1527 – Outsourcing Development to fit Your Goals with Particle 41’s Benjamin Johnson

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0:59with us right now it's benjamin johnson benjamin you are the founder and ceo of particle 41 you're found on the web at particle41.com benjamin thank you so much for ben thank you so much for joining us yeah josh either but uh yeah i answered it either you know my mom calls me benjamin when when she's inspired. But it's great to be here, Josh. Thank you. I only get Joshua from my grandma. So that one might not get my attention if you call that out. But tell us about Particle 41. Yeah, we're a software development company that wants to put experts everywhere. We have flexible terms of engagement, and we do custom application development, DevOps or platform engineering, and data engineering as our core services.

1:46So you might look at app development DevOps and say, there are a lot of potential solutions. So if I'm an owner of a company and we need to get some stuff worked on, how do we hire a good developer or a good agency to work with or a good technical advisor? It can be really challenging to know who to work with, how to vet them. What would you advise on that? Yeah, I think the beauty of working with us is if you compare it to the straight hiring, like going to a recruiter, hiring folks internally, the reason why you do that or the advantage of doing that is because then you have extra confidence that all the work product that they build is your work product.

2:32And so the next step out is to outsource with somebody who does work for hire. That's what we do. So we recruit the team. We know that the team is solid. We've done work with the team before. And we're kind of taking our team and we're loaning them to you. But they work alongside of you, shoulder to shoulder. And then everything that they build belongs to you. So it's really cool that we get to map to the outcome, the result that the business owner wants. And we get to do it in a way that doesn't put this extra HR recruiting burden on the business. So I would just look for those things, ask really good questions about making sure that all the IP belongs to you.

3:18And then how is the team going to handle, how is your partner going to handle things like extended leaves or off days? And what we do is we handle those things inside the team so that our clients don't have to. Yeah. And so for someone that's listening to our conversation right now, and maybe they've been kind of growing and scaling up and historically, maybe they've just hired contractors. Maybe they've used a platform like Upwork or something like that, hired some developers, got some stuff done, but they're kind of looking ahead at maybe some more ambitious goals. Um, what might they experience, uh, that might be a little bit different, um, when working with a serious team, like, you know, what particle 41 does versus maybe just kind of working through a platform like Upwork.

4:09Yeah, I think Upwork is a great platform for finding somebody, but you're really taking on the full direction and management responsibility. And I separate those two responsibilities. You're always going to want to have the influence and direction over a team that's tackling those larger, broader, ambitious goals. But what you don't want is you don't want all of this management responsibility. And so the management responsibility is, are the people experienced? Are the people able to accomplish things daily and make everyday count? Is the team communicating status regularly so that everything is highly visible?

4:48These are the things that we cover for you. Going to Upwork, sure, it's a great way to find a person, but you are still taking on the management and development responsibility. And that's really the value prop here is that we'll manage the resources, but at your direction. What skills are required for technical and project management when we're talking about a tech project that maybe a founder or CEO may not have? What are some of those things that, look, I really think you ought to consider not playing quarterback on this one? Sure. Well, just understand that we get to see engagements across many clients.

5:34We were engaged with 31 different clients in the last 12 months. We got to see the trends across enterprise customers, medium-sized businesses. And so we know how to right-size the tech for the type of objective, the type of result that you want to accomplish. I don't know that CTO and founders specializing in their core service or their product really get that visibility of what works and what doesn't work. And that's something that we bring to the table because we just get to see the good, bad, and the ugly across lots of engagements. And so it's an unfair comparison, you know, when we're working in that and then thinking that as a founder or CTO of a company, you're going to be able to see those trends as widely as we do.

6:23You know, one thing I know that, you know, because I've since early 2000s, we've seen, you know, technical implementations and that sort of thing. You know, one of the most frustrating things that I experienced and, you know, when we were like we had a project manager and but still at the end of the day, there was just we found that there were so many challenges with miscommunication or, you know, where we feel like we have completely described the capabilities that we need or the not the technical, but, you know, the requirements that we need. And then it comes back. And, you know, once you start digging in a little bit more, you're like, no, that's not what I asked for.

7:08I don't know how I could have been more clear on that. I found for me that that was something that unfortunately happened far too often. Yeah, it is something that happens too often. I asked for X, I got Y. We obviously want to prevent that. Development is a very iterative process. If you have big bangs in your project management lifecycle, those are bad because then there's this kind of distance between the people executing the mission and then the results. So what we want to do is we want to visibility is one of our core values. We want to show work result quickly. This means that you will witness work in progress.

