Dan Maccarone 3:57
I’m in the Flatiron District of Manhattan right now. 23rd. And fifth.
Rolando Rosas 4:01
Love the restaurants down in Manhattan. Boy, there’s some good restaurants in the world. You’re so spoiled in you can walk one block north, one block east, one block, west and south and it’ll take you a long time to eat all the food and just in that radius.
Dan Maccarone 4:18
From my window in my office, I can see how long the line is at Shake Shack. And that determines whether or not I when I leave my office to get lunch.
Rolando Rosas 4:28
Thank you for coming on the podcast. I want to jump right into it. Our name of our show is What The Teck? What is your favorite piece of technology right now that you’re geeking out on.
Dan Maccarone 4:38
So I just bought like literally last week the new I watched, I watched the came out Apple Watch. And I’ve been geeking out on kind of all the new features over the past week just getting everything set up. My wife and I are both like fitness nerds. And so using all the health tracking apps and updates there have been really fun to see how those updates were made. And so it’s my nerd my tech nerd thing over For the past week, for sure.
Rolando Rosas 5:01
So normally you’d like to help us out if we find that you’re tracking your thing or your messages,
Dan Maccarone 5:07
might be telling me things I don’t want to know more than anything else. I was on a plane yesterday, he kept telling me to stand up and I can’t do that on a my plane, I can’t do anything
Dave Kelly 5:16
like that. When it’s you and your spouse, and you both share, it becomes competition.
Dan Maccarone 5:24
No, my, my wife and I don’t necessarily do the same type of exercise. Unless we’re like playing each other. And like tennis is something which gets done, it gets very competitive because we both want to beat each other. But I think that what we try to do is more, we have a positive household. We’re like, how many steps did you get today? And then Oh, you got 19,000 I only got 18,000 That I’m like, shoot, I gotta up my game. But it’s more just about like, making sure that we can our workouts and giving each other the room to do that.
Rolando Rosas 5:53
Sometimes a little healthy again, the word the healthy competition. It’s not so bad. You could push her she pushes you a little bit. You get in 10,100 steps she gets in 10,200 steps.
Dan Maccarone 6:04
She has gotten mad at me if we go running, and I run past her. Shake Shack shakes shack viously. You gotta have goals, Dave? Well, it
Dave Kelly 6:17
was one of the bars that you’re part of. Yeah, either way. Yeah, it’s stupid.
Rolando Rosas 6:22
Let’s jump into that. Talking about experience and running things. You have an extensive amount of experience when it comes to working with companies and startup, I want to ask me, because you’ve seen a lot of things over the years, you’ve been in business a while. So you’re quite an expert on these things. What’s the most common mistake you’re seeing with businesses? Whether it be their user experience, whether it be their the lack of customer focused? Or the goals? What are you seeing the most common mistakes that businesses are making today?
Dan Maccarone 6:53
I think there are two, I think there are two one is trying to solve a problem for yourself versus for your audience. Meaning like, you think that people want a certain thing, or you believe that the world that works in a certain way, without understanding that most people don’t think the same way that you do. And so really focusing on what is the real thing, what is the real problem to solve here. And that’s true in the bar. It’s true in a startup is true anywhere. And the other thing is trying to do too much at once trying to be everything to everyone. But then when you try to put so much out there and boil the ocean, you can’t actually focus on what is the one thing you need to do to be right or to be helpful. And so when companies have one of those things, or both of those things going on, they tend to lose focus on what’s going to actually make them successful. And that’s definitely something that I’ve seen and probably even had to like learn more and more as I’ve gotten more experienced over the years as to the major things that have become stumbling points your company’s credit your full approach to. Yeah, the thing is that you need to put be willing to put something out there. A lot of founders, a lot of big companies are afraid to leave until they won’t put something out into the world and see what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve never been out in the world, you never gonna know. So, launch, learn, and then rework it and revise it and then keep it moving and evolving, because you’re never done.
