ANTHOLOGY – Self-hosted, self-confident & self-employed (Friends)

27:29Okay. So we've been looking at a bunch of stuff. Self-hosted search. There's an app called Searching. It's spelled SIA, like you see a steak, and then XNG. Okay. It creates an anonymous Google search profile for every query you make. So there's no tracking cookies. I mean, they know your IP address that it's originating from. But beyond that, it's a brand new empty search profile every single time. There's no ads. There's no tracking. There's no spyware. like all of that stuff and it presents the results. Do you remember how Google used to look 10 years ago? Yeah. And now it's got this AI nonsense at the top and pictures and I've trained myself to scroll to about a third of the way down the page before anything interesting actually happens.

28:11With searching it's right there at the top every time and it can self-host it and I connect to my instance through TailScale of course running in my basement. What I didn't expect though was to start looking at other things like AI search, like perplexity. Have you come across perplexity yet? A little bit, yeah. Amazing. Google must be quaking in their boots because you can self-host perplexity with something called perplexica and then you can use searching to... Perplexity goes out to the internet and does those searches on real content because ChatGPT is based on two years ago, right? The data they scraped two years ago.

28:47It'll say, sorry, I have no record before October 2022 or whatever. Whereas perplexity is searching YouTube videos right now. And it's summarizing videos from like right now. So you're like, is the AMD 9950X the best CPU right now? And it will go out and it will transcribe a bunch of videos, figure out the answer and kind of, and then you can ask it questions. And Google's done in my opinion. And until like a proper chat style comes out. Perplexity is so good. And so you're self-hosting Perplexita? Perplexita, yeah. Perplexita. Perplexita isn't quite ready for prime time. It crashes quite a bit at the minute.

29:25And you need a GPU to do the machine learning, like the AI, because it plugs into Olama. But the idea is there. It plugs into Olama underneath to do the... Could you run it on an M4 Mac or something like that? Yeah. Anywhere Olama will run. You can throw like a Mac mini on your network and just let that be the workhorse. A couple of Docker containers, Ollama, and you're good to go. Dope. That's a couple down in your most recent episodes. So self-hosted.show, full length, go deep, I'm sure, right? Chris is your co-host? Yeah. So you guys go deep on that. What else you got, Jared? Anything else?

30:00I'm just now realizing that I've been without Google for a long time, but I've just been suffering with DuckDuckGo. And it's like, I should just replace that with perplexity, and I won't be suffering it. I've just lived without. And I've learned how to use.go to the best of its abilities. Example, I was doing some messing about for my talk here, and I wanted to know the file path that the Nginx Docker uses for its default volume mapping. And I literally said, perplexity, what is the default Docker Nginx mapping for the HTML directory? It came back with the slash user slash share whatever. Boom, right there.

30:38I didn't have to go to look at the actual Docker Hub page. Nothing. It was like right there. And it was. So non-self hosted. What's their model? What's their business? Perplexity. You get a certain amount of searches for free. And then you can pay 20 bucks a month for pro searches, whatever that means. I haven't looked at that. Cool. So you said Perplexica is not ready for usage, necessarily. Mine's been unstable. I mean, I don't know if that's just an Alex problem or what. Right. What are you running around? An Epic 48 core thing with like an NVIDIA. So it should be Hummin. It's not a hardware problem.

31:17It could just be that revision has a, I don't know. That'd be dope. That's cool. I mean, especially if you're on the LAN, I suppose you can always expose that via a Tailscale URL. Thank you very much, Tailscale. To be able to match your own search that's self-hosted. I can get down with that. I mean, we've given so much to Google. So much. It's time to take it back. It's time to just stop giving it to them. Take it all back. You're not going to get it back, but you can stop giving it to them at least. I can hear Tom Morello warming up somewhere over there, you know? There you go. Good reference.

31:51I was trying to go for a Goonies reference, but it was probably too deep of a cut. Do it. I want to hear it. He's like, those dreams up there, those are other people's dreams. He's like, these are our dreams. And I'm taking them back. I'm taking them all back. I remember that, yes. But you know what? This one. This one right here. This was my dream, my wish. And it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back. That was my big cut. That was good. Sean Astin, we love you, man. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Alex. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, man.

32:56instance, they got to sign in, set up their keys, set up their code editor. How's it work? Step one for them, we try to make it remarkably easy for the dev. We never gate any features ever for the developer. They'll click that link that their platform team sends out. They'll sign in with OIDC or Google, and they'll really just press one button to create a development environment. Now that might provision like a Kubernetes pod or an AWS VM. You know, we'll show the user what's provisioned, but they don't really have to care. From that point, you'll see a couple buttons appear to open the editors that you're used to, like VS Code Desktop or VS Code through the web.

33:32Or you can install our CLI. Through our CLI, you really just log into Coder and we take care of everything for you. When you SSH into a workspace, you don't have to worry about keys. It really just kind of like beautifully, magically works in the background for you and connects you to your workspace. We actually connect peer-to-peer as well. If the Coder server goes down for a second And because of an upgrade, you don't have to worry about disconnects. And we always get you the lowest latency possible. One of our core values is we'll never be slower than SSH, period, full stop. And so we connect you peer to peer directly to the workspace.

34:00So it feels just as native as it possibly could. Very cool. Thank you, Kyle. Well, friends, it might be time to consider a cloud development environment, a CDE. And open source is awesome. And Coder is fully open source. You can go to Coder.com right now, install Coder open source, start a premium trial or get a demo for me my first step i installed it on my prox box box and play with it it was so cool i loved it again coder.com that's c-o-d-e-r.com and also by our friends over at eight sleep check them out eight sleep.com i love my eight sleep i've never slept better and you know i love biohacking i love sleep science and this is all about sleep science mixed with AI to keep you at your best while you sleep.

34:48This technology is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in our bedrooms. Let me tell you about 8Sleep and their cutting edge pod for Ultra. So what exactly is the pod? Imagine a high-tech mattress cover that you can easily add to any bed. But this isn't just any cover. It's packed with sensors, heating and cooling elements, and it's all controlled by sophisticated AI algorithms. It's like having a sleep lab, a smart thermostat, and a personal sleep coach all rolled into one single device. And the pod uses a network of sensors to track a wide array of biometrics while you sleep. It tracks sleep stages, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, temperature, and more.