7:53So it's not like it's the absolute opposite of that first day in a brand new house. We want to show you the framing. We want to show you the everything coming together. Make sure we're on the right track and then manage your expectations that this is part of the process. and we want to catch issues or trajectory problems quickly. And I think that really helps make sure that we make X equal X. And we're also able to learn from each other as we go. So we're an agile dev shop. We make sure that we're very iterative, that we're showing work results regularly. We also don't have any long-term engagements.

8:32You know, if you don't like what we do, 30 days, see you later. So because of that, we really need to show that work progress as you go. And so I think you could probably look back to your previous experience and say, hey, we were too far away for too long. And then when we came back, we had this disillusionment where we just try to close that gap and make sure that every member of the team is talking to the stakeholders and that there's visibility across the board. Yeah. Yeah. And so, Ben, as an agency yourself now, how do you like, I don't know, who have you worked with? And like, how do you typically engage with new clients today?

9:15Sure. So we've we we have a pretty wide range. We would love to work with probably folks with roughly three million in funding. Right now, it's really tough for startups to function. So we don't have a whole ton of startup clients. But then we also work with companies up to 100 million in revenue. So a new engagement just generally says, hey, where's the mountain of work? How can we help you develop that mountain of work? We have CTO advisors, project and product owners that will help you develop that mountain of work. And then we put an agile team to just, you know, what we really like doing, I would say, is like, we like to crush the mountain of work and show that daily progress.

10:01Do you find yourself, I would imagine you get some good inbound word of mouth, that sort of thing. I'm just curious, as a developer, what sorts of things do you do to kind of expand your read, to track new business? Because obviously, you're the founder, you're responsible for growing your company as well. What is that life like? You know, like most of your audience, I'm trying all the things. So I understand as a business owner, we've been really blessed that we feel like our best advocates are past successful engagements. And so we've grown tremendously by referral. I would say almost about 60 % of my business has been referral and about 40 % partnerships.

10:49So also finding strategic partners is a great way to achieve stair steps in growth. So looking for, hey, I know this company here that we've gotten to know offers these sets of things, we offer these sets of things, but our clients are similar. looking for that in the market of where are those adjacencies that are still serving your same ICP, ideal customer profile, but in a different way. Go to them and say, hey, you already know some of my hopeful clients. How could we partner a structure in a way where I can make you look good, I can serve more clients, and we can combine. So partnerships are a great way to grow quickly.

11:32they are hard to develop. They take a little bit of additional rigor. So we 60 % referral, about 40 % partnership. And then I am just on the cusp of doing a little bit of, you know, direct marketing and direct sales. So that, you know, when I say trying all the things, I'm kind of starting a new chapter in my trajectory to try some of the more direct approach. Yeah. Ben, when you begin a, what does, let me ask you this, you know, someone who's like, maybe, you know, they've got budget and they have some ideas around what they want to do, but maybe it's not real firmed up. Is that an appropriate time to have a conversation with you or do they really need to have that a little bit more fleshed out?

12:24Absolutely. But I would totally direct them. You know, what we're really good at is that crushing mountains of work. So if you have an idea and you haven't flushed it out, we do have some designers that you could work with. But I would also do something else. I'd go look at bootstrapping as a keyword and do some Googling around on this concept of bootstrapping. So if you just if we take a little bit of a history lesson before interest rates were zero. So kind of rewind back then. People really had to flush out their ideas well. then we went into this period of time where capital was super cheap and the VC market would contribute to early stage ideas.

13:11I think we've come to an end of that kind of condition. And so the earlier bootstrapping work is kind of re-entering relevance. And what bootstrapping said was try your idea out in the cheapest way possible. So people might, rather than going and building a big social network alternative for some niche group of people, they may try an ebook or they may try just doing small things that would allow you to test your idea and validate that the market is there. And you can build up some of those things. So I'm trying to come up with a good example on the fly, But that bootstrapping material, there were some really good people who wrote a lot of good content back when capital was harder to raise.

14:00And you could study that and see some of those ideas of how could I test my idea, bootstrap my idea, get validation, maybe even start getting a little bit of revenue, you know, to make sure that I'm on the right track and show traction. Yeah. And I'd be happy to help people out with that thought process. You know, that's, I was a bootstrapper in those bootstrapping days. I would love to help out. Yeah, yeah. So your website, particle41.com, and, you know, for someone that's listening to our conversation, maybe they're doing some due diligence right now and they've stumbled upon our podcast and they're listening to you.

14:37And they're like, they're curious. Um, what would be the next step, uh, to kind of, kind of build the relationship with you and your team? Yeah. Send me an email at Ben at particle 41.com. I'd love to talk to you and see where you're at in your journey. Um, see what your initiative is that you would, um, that you're, you're trying to accomplish and see how we can map to that. Yeah. All right. Ben Johnson, again, your website, particle 41.com. and again, you are the founder and CEO. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

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