Dave Kelly 8:09
Sure. Dan, what companies today are brands right now, do you think they’re really nailing it? Who are some of those brands that you’re seeing? And you’re like, they’re just doing it right?
Dan Maccarone 8:20
Sure. I think Nike is a brand that like always isn’t right, obviously for sports. But they’ve really become such a digital company, digital focus company outside of just a sportswear that like there’s no one who I think in the world of athletics like can do with them. They just nail it every time. I think a lot of the brands are going to hear just brands that we’ve heard a million times we Apple is another brand that I think just you know, they crush it when it comes to hardware. I think hardware is a really hard business to be in and to get right again and again. And they do it hate a lot of their software, but their hardware is is fantastic.
Rolando Rosas 8:50
What is it about their software that doesn’t jive with you?
Dan Maccarone 8:53
So I think that a lot of their software just it lacks that preciousness that that user experience that really designed detail they put into their hardware, have you look at their their like iWork suite Numbers and Pages like like, it just gets a third. It’s a far third runner to Microsoft and Google, right. But you look at their hardware, I’d rather have an iPhone than an Android phone. I’d rather have a Mac a Mac than a PC. But I don’t want to but I’d rather use Excel or Google Sheets than numbers. I think that’s a good example of that. I think I can’t say that all their stuff is bad. I think their health stuff was pretty good. I was watching health earlier. But I look at like just so much of their like their calendaring software’s like way behind what Google and Microsoft do. And it’s just a shame because these are things that are built into their systems or things that like people could be using regularly. And they just get trounced on it.
Rolando Rosas 9:42
Yeah, I think when you put it in that perspective, even though they have a have a really good ecosystem, right? They’ve built an ecosystem. Microsoft had built an ecosystem. Google has a properties prop bunch of so they have an ecosystem. It it’s probably just about where the core of their capabilities. They do have a unique OS. But the core is the hardware bits. And that’s how Macs and iPhones and iPads and the rest. It’s about a unique product. The concept of an app was there’s right to put it on a mobile phone. And I think over the years, I have my preference. On the software side. I’m an Android guy. I love my experience.
Dan Maccarone 10:22
I just threw Google under the bus.
Rolando Rosas 10:25
Yeah, well, like Android and I were a Google shop, we got we’re up and down vertically integrated as a company with all kinds of integrations using Google. So it makes the experience for me and I know Dave, you’re using as well, it makes it easy. If I’ve got to do stuff on my smartphone, it’s shoot stuff out to the different folks at work and vice versa, sharing collab, and also the other related apps, I don’t know, that’s my experience.
Dan Maccarone 10:52
I’m with you, I’m with you on this. Look, I think I’m a hardware standpoint, I love apple. Because if I have been, if I have an iPhone, that’s cool. But I have an iPhone and a Mac, and I watch and Apple TV, everything works together automatically, right, which I love. But as a company, it’s only once a company like, we might be using Apple hardware, but we’re using Google software, right? Like we run everything on G Suite like email, Docs, everything we can think of a single thing we don’t do that’s not on G Suite for most of our work other than maybe like design, actual design work. So I think that each of those companies has a think things that they do better than the other, and they’ll constantly push each other to do better. Because if you look at either of their products, you know, one will launch a feature, and the other one will copy that feature and probably enhance it and keep that race going for a long time, which that’s healthy competition. That’s good business. I think that it makes all those companies become better and better and technology overall, overall, which benefits us right?
Rolando Rosas 11:48
Indeed, some days, you know, I
Dave Kelly 11:50
when we use Apple, I love the integration. So we’re creating a lot of content, we’re out in the field. And I’ll tell you, it’s so nice to bring my phone 14 into my office, and it just sinks right up into my MacBook. And now I have it and bring it into my different applications. We didn’t have 20 years ago, that is something that I’m married to with some of that software when we’re trying to use external hardware that’s not Apple did, that they’re just bullies. You guys find the workaround? What locking you while if you can get under the fence, that’s fine. We’re just gonna we’re just gonna hold you right there. So I think that’s the frustrating part with some of the software with Apple.