35:32And the really cool part is this. It does all this without you having to wear any devices. The accuracy of this thing rivals what you would get in a professional sleep lab. Now, let me tell you about my personal favorite thing. Autopilot recap. Every day, my eight sleep tells me what my autopilot did for me to help me sleep better at night. Here's what it said last night. Last night, autopilot made adjustments to boost your REM sleep by 62%. Wow. 62%. That means that it updated and changed my temperature to cool to warm and helped me fine tune exactly where I wanted to be with precision temperature control to get to that maximum REM sleep.

36:14And sleep is the most important function we do every single day. As you can probably tell, I'm a massive fan of my eight sleep, but I think you should get one. So go to 8sleep.com slash changelog and use our code changelog and you'll get$350 off your very own pod for ultra. You can try it free for 30 days, but I am confident. I sleep on this thing every night. I'm confident you will not want to return it. Trust me. Once you experience this AI optimized sleep, you'll wonder how you ever slept without it. How do I know? Because that's exactly how I feel. They're currently shipping to the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.

36:52Once again, eatsleep.com slash changelog and use our code changelog and get$350 off your very own Pod4Ultra.

37:06Next up, we are joined by Isra Taha, a senior software engineer with over 12 years of experience. Isra is as legit as they come, yet she still struggles with self-confidence. Sound familiar? We kind of hounded her to get her on the mic. I even felt bad for a minute, but it all worked out in the end because she decided to do it and we had a great conversation. Here it is.

37:31Isra, Isra, Isra. Yes. Here we go. How close do I have to be? Is that good? Depends on how loud you're going to be. You're golden. You're golden. Sweet. So we asked you to come on the show yesterday morning. Yeah. Now it's today afternoon, but you made it. I did. I almost didn't make it. You're stepping outside your comfort zone. I am. Do you find that hard to do? It is, but I gave my first conference talk this year, and it was because somebody pushed me to do it. And so if I don't start to take more of those chances myself, I'll never step out of my comfort zone. and I can't rely on other people pushing me to do something until I do it myself.

38:12We kind of pushed you into this one, didn't we? Yeah, well, a gentle nudge is what I like to call it. We gave her a nudge. We didn't require it of her. Constant gentle pressure. We just wanted her to come on the show. So we're happy to have you. First time at All Things Open. It is. Impressions. It's great. Every day I walk through and I find more booths and more floors. Lots of booths, yeah. Yeah. It's a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. I'm used to more smaller conferences capped at 1 ,000 people. So it can be a little bit intimidating, but I think going to more conferences made me a little bit more comfortable.

38:48Speaking to people, whether at the booths or at the hallway track, just kind of finding people that you have things in common with, whether you went to the same sessions or just at lunch. Yeah. Yeah. We're hallway trackers ourselves, aren't we, Adam? That's right. Yeah. That's where all the fun is. That's where we belong, you know? It is. That's where the people are. Yeah. I've had more conversations with people than I have been to sessions. Yeah. And I think I like that a lot better because you can find a lot of the content online, whether it's on YouTube or a blog or things like that. But the thing that I miss most is that interaction with people because I do work remote.

39:26Yeah. And so I go to conferences for those connections, for those interactions, and not really for the sessions. Right. What if we just had a conference that was only the hallway track? That would be incredible. Hallway conference. I would go to that. That's right. Yeah. Coming to a hallway near you. Yeah. Don't go in there. There's no talks. The nice thing about that is you don't really even need a place to gather. You just need a hallway. Yeah. We don't need an auditorium. Would you have vendors and stuff too? Would it be like this? Everything would be in the hallway. But it would get pretty crowded though.

40:01Yeah, you would need a pretty big hallway. Would there be a revolt attempting to organize? What would be cool would be to put it in an arena, but just in the hallway of the arena, the circular. And so you would just walk in circles. We call it circles. A figure eight. Yeah. Well, that's not how they're designed. Oh, you want to cut through the middle. Just think out loud. Cool shape. This is what we do. Welcome to the podcast. We think out loud. What do you think? Would you go to that conference? I would. If we just made you walk in a square circle or a figure eight circle or a continuous. Kind of like a speed networking kind of thing.

40:40Yeah. Yeah. What would attract you to that conference? The hallway? Because you come here for the people that come here to hang out in the hallway. Yeah. I think it's a hard sell, especially if you have the company paying for it. It's hard to sell your employer on, I'm just going to go talk to a bunch of people. Where's the business value in that? is what a lot of them would probably have a little apprehension with. Right. But it's kind of like a meetup, just on a larger scale. Yeah. Yeah. Or like an uncomf, you know, like base camp style. Base camp? Bar camp. Food camp. No, not food camp. Bar camp.

41:17Bar camp. Bar camp was a response to food camp. Do you know food camp? I don't. You know bar camp? No. Okay. So food camp stood for Friends of O 'Reilly. Okay. And that's Tim O 'Reilly. Tim O 'Reilly. The creator of the O 'Reilly Empire, media empire. And he had an event that was, I think, on his property or somewhere near where he lives. It was very exclusive, invite only. You had to be a friend of O 'Reilly to go. Okay. And it was a camp, Foo Camp. I think they camped out. Okay. That part might be gray area, but the rest is true at least. and cool for everybody who gets invited, but not cool for anybody who doesn't get invited, right?

42:02So Bar Camp was a response to Foo Camp because Foo Bar, right? And so Bar Camp became an unconference where anybody can come. You don't have to be a friend of O 'Reilly. You can be anybody. And because it was an unconference, there was no pre-planned schedule. So you show up on a Saturday morning, for instance, right? everybody gets together and there's whiteboards or even just construction paper and there's a schedule like here's slots and you just show up a lot like lightning talks you just show up and like sign up for a slot yeah and then you just have your you're putting together the conference as it's going yep they actually did that they did that on uh sunday at all things open oh yeah that first day there were two uh tracks there was the community track and then there was a diversity track and the community track was essentially a bunch of people writing down talk ideas or session ideas and they just get around in a room in a circle and kind of talk about that one topic yeah another that conference also does a similar concept that's right open spaces open spaces so we went to that conference yeah in austin in january yeah were you at that one not in austin but i went to wisconsin one we wanted to go to wisconsin we didn't quite make it but you did i I did.

