. That's a service offering. I kind of need a CTO. Would that make sense? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great delineation. And I think it's kind of interesting because the entire, I'm seeing a shift in a lot of startups now where like I guess the jargon would be you probably all have heard SaaS right like software as a service now you're starting to hear service as a software right where it's like how can I it's like flipping the model right like we are all kind of the faces of our business because that human component's really important and now how can I put software behind that to to like maybe make myself more efficient maybe make the experience better for the customer So yeah, service as a software is kind of interesting.

9:22Yeah, that is very interesting. For many people who are running these businesses, there's also another term that I've thrown out already, but I like to talk about the tech stack. I feel like that started really in the tech techie community, but now everybody's sort of adopting it. What the frick is the tech stack? This is every piece of technology that you use to piece together to either operate or run your software. So if engineers are talking about a tech stack, software engineers, they're talking about what languages they used, what frameworks they used, what services, what like APIs they're calling to.

9:59Companies as a whole, when they talk about their tech stack, you know, they're talking about marketing tech, right? Like what products are they using to do their marketing? They're talking about CMS, like content management kind of blogging stuff or CRM. How am I, you know, tracking all my customer interactions? Yeah. So a typical tech stack might be QuickBooks online, HubSpot, the Google suite. Maybe that's where you handle all of your emails. Jobber, if you're a home services company that's actually going out, quoting, invoicing, et cetera. It's basically any piece of software that your company is using to run their business, anything you're doing on the computer.

10:37Many times, I feel like businesses don't even manage it. Have you found anything that's good about, I don't know, tracking, hey, this is how many softwares you're using. This is what you're using them for other than your expenses at the end of the month. No, no, this, well, and this was one of the features that I like specifically built into Yalo when I was building the first version of this, right? Because even if you sort of down scope and tunnel vision yourself to just the custom built software, there's still not a good way to see how much are all of these services costing me? What are all the services that I'm talking to?

11:09Like there's just most companies that I work with are just tracking this in a spreadsheet, right? There's no, no beautiful way to do it. Okay. So I'm a small business owner. Cool. I got it. I think I understand the IT portion of it. Anytime that I now need something technical, I'm reaching out. I feel like anytime I talk to somebody technical, let's say I wanted to build an automation or even a website, they could quote me whatever number they think of. And I'm going to be like, okay, that sounds good. And they're like, we're going to host it on this backend and we're going to do this and like they might as well be speaking French.

11:42How do I even like get to up to speed so that I don't feel like I'm being taken advantage of by developers or dev shops? I guess the, if anyone takes anything away from this, I want them to know that like, if anyone is making you feel dumb, like stop working with them. You can understand the concepts here and you should just keep asking why until they can give you something that makes sense, right? Like there's darkened in every industry, the really, really good technical folks, that you're working with, we'll be able to explain to you, here are the technical things I'm doing, and here's why. And you should be able to understand that in the context of your business.

12:19So just keep asking questions. If you don't understand it yet, ask more questions. You can ask, like, chat to BT, right? The AI tools are really good with helping figure out the jargon. But I really would just encourage anyone, just keep asking questions. You don't just have to be like, well, I guess I don't know because I'm not an engineer. I'm good at asking questions because I don't mind looking like an idiot, but army with a tool belt, like what, what are specific things I should be asking for? What's the bare minimum, I guess, I don't know, framework or ask scope of work, whatever you want to call it so that I feel confident in what's being provided to me.

12:54That's a really good question. So I think before you approach these agencies, you should get really clear on what success would look like for you. And I think being on the other side of someone who is technical and does deliver on scopes like this, it's extra helpful if the person coming to me has also like, okay, I thought I was being specific, but actually let me try to be even more specific, right? Like think through all the edge cases. Have I thought of everything? What happens if this one weird edge case, you know, happens, right? And then I would, when they provide, they will provide your proposal.

13:30The proposal will have a scope in it. It will have a price, maybe some information about how the project will run. And I would go through it with them and say, okay, when you say, when this bullet point on your scope says this, what does that mean to you? Because to me, it means this. And here's what the success metrics are, right? Like just really getting clear to make sure that everybody understands what all of the words mean, right? Keep talking about that because you've built more than 40 zero to one products. First of all, define what does zero to one mean? Yeah, this is another like funny tech world jargon.