Dan Maccarone 12:33
Yeah, they do try to keep you in there lock you into their ecosystem, which is challenging.
Rolando Rosas 12:36
Yeah, that’s absolutely. It. Speaking of locking. I love this. I love it. I absolutely. Speaking of locking I want from a locking down or locked down there. We just want to rewind the clock a little bit a couple years ago, two years ago, I know that you’re in the hospitality business, among other things, I wanted to ask you what that experience was like and the impact of COVID on on your business on your bar business? Because I know you’ve run bars, plural, plural, right? Bars,
Dan Maccarone 13:06
I have three bars. Yeah, yeah, there
Rolando Rosas 13:08
you go. It’s that like, and then what was it? Where is it today? What’s the business changed since that? Or it’s their new transformation going? What was it? So tell me what it was like when you heard the lock downs were starting in place, and people were staying home.
Dan Maccarone 13:23
So I think that what I find really interesting about that particular time, is that as I was talking to my co author from my book about this, like we were thinking about writing an extra chapter at the time, about how, as a restaurant owner or a bar owner, you have to learn how to innovate. And in in, we were pitched an extra chapter to our publisher, and no publisher was interested in adding this on. But they’re like, no one really wants to think about bars and restaurants right now is a good business model. But my point was that like, no, like, every single person in the restaurant industry had to pivot almost immediately, and figure out how do we survive? Well, we have zero customers coming into the restaurant or bar, what do you do? How do you change your business model on a dime, with very uncertain ideas? Well, so what we what a lot of restaurants didn’t, what we did was, first of all, you know, we immediately were able to create takeout cocktails, which was in New York, like you, the idea of taking a drink out on the street was pretty illegal free pandemic. And exactly, and the city was really good about letting the bars adapt to this. So basically, every bar now had a takeout window and you had food and you had drinks and you sold it, but you didn’t just sell it by the glass like you are selling Cocktails by the growler or by the pint. So you have to figure out
Rolando Rosas 14:36
keep home for a while I’m gonna be inside.
Yeah, or just walk out a drink it with your friend as you walk to the next bar down the street and support them to a treasure hunt of cocktails.
Rolando Rosas 14:44
What do you think about New York? I don’t know if it’s still they’re still in love with it. But New York to do like what Vegas in New Orleans does and some of the larger cities in the world, which you’re going to take it out. You just can’t do it in a glass container. You take it in a cup or something like that and walk from place to place whatever We’re doing it.
Dan Maccarone 15:00
I think it was great. I’m very pro, I’m very pro drinking outside. I think I think that like, New Orleans is a bad example, I think is most of the time you get people who are throwing up on Bourbon Street. And you if you’re going to Bourbon Street like five in the morning that people are just hosing it down from like the vomit that’s illustrate unfortunately, but like, but I think in New York, what I found was that people are mature, people get drunk, whatever. But most people are pretty responsible. I think it created a camaraderie in the city to the point where not only were bars doing this, but bartenders mixologists, were going into the central park or Prospect Park, and they were making their own bottled cocktails or selling and being entrepreneurs. And as I’m a fellow entrepreneur, like, I love the idea that people are creating businesses in the middle of Central Park, just to entertain fellow New Yorkers. And the other thing that businesses had to do at the time was realized that okay, so even when we can’t have people outside, let’s say you get to like June, July, August 2020, all of a sudden, not only new, a restaurant, a sort of food and cocktail expert. But now you have to be into construction, because you’re everyone, New York built these outdoor facilities, on the sidewalks. So you have a second structure that has to be weatherproof, that has to be carved fruit, right? You’re driving down the street, and while your car is like crashing into your structure where your customers are. And you have to figure out like how do you now create a business that has only outdoor service? And how do people cut it out cuts customers in the middle of December in New York, who want to enjoy going to a bar sit there and I’ll tell you what, like I have friends of mine and myself included, we learned it and something I never thought we’d learned is we learned what the best brands of like heat lamps are like, where do you position them so that people can sit and get warm. And like you would choose the bars you went to? Based on the heating situation, in addition to the agreement cocktails,