43:20A spaces. What was that called? Birds of a feather? Was it called spaces? I don't know. Like there was tables. It was called come to my table and hang out. And you would sign up. The tables were lettered or numbered. Yep. They were numbered. And you would sign up what we're going to be talking about at this table. And Adam, you did home lab or something? I did. I did home lab and I did podcasting. Podcasting. Yep. Was that cool? That was cool. Did you get a lot of people come to it? Describe a lot. Four or more. Oh. Yes, a lot. Yeah, it was good. We had some good conversations about both, Home Lab and podcasting.

43:57I think a lot of people are probably interested in podcasting in some way, shape, or form. Yeah. I did a really good job with my placard, though, because you could put it up on the board, and I decorated it. Oh, nice. I made it look flashy, you know? You think that's how you got such big numbers, like more than four? I think it was a great topic, but it was also like, oh, look at me. Yeah. I was peacocking, you know? I guess you got to do what you got to do. Yeah. Get your attention, bro. You know? Right. Get your attention. So that's cool. I like the idea of, I like improvisation. I like spontaneous things.

44:29Yep. And so I really have, I've gone to a lot of bar camps over the years. Yeah. Used to be a bar camp Omaha every year for a long time. And they were just fun because you never know what you're going to get. Right. You don't know who you're going to meet or what you're going to talk about. Oh, that's pretty neat. Adam is showing her a picture of what he put on that conference. It was the main thing, and I put a little sub-topic. Let me see it. I'll describe it. Go ahead, Drew. It says, all caps in blue across the top, Homelab, exclamation mark. That's it. Oh, no. I thought those were names. I thought people signed up.

45:03It also says now in kind of a cloudy, kind of a mixed-match unified. Proxmox. Oh, yeah. It's a tag cloud. VLANs. Ultimate. Ultimate? Ubuntu. Ultimate. Texas. Docker. Oh, no, TrueNaz. Texas. Can you read? Your handwriting leaves a lot to be desired. Wi-Fi 6. Pi Hold. Now, did you talk about all these? Yes. So that's not even false advertising. Now, the other one says podcast in all caps, and then EEN in lower caps, because I think you probably forgot to put that in there. Exclamation mark. Mike's software, sales, editing, questions. community clips gear that's good that's good advertising i like that because a lot of times you have like a topic but you don't really know like what they're going to be talking about almost too open-ended it's too generic or i know about you know or you want to something or other yeah switching ports and stuff yeah come on now yeah you know wi-fi six right it'll get you i don't know what that is see but you would want to you might show up and find out about wi-fi generally right yeah what is wi-fi uh wireless uh something yeah i think it stands for fidelity but that's right but yeah wireless networks right and six is a good number and six is just better than five you know it's the next version than four too it's here though right wi-fi six it's here many devices are Wi-Fi 6 enabled, but not all of them.

46:34Yeah, it's not faster. It can do more concurrent bandwidth than Wi-Fi 5. It's a wider pipe, but not a faster pipe. Cool. Interesting. I learned something today. If you were to command a space and advertise it, did you do that at that conference? Did you start one? I did not, but I attended my first open space this year, which is surprising because like we've done open spaces at that conference for 11, 12 years, but I was always interested in the sessions and I didn't realize that the interesting conversations usually happen in those open spaces or in the hallway. But I went to my first one this year and it was on meetups and how to get people to show up to meetups, how to organize meetups, because a lot of them have died down since COVID.

47:29A lot of them are pretty much gone. So how do we bring those communities back? How do we, in a sense, resurrect those meetups and get people more involved in those things? Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So if you're going to start a space, though, like you're going to step outside your comfort zone. And next year at that conference, I'm going to run a space. I would probably do it on React Native. Okay. I've been a React Native developer for two years now, but I'm a solo dev for the most part. And I don't know a lot of others in the community, at least immediate community, that do React Native development.

48:06So it would just kind of be interesting to see if there are people doing mobile development, what are they using. If they're interested in React Native, I could maybe talk about that a little bit. Yeah. But yeah. How do you keep up in the React Native world? I listen to the React Native radio podcast. That's hosted by Infinite Red, who is one of the leading consultancies, actually one of the biggest consultancies in the U.S. for React Native development. I also read their newsletter. They have a newsletter that they publish with some of the latest news. I keep up with React Native releases. They just released 0.76 recently.

48:44And then just kind of keeping up on Twitter, just reading up on new libraries and frameworks with Expo. Brand new architecture, right? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a take on that? New architecture by default. I haven't used it yet, but it's supposed to be faster than obviously the old architecture. So there's a lot of push for React Native packages to switch to the new architecture because there are ones that are still not compatible with it. So if you do switch your project to new architecture, there might be some packages that kind of have issues with that. But I know there's a big movement to get those packages compatible.

49:23So, yeah. What else, man? Anything else? Is it GPT-able? React Native? Like, how do you level up and learn? Where do you get your new skills? By doing. It is GPT-able. But some of the stuff is a little bit older or, like, outdated. Right. So you kind of have to keep up with documentation, kind of have to try it out for yourself and play around with it. But yeah, that's kind of been one of my biggest struggles is where do I find those resources when I have questions on how do I do this or this isn't quite working the way that I expect it to, where do I go? And so Twitter, Infinite Red also has a Slack community of a lot of React Native developers.

50:08So if you have questions, a lot of times you can go into their Slack, ask a question and somebody will be able to either answer or point you in the right direction to figure out where to go from there. Nice. What are you doing? You said learn by doing, so what are you doing? I'm building a React Native template. So I am using React Native CLI to build a template with React Native hook form and Zod for forms and validation and integrating authentication with the idea that if I wanted to build a mobile app with React Native, these are the things that just kind of come with it so I don't have to rebuild it from scratch.