14:06A lot of people will say I'm a zero to one like engineer, zero to one product manager. That just means before there was not a project. And then when you were done, there was one. But it's usually not referring to the product that will take you. Often you'll hear people say zero to one, one to 10, 10 to 100. And that's just kind of to delineate like this was the MVP. This is something that, you know, got us growth. And then this is the really big scale. So zero to one is the MVP. Zero to one is the MVP. Zero to one is we have this problem, not really sure how to solve it yet. Let's figure out what makes the most sense and let's get something working to kind of prove it.

14:44That's usually articulated as the most difficult phase because you're going from idea to the first workable product, which is very similar to what we're talking about with business owners, right? It's like, I have an idea for what I want. I'm going to go contact a dev shop so they can create me that workable product. So I think your experience and skill set is uniquely suited to talk about this. And the place you started was basically start with the end in mind. Is that the way you did it with zero to one products as well? As you're like, let's scope out where do we want to end up and work our way back?

15:14Yeah, 100%. And it's a lot of times it's like, okay, what would my dream scenario be? What do I have to have for me to say, yes, this thing works? And then when you're figuring out the solution, and this is another conversation you can have at the dev shop, when they tell you, oh, we're going to build it with these technologies, even if you don't know the technologies, say, why did you choose those? Because a lot of that science or art, maybe it's more of the art in that zero to one is understanding, oh, if we pick this, these are the trade-offs we'll have long-term, but these are the pros for right now.

15:47And it's kind of like, that's why those people, the really good technical people that can sort of translate between you and the tech teams are really valuable because you have to, as the business owner, you are responsible for making those trade-offs and saying, yep, I'm fine with that trade-off. Whatever that means for the tech team, go do it. As I'm vetting these dev shops, are there like any broad categories that you're like, here are the five categories you need to look for, or here are the three, or maybe it's just one that you really need to make sure is spelled out when you're getting these proposals from development shops?

16:22I really like to see dev shops that have proposals with the sort of operating procedures. Like here's what we will do on milestones. Here's what kind of week to week will look like. I think you should always get multiple quotes because I think sometimes it's hard. One dev shop might quote you double the other one. But if you have a range to choose from, that's really helpful. Do I need to focus on architecture? Do I need to worry about, Oh, this is what they're telling me they're building on top of. Boom. That's one pillar. Here are the milestones they're projecting. That's another pillar. Here are, I don't know, the tech stacks.

17:00I don't even know the terminology, right? Like I guess in my mind, I'm trying to think through, okay, these are the five checklist items. I don't know if you have those types of things, but anything that you can help me around that would be amazing. So, okay. The proposal should always, of course, have like timeline and scope. you should make sure that the scope matches your expectations as well. Often, really good dev shops will also include kind of details in the scope that you didn't think of. For non-technical people, this is a lot of times like an admin portal, right? Like this isn't something we're thinking about as the outcome of the project.

17:34But, oh, yeah, I actually do need an admin portal, right? So looking for things where it's like, oh, I didn't think of that. That's good. The tech stack, if they have a high level architecture in there, that's always good, too. the other thing that's really helpful you should always ask the dev shops for examples of other projects that they've done and when you're looking at them like it's easy to pull up a website and say oh this looks good but really think like is this the same type of project that i'm asking them for right because some dev shops will be really really fast at like simple websites but maybe you don't need a simple website and so they might be really awesome at that but maybe not a fit for you.

18:12And then the last thing is asking for referrals. Like if they can pass you the name or a LinkedIn link, you know, someone that they've worked with before, just so you can kind of get a sense for what it's like to work with them. That's really helpful. Yeah. I think the clarity piece is really interesting that you talked about, or just maybe sit down with your thoughts or maybe mess around with chat GPT and like get really clear on what you want. Don't just say, oh, I want a website that gets contact information from potential customers. Okay. Think through what fields do you want? Do you just want their first name, last name, email?

18:45Do you want their first name, last name, email, phone number? Do you want their first name, last name, email, phone number, zip code? How expansive do you want it to be? Is it just a single landing page? After they click through that, does it pop up to something else that leads them somewhere? Just thinking through all those steps. Yeah. And your experience on the backside of it, right? Like once they submit, what do I want to happen with that data? What happens next? Right. So just trying to like think through, okay, this is my vision. Now what's every perspective I could look at this from to try to really, really, really get clear on what you want that end product to look like.