Rolando Rosas 16:40
theaters look good. And they’re working. So that yes,
Dan Maccarone 16:43
it’s so true. And like it was one of them. Yeah, and then also hot. And you learned a lot of being electrician because you had to like put electricity into the outside structures. If you’re like we’re a sport one of my works in the sports bar. So we had to be on the show all the football games at like an outside structure at once we have 15 TVs inside the bar, you have zero outside. So there’s just a lot of adaptation that we had to learn. And I think that’s a good thing for any founder in tech in bars are to understand is that you have to be willing to change you have to be willing to like to the need in front of you and adapt. And even if it’s temporary. The good thing about bars right now in New York is our outside structures are have been allowed to stay which means a lot of bars have doubled their capacity. That to go drinks have been they’ve had to that’s been back and forth. They they made it illegal though they made illegal again, they made illegal illegal again. And but New Yorkers want it. They want to know your customer and your customer wants those things. And why would you want to get rid of those things.
Rolando Rosas 17:39
And imagine like in New York, you think about New York, 20 years ago, we were talking about this earlier. And you just said something that made me think about this was that 20 years ago, there were very few places that had a street that was co opted as a sidewalk. Bikers were getting run over pedestrians were getting run over in Manhattan. And now you go downtown in New York City. More and more people want entire streets with tables and chairs, areas where you don’t necessarily have to be indoors. You can be outside on that beautiful summer day or fall day and enjoy a cocktail enjoy your to go food or just in more people want that. And like you said change is going to happen. How can you serve those customers better? And how do businesses adapt to the changing environment is amazing because like you said, on a dime, all of a sudden everybody went home
Dan Maccarone 18:36
pretty happy. It did lead to a lot of street closings in New York on the weekends to where I live in Brooklyn, right near me in Park Slope is Prospect Heights, and they’ve closed down like Vanderbilt and on the weekend, and you just have families going out and hanging out. The other thing there. And this is the word change is a really good one to use. There’s that here comes a pro tip. The world doesn’t stay the same, nothing is static. Everything’s constantly changing and evolving. And people who are averse to change are gonna get stuck behind like you have to be looking at what’s going on and adapting and evolving and learning. And this isn’t in the bar world, we had to do it quickly during the pandemic. But this is true and technologies is true in any business. If you try to stay the same, you’re someone’s gonna innovate back and pass you whether it be a startup or another corporation that’s out there.
Rolando Rosas 19:24
Indeed, I want to throw this out because I know you’re a tech guy too. I was on a webinar this morning tees up what you just said. He was talking about Amazon, let me see if this squares with what you know to this. This gentleman was doing a lot of analysis and studying the algorithm on Amazon. He says, you know, if you look at what Amazon’s done on the back end and what it’s doing to become the destination for everything. The algorithm has evolved to the point to where they’re in the process of mapping user preference to the typed words so that it knows your female your your female that has kids, you may I type in stuff and it knows that and it may serve you up on the search results, the stuff that’s more for you, rather than what’s ranking 123 or four, because it knows your preferences, overrule the best selling products or the best products for female, Digital’s knows that you had this preference. And this is what you bought in the past. So therefore, we’re going to serve you these results, instead of what’s being ranked by keywords. What do you think about that?