50:55So these are things that I like to use or would make a development easier. And just kind of learning by doing. So how does validation work with Zod and React Hookform? How does authentication work with Auth0? How do you implement state management with all of these technologies and what's the best way to do it? So it kind of helps me learn about the technologies that I'm using, but also how to integrate them with other technologies and have something that I can then take and use to build a real-world app. Awesome. If you had a magic wand to change React Native, an angst, or just something you haven't learned quite as well as you'd like to yet, what would it be?

51:38How would you change it? Debugging. Debugging? Yeah. What's the problem there? I think the tools that we have today aren't like the tools that we're used to in web development. I know there's a debugger that's coming out with React Native 0.76. I heard about it in React Native Universe or React Universe. I can't remember the name of that conference, but it was held in Poland earlier this year. Most of my logging and debugging in React Native is console logs, and I'm sure a lot of people kind of do that. It's just not a lot of good tooling around debugging in React Native. There is Reactatron. It was also built by the folks at Infinite Red.

52:18I haven't had a chance to try that out yet, but it's one of those things where if I could know more about debugging in React Native, I'd probably try Reactatron, try out the new debugger in 0.76, and kind of figure out how best to do that. Awesome. Dope. Good job. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for sharing with us. Now you're a podcaster. Awesome. Damn. You did it. I did. We did it. We all did it. It's done. It's not as scary as I thought it was going to be. Told you. Yeah. It's fun. You just talk to each other. What's up, friends? I'm here with a new friend of ours over at Assembly AI, founder and CEO Dylan Fox.

52:56Assembly AI is where you can turn voice data into insights, chapters, transcripts, summaries, and so much more with their leading speech AI models. So Dylan, give me a glimpse into what you're doing with speech AI models at Assembly AI. So at Assembly, we're building industry-leading speech AI models for various tasks like speech-to-text, streaming speech-to-text, speech understanding, to help developers easily convert voice data, whether it's live or pre-recorded, into super accurate text. And then to help developers extract a ton of information and metadata around voice data or even around the text that they just were able to convert from that audio data.

53:36So these are things like picking out entities or PII that was spoken in voice files or summarizing voice and audio data down into custom summaries. It's things like being able to detect how many speakers spoke and who said what and what the names of different speakers were. So we bundle all those things into a super simple API with really great docs that developers can just sign up to for free to start, use the API, build into their apps, and then build these really cool AI apps and products and workflows and automations on top of voice data with. I dig it. Okay. Can you take me a little deeper into the opportunity for developers?

54:15Because it seems like there's a lot of voice data out there and there's a lot of trapped value in that voice data. There's so much voice data being created on the internet now. Podcasts, videos, phone calls, voice messages, audiobooks, virtual meetings. It's crazy. And you can now transform and understand all this voice and audio data in ways that were not even possible a year, 18 months ago. So what we're seeing with the help of these new AI models that we're creating at Assembly, developers and organizations are just racing to build all these new applications, workflows, those automations that leverage the voice data they have either within their organization or within their product to build really cool new products and services workflows that are just like taking off at the market.

55:02So at Assembly, we're building the industry leading models for all those different apps and workflows, whether it's speech to text or speaker diarization or speech understanding capabilities to summarize voice data or extract entities from voice data or mask PII from phone calls for various types of automations that might be built. And we're exposing that through a super simple, super scalable API that's just constantly being updated and constantly getting better. And so we're seeing a crazy amount of developers and companies just build really cool apps and services on top of our API every day.

55:35It's really only just getting started, especially with the model updates that we have planned over the second half of the year that are coming out. They're really excited to launch to the developers on our API. Okay, constantly updated speech AI models at your fingertips. Well, at your API fingertips, that is. A good next step is to go to their playground. You can test out their models for free right there in the browser. Or you can get started with a$50 credit at assemblyai.com slash practical AI. Again, that's assemblyai.com slash practical AI.

56:13Our final two conversations are with a husband and wife pair, but we speak to each of them separately because they had their son and daughter with them at the event, which is awesome, but means they had to take turns on kid duty. First up, Avindra Fernando, an independent software consultant. After Avi, we speak with his wife, Aditi Rabachandran. Aditi is an independent software consultant. Is there an echo in here? No. Is there a power couple in here? I think so. Well, we're here with Avi Fernando. Fernando. Fernando. We're here with, I was about to call you Abby. I just changed the A sound. Abby.

56:52I'm Abby now, y 'all. Avi Fernando. That's right. From Kansas. Kansas City. Kansas City. Born and raised? Not born and raised. Born in Sri Lanka. Okay, Sri Lanka. How did you get to Kansas? I got to get to Kansas. Are you the Missouri side or the Kansas side? I live on the Kansas side. Okay. Yeah. So I got here when I was 19. Wanted to pursue a degree. Yeah. So that's what I'm doing. KU? Rock Chalk Jayhawk. Oh, Rock Chalk. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, we speak a different language here in the Midwest. What did you say? Say it louder. I said Rock Chalk Jayhawk. Rock Chalk Jayhawk, yeah. Rock Chalk.

57:25That's their saying. Rock Chalk Jayhawk. That's our chant. Yeah. The KU Jayhawks. The motto. They're the Jayhawks. The mascot. Rock Chalk Jayhawk. Rock Chalk Jayhawk. Rock Chalk Jayhawk. That's right. Yes. You're saying it right. That's what they all say to each other. It's kind of like saying Semper Fi. You'll be chanting it. Yeah. It's a chant. Give me a demonstration. Give me a demonstration. Do it. Rock Chalk J. Rock KU. That's it. I did not go to KU. All right. But I've been there many a times, and I know the chants because I live nearby. All right. So you're 19, move from Sri Lanka to Kansas, of all places.

58:07That's right. Yeah. And then you never go back. No, yeah. I stuck around in Lawrence, finished my bachelor's in computer science. Nice. And then decided right after, like, let me do a master's as well. So I pursued my master's right afterwards. And then stuck around in Kansas City. Yeah. Since. Got married, started a family, started a business. Yes. In that order? Eventually. Yeah, eventually. Sure. Probably skipping over a lot of life there. So my wife and I, we met at KU. Okay. We were both teaching assistants, so we started dating right around the time of graduation. So we both started at Cerner, which is a large healthcare IT company in the Kansas City area, on the same day.