19:21Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract. I would spend time, energy, and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business. And you would like, subscribe, and leave me a five-star review. Now, out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights. We both get a ton of value. But I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help.

19:54And if you want, even share this with a friend. I think the other thing that would be interesting to hear from your viewpoint is like, should you get multiple quotes always you should always yeah 100 this is hard it's like what do i do i go to google and i'm like a custom website developer you know what i mean like where do i even go to look in your experience where's been the best way of finding good people honestly referrals from inside my network right like yeah folks that i know that have had projects done like hey who did that for you did you have a good experience with them can i talk to them that's been my my best way because a lot of times especially with these dev shops probably so many of your listeners have horror stories with dev shops i'm sure everyone does but a lot of it comes down to communication and trust right and like where where do you find people that have good communication and high trust probably inside your network right so it kind of makes sense well and that kind of leads me to yalla when we met in person a month or so ago i'm really deep into this vibe coding world.

20:57I don't do a ton of vibe coding, but it's been interesting to see. And basically what that means is now with natural language, dummies like me can go to a replet, lovable, even cursor, although cursor is more complicated and just say, Hey, I'm trying to build a website. These are the components that I want on it and it will build it and it's functional and I can throw it up. And so people like me start thinking, well, cool. I just saved a bunch of money. I don't have to hire an outside developer and they roll it out and it looks good for the first day or two. And then all of a sudden it starts breaking or people start complaining because the links don't work or, and then they've got to go and fix it.

21:33And if you go to try to fix it, it doesn't necessarily go and fix that one thing that you asked it to do. Sometimes it expands the scope and it fixes other things that you didn't even ask it to do that weren't actually broken. So what you do is you get this Frankenstein of a website and to the point where you're like, okay, now I got to get somebody professional in here to come fix it. And at that point, when you bring the professional in, you're paying the professional for two things. The first thing you're paying them for is to get educated on what you built, like what the freak is this thing?

22:03And the second thing you're paying them for then is expertise. And you want to just pay them for the expertise, but you can't pay them for the expertise until they get educated. Now, that is the same problem that many small business owners face historically when they built a website is like, I don't like the developer that I had. I've got to bring somebody in. So let me bring in a new developer. they still got to get educated and then they've got to fix it. But now it feels like that problem is only, it's expanding because you've gotten all these people who were like, oh, I'll just vibe code my way to a product.

22:33What you explained to me was this term called technical debt. And that's when the light bulb went off of like, oh, holy crap. I didn't even realize that even in my small organization, this technical debt is really impacting me. So can you talk about what is technical debt and why is it actually a problem? yes yes and i think while you were saying like oh here's all these weird things that happen when you vibe code with ai you touched on it too but i was thinking like i bet if you had removed the word ai from that story a bunch of people would actually resonate with that with their horror stories from these dev shops they've hired right which is why that like i mentioned it comes down to communication and trust and i will just share quickly and then i'll jump back to technical debt the framework that I like to use for communication with dev teams, you've got to set the expectations up front and specifically do a kickoff meeting with them.

23:24The goal of the kickoff meeting is I want everybody to know everybody's first names, right? We need to have a little bit of a personal relationship and rapport here. Second, I want the whole team to have context. They should understand why we're here. Why are we building this? Why do we care about this? And third, I want the whole team to know where we're going. How will we know that we've got to where we're going? What does success look like? Let's kind of kick off meeting. Thing number two is weekly check-ins. The check-in should just be, what did I do last week? What are the priorities for this week?

23:56What goals do we have for this week? And then talk through any questions. So no matter how clear you get on your scope up front, there will always be questions. That's okay. That's expected. Let's have a regular time to tackle them. And then pillar three is just ongoing communication. So a Slack channel or WhatsApp chat or something where you guys can talk ongoing as things are coming up. It doesn't have to wait for the meeting. There should be an ongoing place where everyone can see priorities and see progress. So like source of truth, here are the priorities. Here's how far we are. So those are kind of the three like, you know, communicate really well with dev teams.