Dan Maccarone 20:30
I think that’s right. Amazon is probably one of the smartest companies when it comes to how they use data to cattle lack of a better word manipulate, manipulate you into doing things that you may not otherwise do. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s if I’m right, I think I’m right about this, that I think they do something like 98 or 99, a B tests her screen per day, just to get to see what will optimize your buying proclivity. And so you had me and Dave are looking at the same page on Amazon, it might look slightly similar, but the Bobby, to your point, different things being served up to us and different little widgets being served up to us that that would help us make decisions. But Amazon like Amazon is one of the smartest companies when it comes to this. And they’ve been doing this for 24 years or so 45 years, when I’m one of the things that they did better than I think anyone else is understand when they need to evolve. So if you think back to Amazon, in 1998, or 99, they look just like what their navigation is. Remember back then was tabs, right? You had like books, DVDs, movie, whatever. So if you remember that, like they started adding more and more things. So they had that layer of tabs, which I believe they tried to trademark, by the way had the tab navigation and they never succeeded. But yeah, but they had these, this, this this like row of tabs, they added more than they had second row tabs on top of that the new third row tabs top of that, and it just got to be too much. And so they re examine themselves. So no, no, we got to rethink this. So they went back to a simplified tab thing where they had like home. And then the next tab was the last thing that you looked at. So it’d be like home books or home DVDs, whatever you Dave looked at work. And then they had another tab that was all categories. And if you clicked on that it was just she huge thing of all their categories were like, Oh, I can just too much. So when they realized they had that much stuff, they changed again, they thought, how do we make a better navigation system for themselves. So they got rid of tabs altogether together and created a side nav. And if you look up there, that’s probably the mid 2000s, early 2000s, you have like just category by category down the left hand side. But eventually, they had so many categories that you would scroll farther down the screen than you would have on the homepage, because there are so many categories and go through. Yeah, and that’s when they went to just a search box. And if you think about it, I talked about this a lot when I’m doing workshops on product design, like Amazon, like Google, like they they’ve earned the right to just be a search box. And any product that thinks that they can start with that is wrong. Because they imagined Amazon on day one and 96. And over they started just with a search box. Just what do you want to buy people like I don’t it’s all boy talking about? Like, they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t trust that the idea that you’re gonna buy and get listing on the internet, no one knows what it is. But 25 years in, they’re like, yeah, we can be a search bots because we sell everything and everyone knows that. That’s true innovation. That’s true evolution rather. And I think that people will remember that, like they didn’t start there. They got there. And when you’re thinking about a company, like where are you at? And what can you earn? And what do you where do you want to get to just don’t think you can just turn that switch in or flip that switch and be there immediately.
Dave Kelly 23:32
Now Amazon has become this massive online marketplace where Amazon can thrive, and the SMB market and SMB sellers, like Global Teck. I want to skip question about that Dan’s talking about user experience here and have businesses that are relying on third party platforms like Amazon to sell things, is there an opportunity to you meet UX strategies and apply them? Or are they just locked in to what that platform will allow? Have you ever dove into that at all?
Dan Maccarone 24:08
Yeah, I’ve done a lot of work in marketplaces, which is basically similar to what Amazon does, I think that there’s there are a couple of challenges when it comes to this stuff. Generally, if you’re Amazon, and you have a pretty large customer base, who are who may not themselves know that they’re shopping on Amazon versus a small business or whatever, you want to keep that user experience fairly consistent, so that people are relying on the tropes that they’re most used to. And so trying to create unique experiences, or like store in store experiences for for businesses can be challenging. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t do things that don’t like separate that or differentiate those individual small businesses from each other. If you think about it in the offline world, you go to Bloomingdale’s or you go to Dick’s Sporting Goods, you have like store in store, right? You can go into Bloomingdale’s, and there’s an area for Calvin Klein. There’s an area for Ralph Lauren, there’s an area for whoever. And those are slightly branded, but you’re not really thinking you’re not still in Bloomingdale’s, you’re just in the sub brand. And so the same thing is true digitally. I actually, I did think Ralph Lauren is the company that started the whole store and store thing offline probably like four years, four to five years ago. But they I worked with them about 10 years ago, trying to do the same thing online, similar to what you’re talking about. If you go to Amazon, and you’re a small business selling things, if you go to Bloomingdale’s, and you’re trying to create your Ralph Lauren store and store like how do you differentiate yourself without without making someone feel like they’re in a jarringly different experience. So it’s about layering in different types of UX or different types of brand experience, as opposed to changing it right? Like, you don’t want to, you don’t want to like disrupt the checkout experience, you don’t want to disrupt like adding to cart, you, what you want to do is find ways to add splashes of personality or add like your own take on a particular product, whether it be wireless headphones, or T shirt, or white college or whatever the product you’re selling. And so you figure out like how do you editorialize around that? How do you as Amazon, give your customers the ability to be a little bit dangerous, right to be a little bit like in charge of how their stuff is displayed? Without changing the entire layout or changing the entire that are using us to go through that? Does that make sense?