58:49Wow. So we've had a great journey from the very beginning. Yeah, you have. In lockstep. Yep. That's good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And you are a React guy? Oh, one of my specialties, yes. Okay. Yeah. What's your list of specialties? Why don't you list our specialties for you? Mostly front-end, yeah. I would say React, Next.js. Do a lot of playwright tests, Cypress for my clients. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you are running your own business. Yeah, since 2021. How'd you get there? Great story. So back when I was working at Cerner, I got to meet a lot of architects and senior engineers, which I had learned a lot of knowledge from.

59:32And then this journey goes along. at one point I decided to join another big company. At that point, I started to feel like I was attending a lot of meetups locally because I wanted to spread the knowledge that I was gaining from the other people. And I spoke to a couple of directors at RSA at the time. And then they were like, yeah, you bring the meetup in-house and we'll let you host it. We'll let you have people in it. So it was awesome, right? So I was really motivated by all of that. But then I realized what I'm missing is I'm seeing how big companies run, how they operate, but let me see how the small companies run.

1:00:10So I took the risk and I said, okay, let me just go join a startup, a product startup. So that was my journey into seeing how a product works. From a startup level, there was only like five people at the startup, and everyone was wearing different hats, getting started with it. Learned a ton there, right? constant innovation, constantly grinding. Great, great, great time there. What I was thinking to myself at that time was, okay, now I got the product startup perspective. How does services or consulting work, right? Let me go experiment that. So I joined a services startup, which their motto was consulting.

1:00:48A couple guys, amazing dudes. Got to work with them, see how they negotiate contracts, you know, bringing different contracts. One of the contracts was so interesting to me. I was working on an app for someone. That was his hobby. He wanted this idea of a virtual bar. So he was mapping out all the bars in the cities that they go to and would give the ability for someone to purchase a seat in the virtual world, which was a fascinating idea. I was like, people pay for this stuff? It's like, yeah, this is cool stuff, right? So I got really motivated by that. And then eventually decided, okay, I'm just going to, I'm just going to start this journey on my own and see how things go.

1:01:29So that's fast forward to 2021. Sure. And I worked with a client and at that point I decided, okay, the project's going really well. And I think I can pull the plug on my full-time job and took that leap and never looked back. Gotcha. So you were kind of a weekend warrior at that point. Yes. You had a job. Yep. Nights and nights and weekends. I was wondering, because for a lot of people going into their own business, especially a services business like a consultancy, the question is, how do I get that flywheel going? Do I just quit my job and take the leap or do I weekend warrior it for a while?

1:02:09So did you have a plan from the start or was it just kind of like opportunistic? Yeah, I think I jumped into the opportunity. Maybe in hindsight, I probably jumped into early, but again, I have no regrets, right? There's never a good time, man. Yeah, absolutely. Right? Yeah. There really isn't. You can't town that stuff. It's like the market. You can't town the entrance into a stock. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, you can, but it's hard. Right. It's basically impossible. Yeah. Just get in. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The best time is now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's why you've been doing that for three years?

1:02:39Yes. What's the hardest part? Hardest part is managing the different clients and keep the pipeline full all the time, right? So now wearing different hats, not only consulting, not only coding, not only mentoring. Selling. Selling. Yeah. Closing. Invoicing. Invoicing. Collecting. Selling, collecting money. Contracts are tough too because you want to scrutinize those contracts. Those contracts are obviously like words of bond. Oh, yeah. So it's got to be clear. Yeah. And you don't want your client relationship to go haywire because you did not word your contract well enough. Yeah. There's always little details between each contract that changes.

1:03:16Yep. And there's a lot of details in that process. And finding the right people who actually write the check. Some companies, it's the CTO who does that. Some companies, it's not. The CTO still has to talk to the CFO, or the senior engineer will have to go talk to someone else. So getting everyone on board. Do you have to spend a lot of time hunting down a check? What's that? Do you have to spend a lot of time hunting down this check? Once you've delivered your invoice, is there sometimes like, hey, you know, y 'all owe us the money the invoice said to pay us? you know? I've been fortunate so far.

1:03:47Okay. So, knock on wood. You'll hit it. Yeah. You'll hit it eventually, especially larger. I still haven't had to. The larger the org, the less they care. Yeah. What's your TTP? What's that mean? I'm making this up right now. Yeah. Time to payment. Yeah, do you have like a net 30? And TTP. Sorry. Meantime to payment. Mostly net 30. Uh-huh. Right, that's my standard. Yeah. But, a couple months too. Fair. We're great. That's good. But that's, I learned a new word today. MTTP. Yeah. to payment. Here's a pro tip on your terms. Take that net 30 and turn it into due upon receipt. Yep. Because if they're big enough, they're not going to care anyways.

1:04:25They're going to pay you when they want to. And if they're small, they'll take that net 30 very seriously and they'll pay on the 30th day. So if you just change that to due upon receipt, and if they're serious, they'll just pay you as fast as they can. But the other ones will ignore you anyways, so they're not going to pay attention to your net 30. It won't really matter that much, but you might as well try to get paid as fast as possible. Gotcha. Yeah, that's what I do with one of my clients, and they're really good about it. Yeah. Good about it, yeah. But, yeah, the larger ones, you know, it's like a whole, like you're a vendor in a system, and there's like some.

1:04:55They don't even care what your net anything is. It's like, net whatever, I want to pay you. Yeah. If you're lucky, I'll pay you. The nice thing is, though, on the larger ones is once you get that deal set up, and you're in the system, and you're on those terms, they will actually pay you reliably. That's right. Whereas the smaller customers, you know, they might run out of money in the meantime or something. Yeah, yeah. And just not have the money to pay you. So I certainly hit that as well with my time. Yeah, it's interesting. I worked with a foreign client too. And sometimes you have tax concerns too, right?