Rolando Rosas 26:17
Absolutely. Absolutely. It makes sense to me. Amazon is not getting any smaller. They’re certainly getting bigger, a lot of learning lessons, what they do, what they’re not doing things that they even exit out of, I just saw that they were discontinuing their Amazon glow, which was the built for during the pandemic was for kids. It was like a little mini video card. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that’s gone out of that business now. So that must be that
Dan Maccarone 26:44
was like a year.
Rolando Rosas 26:48
It just announced it like a couple days ago. That’s it, that product. So getting out of it. So that change, talk about change. So wants to kill things off fairly quickly, when things aren’t working, which is amazing. In this as a seller, this happens quite a bit, they’ll do something in beta, you think it’s working, and all of a sudden, they know we’re not doing that anymore, we’re going in this direction over here. And that is like constant right now. Every week, they’re adding something to taking away. They’re modifying it really, I heard somebody recently say that the level of complexity, as a seller on Amazon is increasing every year, we go back 10 years, every year. And so the number of sellers that are going to excel in that environment, as complexity keeps growing are going to be fewer every year. So eventually, you will see your competitors because it’s so complex, and that you’ve mentioned Google, you think about I think about Google in the early 2000s. Google Ads was simple. Anybody could do it, you didn’t need a dub special, or a Google specialist to handle your Google ads, because it was simple. That’s not the case anymore, right? You need a specialist, if you’re going to be in the Google ad space, and you’re going to use that as a tool. You have to have somebody that’s breathing it otherwise, it’s too complex to just come in cold and start using it as a tool.
Dan Maccarone 28:07
For sure. Yeah, same with social advertising, right? It used to be fairly easy. And now it’s so targeted. And so there’s it’s so challenging to figure out which which network to use to remind the people that you choose Google ads, you’d use Facebook, or Instagram or whatever, like, it’s gotten so much more complex over the years. And when, in some ways, that’s good, because it means there are more jobs for people to have in the world of advertising and marketing. I look at it, it’s so funny to think about tracking this way, right? Years ago, when I first started in tech in the mid 90s. Like, you could do everything. I could be a designer and a developer and do UX. And I could probably project manage myself. And as time has. And I used to be that I used to have the people who work for me who were doing UX design, also the front end developers because I was like, I want you to be able to think about how you’re going to code this while you’re doing like today. No way would we do that? Oh, you’re designing for seven different platforms. You have desktop, mobile, you have Android, you have iOS, you so many different things. And and then you also think about like, what language are you developing, and you try to be with a lot of companies calling unicorns to me is just useless endeavor, because you can never be like that, that that skill. Even in UX. I’m a generalist. So I do everything from strategy all the way down to like, actually wireframes whenever in research, but a lot of people even just focus just on research, or just on wires or whatever. And the industry, to your point around advertising on Google to designing products has gotten so complex that you really have to be specialized in a lot of ways to be successful and to be talented and good at what you’re doing. And that leads to being collaborative, right. You need to be talented and smart and good at what you’re doing. But also be open to the fact that like, you have 10 people around the table who all bring different sets of expertise. And it’s really important to listen to those people to create something that’s going to work and that’s true in hardware. That’s true in software. That’s true and advertising. That’s true. Anything you’re making. Yep, Um, we think about that all the time and the stuff we’re working on.
Rolando Rosas 30:04
Let me ask you about something you just talked about media. And it’s certainly one of our favorite topics here internally to talk about. What do you make of TikTok and what’s happening there. They’ve, they themselves single handedly, especially from, I want to ask you from an advertising perspective and working with clients where TikTok now is the most watched app, it beats YouTube in session time, it beats creeping into Google, because they just announced that they’re going to make a change in how search gets displayed, because TikTok is taking 40% of all views now from a Gen Z perspective. Start on TikTok. So everybody’s reacting Google, Instagram, you’ve got YouTube as well talk saying that, because why they have shorts. What’s your take on TikTok and how businesses go about leveraging and using TikTok.
Dan Maccarone 30:56
So just to be clear, I’m not a marketer, and I certainly am not a social media expert, but I do a lot of work with them. And so I’m just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous. I think if we you can’t ignore TikTok, it’s a major player in the world of content, right? I think if you’re, whether you’re Google or Facebook, or your The New York Times, or the Washington Post, or your NBC or HBO, I think that TikTok is relevant to you in all those, because it’s how you’re going to grab the audience from the Gen Z generation. I think that like, what TikTok has done so well is make it easier than YouTube ever did make it easier than Instagram or Facebook ever did, to go down the rabbit hole of content and get swallowed up by it so fast to waste your time, or from two minutes to 10 minutes to 60 minutes or whatever. And if you’re a smart brand, or you’re on there, if you’re Google or Facebook, I think just trying to replicate. TikTok is a mistake. I think there are things I would think about what is the thing that we can learn from what makes TikTok work and see where it might apply to another product? Or, or do you just go and get people where they aren’t Google or one thing because they’re they’re more challenging because they are direct competitors. But I think if you’re trying to like if I was if I was, if I was a brand, where I was trying to attract an audience, I would be trying to figure out how to create content on TikTok. That doesn’t seem spammy when YouTube came out. And then all these companies launched that were viral video companies that promise they could create something that would make it go viral. And that was all bullshit. We like to swear on this.
Rolando Rosas 32:28
You can absolutely we’re uncensored here.
Dave Kelly 32:32
So don’t try to go viral.
Dan Maccarone 32:34
Yeah. If you try to go viral, you will most likely fail. And so I think with TikTok, it’s YouTube 3.0 or 4.0. It’s like, how do you create something even shorter, that’s fast paced, that’s really interesting and truly entertaining, or at least interesting. And seems, seems real. As soon as it seems insincere. People are going to turn it off. And that’s on any platform. So it’s like, well, what why are people grabbing towards gravitating towards tic tock our attention spans are shorter, and Google and Facebook can learn from the lack of attention span and look at Google stories, or I’m sorry, Instagram stories, or, you know, the different ways that we can adapt. But I think that just, yeah, be scared, be scared of TikTok because I don’t want the Chinese government getting my information every day.
Rolando Rosas 33:18
Push back on you Dan. But that because Facebook is almost as bad with that whole surveillance thing as TikTok, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But if you use your manual, your bedroom, and you’re talking to your wife, and all of a sudden she goes on Facebook, because she’s using Facebook, ads for lingerie, or baby stuff within the next couple of minutes that she’s on the app. And that’s because they listen to the microphone. And it’s in their terms of service. It’s in their patents and all this other stuff that they’ve put out on how they’re they work. So from a data perspective, Facebook and some of the other social media companies that are out there, have as much if not more information than TikTok, because I think that TikTok.