1:05:22You got to get the right documents before they can pay you. So I had to go obtain tax certificates saying that I pay taxes in the United States. Really? So that I don't get double taxed in the other country. So yeah, there's a lot of hoops you got to jump through when you're actually customers are from outside of the US. So when I first started, I thought to myself, if I want to work 40 hours a week and I can bill X dollars per hour, you know, I think it was like 75 when I started and I can get that 80 % of the time that I'll make this much money. Does that, does that dog hunt? You know? And then you look at that number and you're like, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense.

1:06:00Like I can live off of that. What I didn't realize is, is that working 40 hours a week, if that's what you want to do, which is what I wanted to do. And billing anywhere close to 40 hours a week, like those two things don't happen, right? No, very rarely. It's a dream. Yes. So how many, what percentage of your working hours are you billing? Is it 50%, 80 %? Because you're a solo consultant, right? So you don't have any help on anything, maybe some software doing some stuff. That's right. Yeah. But like everything that has to happen in your business, you're doing it or software is doing it. How much of your time are you billing on a weekly percentage wise?

1:06:36Don't need hours. Yeah, I would say about 80%. 80%. That's a good estimate. And you have a large customer, which helps. Yes, absolutely. How many hours a week do you work? About 35 to 40 right now. What? Nice. Yeah. Self-employed? Yes. Working 35, maybe 40? Yeah, which is pretty good. I keep Jared's face, by the way. What are you looking at me for? Well, because I just want a response. Yeah. Okay? For me? Well, I was telling Jared earlier that I do have capacity, right? I'm always constantly looking to keep a couple of clients at the same time. So I can agree to some more contracts and get those hours in.

1:07:16But you got an 80-20 rule on your customers. Like currently you have an 80 % customer and everything else. Yes. Yes. So that helps you get to that 80 % billable. Yes. If you had three smaller customers at the same time and no larger one, you would spend more of your time trying to fill that pipeline. Yeah, yeah. And if that 80 turns into zero, now you're flip-flopped. So there's risks on either side. There's no perfect way to set it up. Yeah. And I think it depends on the year, it depends on the month. All of these formulas would change and you've got to constantly keep adapting to the newer world.

1:07:49I'm just surprised. What are you surprised about? That you only work 40 hours. Yeah. Not a lot of people do that. Yeah. Well, there's a primary reason for that. So we have a little one at home. And I deliberately want to spend as much of this time. That's the way to do it. Heck yeah. With the kids. Just because you have that principle doesn't mean you get to always do it. And that's good for you that you do. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm surprised not because I think you should, but because you don't. Yes. Which is a good thing. Yeah. And, you know, you're talking to two people who power ties their family deeply, you know.

1:08:25Is there a better way to say that? Deeply? Yeah. It's just, I thought about it, you know. Massively? Bigly? Yeah. Bigly is the right word. Bigly is the right word. Yeah, I thought about it. It's like those years of my son and my daughter. They're not coming back. Yeah, the time, once it's gone, it's gone, right? It's the most valuable thing. And I have a bunch of them. So the way I look at it is I got six kids. And I look at it like every year I lose six years. Because all six of them get one year older. So that's six years they've actually gained on a single year. And so how precious is each one of those?

1:08:57Oh, absolutely. Once they're all adults, those years won't matter quite as much. But right now, those aren't coming back. I'm about to start crying, man. Yeah. Look at the three of us here. It's hitting me hard. Although, Avi's got us beat because his kids are literally with him. Yes. Last year, I had a son with me and the year before. Yeah, I consider bringing my son, and I really wanted to bring him. I was just thinking. How old is he? I'm just not sure. Eight. He's a little young. Yeah. Yeah, I think he needs like one more year before he can. I would not be able to concentrate. Yeah. Right.

1:09:27And it's not his fault. is that I would actually probably want to experience it with him. So I would be distracted as a dad. Whereas otherwise, I can totally focus. So we pick and choose. So this is the second conference. So my wife, she's speaking here too, and she gave a keynote earlier. So that's why everyone's here. He flexing on us right now? Yeah, he is. He flexing? He did. He literally flexed his body when he said that. He was like, he's flexing. All right, we get it. You're cool. and I continue. No, your wife is cool. Oh, you're both cool. Yeah, that's right. You're both cool. That is nice though.

1:10:03He's cool by proxy, okay? That's what I'm trying to say. The truth is we can find a babysitter. They're still in lockstep. That's true. They're still in lockstep. Yeah. Look at that. After all these years. So you're doing the consultancy. What does she do then? She does very similar consultancy as well. She does mobile. Okay. Yeah, that's her specialty as well. All right. So you're both kind of doing everything the same. Now is one of you better than the other? There are talks about merging the companies because we don't want to pay the same accountant. Yeah, exactly. You might as well minimize your costs.

1:10:37We started at different times and different specialties. Going forward, let's merge. Yeah, totally. Brand new company name. Maybe even like, I don't know, what's the company's names? So my company is Taprobin Consulting. Okay. And hers is Surya Consulting. So we can hyphen it maybe. The old hyphen. We'll have to sit down and talk about that one. Well, she's out here to speak for herself. That's right. So we need to decide right now before she gets here. That's right, yeah. See if she agrees. And if she does. You both are eyewitnesses, right? Yeah, exactly. We signed it in the document. We're good.

1:11:11That's good, man. I mean, that's very cool. Power couple. Yeah. That's a power couple right there, man. Yeah. So much potential and possibility. Yeah. It's cool, man. Good for you. Thank you. Yeah. And you get to have your kids with you, too. I mean, what a blessing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's where it's at, man. Yeah, I'm hoping my daughter, she came to my wife's talk. She's inspired. So hopefully she wants to be a speaker one day. Yeah. That's where dreams begin right there, man. That's right. But Jared, I've got to tell you, six kids, you're a power dad. Well. For sure, yeah. My wife's pretty amazing, too.

1:11:51Or very smart. I think it's pretty smart. A little bit of both. Yeah. A little bit of both. There's a fine line between a crazy person and a wise person, isn't there? Any twins in there? Nope. Okay. All organic. I'm Power Dad. That's right. Organic. I guess twins are non-organic. That's hilarious. Well, thanks for chatting with us, Avi. It was fun. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Well, thanks for having me. It was a blast. It was the best. So who are these people? These are people that have been on the show. Those are not you. Oh, okay. Oh, this is video. Well, we're not doing video here. Oh, okay, good.

1:12:31We have a drone. I'm just kidding. So this will be audio only, but... What did you have for breakfast? Has it started? We're just sound checking, yeah. Gotcha, yeah. I had scrambled eggs, coffee. You ate scrambled eggs? Mm-hmm. And coffee? Yeah. Lots of coffee? Lots of coffee, yeah. Very standard, yep. What did you have for breakfast? I had two eggs, over easy. Yeah. No toast. No toast. I had some hash browns. Yeah. Light fruit. And one strawberry and one slice of orange. Wow. Yeah. Very detailed. The breakfast of champions. I remember it like it was just this morning. Usually my breakfast is just leftovers from my kids.

1:13:16Yeah, I know how that goes too. Yep. Leftovers, huh? Uh-huh. So you're a leaders eat last kind of person? Sort of. Yeah. Yeah, I have a couple kids and just look at them, like, waste all their food, and then I know they're not going to finish it. Right. And then I just eat off their plate. Muffin you didn't eat. Yep. There's a half a bagel I wanted. Right? Yeah, my daughter is good at loading up the plate, but she's not going to eat any of that. So, yeah. For sure. My mom used to do that constantly. We call her, like, the garbage disposal because she would not let anything get thrown away. Yeah.

1:13:50And whatever was left over, she's like, just give it to me. She's never happy about it. Yeah. She's like, I'll eat that. My mom did the same. I'm going to eat it now. We're not throwing anything away. Which I appreciate that sentiment, but it's like, well, you're just taking in empty calories on our behalf, Mom. Yeah, it's got pros and cons. You don't want to overeat for sure. Yeah, totally. So we spoke with Avi yesterday. So we got his side of the story. Okay. Let's hear the real story. He told us that you guys met at KU. Yeah. And you're still together. Seems like he's telling the truth. Yeah, two kids and two businesses.

1:14:30Yeah. And so you're doing very similar things. Yeah. How did you get into it? So I grew up in India and my dad had a small business. He was buying and selling cleaning products to hospitals and local companies. And he's a very ambitious person. But of course, he didn't scale up to a large company or anything. It was just two people, my mom and dad. And he would always go meet these customers. And basically, it was more for the flexibility. And he loved being an entrepreneur. So I just kind of grew up watching that. And I knew that was a possibility. And I knew that he didn't have a boss, but he had, like, many bosses.

1:15:09He was always, like, after all these customers and all of that. So I guess that's where I draw my inspiration from. Okay. And so when you graduated from KU, you had an engineering degree? Yes, I did computer science undergrad in India, actually. And then I came for my master's to KU. And right after that, it was a good economy. It was 2012, so I got a job right out of college, moved to Kansas City, went to a big corporation. So yeah, that's kind of how my journey began. Just one step in front of the other, huh? Uh-huh. And now you're doing mobile apps or something? I did do that for a while, but now I'm more into the web apps as well.

1:15:47Okay. So I was doing React Native for a long time. Once in a while, I do get customers who do React Native. So I do both. Gotcha. Yeah, React and React Native. And between you and your husband, who's the better software engineer? You have to go scan our code to find out. Okay. Yeah. So she's not going to answer that one. You know, we try not to work together, honestly, on projects. Yeah. It kind of... Why is that? We have similar personalities, and we kind of take lead a lot. Right, two leaders. It could be conflicting. So we try to have our own customers, have our own clients. Once in a while, we would maybe review our code or something like that.

1:16:25We talk about problems in our day-to-day work. But I don't think I've ever worked with him. I work with him in conference talks and stuff. We would sometimes give a workshop together. But actual coding and architecture work, we don't work together. Because you've tried and it didn't work or you've never tried it? I just think there's too much. We see each other too much. that's too much yeah we need that space yeah i think that sounds healthy what do you think adam it's not bad yeah i don't disagree but i enjoy working with my wife so yeah yeah i can't you might be missing out on something you didn't realize yeah i said to him i said to avi power couple and he's like yeah yeah but separate you're not unified in the powering of the couple just in the business side obviously yeah i agree with you so what happened was i started out first while he was having a full-time job.

1:17:18And I didn't have any ideas of scaling or anything like that. I just wanted out and wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what that really meant. And at that time, my goal was mostly, I want to spend more time with my baby and I want to earn what I was earning in my full-time. And that was my goal. I didn't have like a large scale goal. So I was like, I need flexibility. I want to spend time with the baby and I want to make as much as I made in my full-time job. So I wasn't looking to like, so I just needed a company. And you know, that, that was the goal. So I just, that's how it started.

1:17:50And then when Avi started, it was a year later and he had, uh, he, he probably had a different mindset. So by then I was doing react native apps. So we weren't sure if we needed different brands or how it went. So he started his own, but technically we're just two people. So we need to like merge together our future now, like, I think we have more clarity now over the years. And we see our son growing up. So we had a second baby. So maybe once he goes to daycare and has a more stable routine, I think we want to scale. And that's when we want to, like, merge. We have no reason to have two different companies.

1:18:25Economies of scale. And different baskets, too. Yeah, for sure. Two eggs, two baskets. Not two eggs, one basket. Yeah, absolutely. Basket dies. Yeah, we don't even actually, like now that you guys are talking about it, we haven't even talked about it or thought about it that way. Oh, well, we're helping. We just know we're doing basically the same thing in different names. That's it. That's okay. And there are times, you know, when I might be fully booked or he's fully booked. If customers come away, we just kind of like send them to the other person. So it's not like we don't really view it as two different businesses.

1:19:01Do you charge a referral fee? No. Not at all. dinner out or anything. You know, dinner's on him. You guys are giving me ideas. You should do it in like marital favors. We are IG men. That's what we do. And there's lots of ways you can take that, obviously. Yeah, I should. I would leverage it. The joker said it best. Every time I send you a referral, I get a manicure and a pedicure or something. Yeah. If you're into that kind of thing. Good ideas. The joker said it best. He said, if you're good at something, don't do it for free. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You're referring something to somebody, husband or not.

1:19:35Yeah. You got to be careful because, you know, the sword cuts both ways. He sent people my way, too. Right. So he gets his referral fee, I guess. It could be like, hey, you're doing dinner tonight. You know, you're in charge of sides. That's how we are in my house. It's like my wife is like, you're in charge of sides or I'm in charge of the main course. And, you know, we'll collaborate and come together. Giving me ideas, yeah. Or, you know, I need you to put away the dishes in the dishwasher. Sure. Thank you very much, you know. Whatever it takes, you know. Yeah. And he's been super supportive.

1:20:04A lot of the risks I was able to take was also because he was in a stable full-time job with health insurance and everything. So I was like, all right, I'm going part-time now that we have the baby. And then I was like, now I'm going to go to a startup. Or, you know, I was able to do all of that stuff because I knew I had like a support system. And then once I got the stability in that business, he was able to take a risk too and start. What is it that drives you personally? I think personally, ever since I got my kid, my first kid, I kind of found more purpose in life and I wanted to do something out of the box and kind of be a role model to her as well.

1:20:45So I just don't want to do a nine to five for 30 years and then realize that I missed out on something. So I wanted to try out being an entrepreneur and see how that journey goes. And I think the flexibility was my first motivator. With the time as a new mom, that was my primary goal. But eventually, obviously, it's the money, the flexibility, the happiness. To be able to see success and failure quickly and then iterate upon that and have control. I just don't want a boss controlling my career. I want to control my career on my own. Yeah, for sure. Sure. It's been so long since I've had a boss that I can't imagine having a boss, I guess.

1:21:29You know, I just can't imagine the, not that it's a bad thing or a good thing, but it's definitely different than being your own controller of your schedule and what happens and what you're optimizing for, the things that matter to you, the way you schedule your day. Yeah. You know, I can't imagine the opposite of that. Yeah, I'm sort of in that space right now too. Do you see yourself scaling beyond what your parents did with your business? Because right now you're kind of emulating that. I do, because I want to. I think right now we're kind of capped out at a certain extent, and we don't have to be that way.

1:22:10So the goal is I think in a year or so we're going to have to try to scale by bringing in people who... Right now the brand, unfortunately, is just me and him. So we need to build that trust with our customers and be able to train people. So it might be a journey, so we don't know what that is or what it looks like. So we'd have to train people and bring them to the level where like, hey, these are these software engineers we trust. And slowly start scaling that way. So it might take some time and money to train these people who we trust and be like, hey, they are part of our brand as well. Yeah.

1:22:46I definitely see myself scaling for sure. What about family? What's that? Scaling your family? No. No. The family's done. It's just two kids. It's a lot. That was a quick no. I know you have five. You mentioned. Six, technically. But, you know, we don't count Ezra. My wife is the same. She's like, nope, no more kids. It's over. Yeah. If I even, like, if for some reason there's even mention of the possibility, I can see her recoil. Yeah. And, like, physical and mental, I can see it in her. Yeah. Because she's like, no. Yeah. No. No, I think we're in a good, two is a great number. I think the national average is probably two or 2.5.

1:23:27That's good. Yeah. I got 2.5. You got 2.5. Yeah. Well, that's exciting. Good luck to you. Thanks for stopping by and talking with us. Yeah. Appreciate that. Any other questions, Adam? That's it. Cool. I enjoyed it. Appreciate that. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Awesome. That's all.

1:23:47That's all. And that's it. our All Things Open 2024 hallway track coverage ends right here. Well, that's not 100 % true, I guess, because we do have a Changelog++ members-only episode coming soon. So stay tuned for that if you are a++ supporter. Otherwise, yeah, this is it. Until next year, at least. One more shout out to all of our guests on this anthology episode. Thank you to Alex, Isra, Avi, and Aditi for the great combos. And a big thanks once again to our partners at fly.io. You know we love Fly. And to Breakmaster Cylinder, our beat freaking residents. Keep the beats coming, BMC. Thank you.

1:24:26Have a great weekend. Leave us a five-star review if you dig the changelog. And let's talk again real soon.

1:24:56Butter's the key to great eggs, right? The edge is nice and crispy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like a small bit or a big dollop? Just a little bit. Yeah. You got to go dollop. You were doing so well. Is that how you do it right? You were doing so well. Yeah. You got to go dollop. All right. Until the end there. Dollop is the way. Awesome. Are you a butter snob? No, I wouldn't say so. No? No. Do you like grass-fed butter? You're a butter snob then, okay? You're a butter snob then. Yeah, you got to check the ingredients, right? Yeah, I'm conscious about what I put in my body. It's cow sweet grass only. Yeah.

1:25:34Kerrygold is like a brand of choice for a lot of people. Yeah. But it's cows. I believe it's New Zealand. Not New Zealand. It's like... Irish. Where's it at? Irish. Irish, yeah. Yeah, Kerrygold? Yes. Yeah, Kerrygold's Irish. Yeah. But I was thinking it was like Greenland, potentially, like one of those, but not, was it like literally an island? It's Ireland? Yeah, yeah, it's Irish butter. Yeah, that's what they call it. Yeah. Okay. So it's cows that graze grass only in the fields of Ireland. What kind of butter is this? Kerrygold. Kerrygold? Kerrygold. Yeah, it's a pretty cool brand. You've never had it?

1:26:13I mean, maybe I have. I'm just not a butter snob, so I don't know if I'm headed or not. I think my Wi-Fi is the worst of the butter. If you're achieving the perfect egg, you know, over easy, over medium, scrambled, you pick your style of eggs, butter. Grass-fed butter. That's right. Sorry. When I make my hamburgers on my griddle, butter. Butter it up. Obviously, you guys toast my buns for my burgers. You guessed it, butter. Okay. TMI, man. You can't go wrong with butter, right? Let's podcast. I would tend to agree that butter is hard to go wrong with. It's just really good. Butter's dope, man.

1:26:53Butter's away. Especially grass-fed Irish cows. That's right, man. What do you mean? You don't do butter tasting? I butter taste all the time, man. Daily. Pretty much daily, I taste some butter. Butter's good. Butter's good.