Dan Maccarone 34:09
Oh I’m sorry, I wasn’t suggesting that Facebook doesn’t do that, too. I also was being glib about about the Chinese government thing. I know, of course, Facebook has all your data. I know that. Here’s the thing though. My wife Betsy is not on Facebook, because she’s she doesn’t want her data out there to anyone. Whereas I don’t care. Like I’ve I have basically resigned myself to saying, You know what, like, I’m a public enough person that you can Google me, maybe you did write your intro to the show, like I’m out there, like people can find me. So I don’t actually care. I’ve just been like, the world is gonna go in this direction where like, my stuff’s out there. And the only thing I want for my stuff being out there know that I’m not alone on this, but I’m also very like polarized way of looking at things like I’m like, hey, I’ll give you my data. But give me stuff back that makes it worthwhile for me to have given you my data. And some people will like have it. I don’t like it out there at all. cuz I don’t want I don’t want people to know that much about me. I’m just like, who cares? Like, I think the world is better, the more open we are, I’m very much in that kind of I’m not an anarchy person. But I definitely believe in the idea of let’s let’s create products and services and things and using technology that that better serve people better serve the world. And if we can you do that by getting your data then great. I understand that. People have different privacy, beauties. And I respect that. And as a designer, by the way, I take those into account, I just in my own personal like life, I don’t I just get my information out to that, okay.
Dave Kelly 35:32
And something. And I found that there’s definitely two types of people that are trying to be private. And then they realized that it wasn’t a situation, I’m not on Facebook, for any other reason, then I’m really just sharing my life out there. I didn’t realize that my wife was putting all of our pictures out there. So she was so as I’m sitting over here, online, don’t realize that I’ve shared my entire life, and then just grips. From the customer standpoint, from the users standpoint, what do they say? What do they say when the software’s reading their mind? When you type in L? And immediately it already knows what’s coming of your brain? Does that create a negative experience with a user? Like,
Dan Maccarone 36:24
in the research that I’ve done? And the research I’ve done? It does not most people that I’ve talked to, and I see I did a bunch of user research this summer. So I think it’s all fresh in my mind, like most people aren’t in the camp of predictive text is helpful, because it generally gets them to where they need to go. And people want to move fast. Most people also say, I think to Rolando to your point before about like, you talked about laundry, the next thing is an ad for laundry. I think most people are whether they believe that Facebook or other companies are listening to you or not. They basically were like, Yeah, it’s weird. It’s creepy. But it is what it is, when we’re gonna do, there’s only there’s only I can do about it. Or I can just not be on Facebook like Dave, even though he’s still a victim of the Facebook algorithm. But But I think most people actually find it useful that look, we did, I remember when we were designing Hulu, like we did one of the first type ahead, search engines for TV shows. And we’re like, we don’t really just look, why are we going to make it hard for you to find the thing you’re gonna find like, why don’t we just spell it out for you. Because if you’re looking for a time to set law and order us had been law, we’re probably only going to have law and order. So let’s just put it there for you and not waste your time. And that’s a good simple example. But I think the funny thing about it is what comes up when you start typing letters, things, because sometimes like the first results, second results, yeah, that’s what I was thinking like, everything else was totally wack. And you’re like, who was searching for that? It could be pornographic, it could just be racist. It could be whatever it is, you’re like, what’s going on, which really, I think is an interesting study and anthropology. But that’s
Dave Kelly 37:59
a letter and we
Dan Maccarone 38:04
get it, the thing that people should be more scared about, or more frustrated by is the fact that like, Google, and everyone has their search history, because if you think about it, what have you like? So one of the things I do as a designer is I have researchers, I like I the best kind of research you can do is to go into people’s houses, usually with their permission, and talk to them one on one. And sometimes like, you’ll be talking to them and you’re like, oh, show me like what your best way is using your phone or let’s take a look at some like sites you visited recently. And some people have no idea even in 2022, that their search history is recorded. And I wasn’t so entitled. Recently. Yeah, I was at someone else recently doing research, their wife was in the other room. And I was like, Yeah, and I was like, Oh, can I look at I just would love to see what news site. We’re doing news research, what news site you’re looking at recently? And I was like, Yeah, sure, whatever. And he got his computer. And they go into his chrome history. And the last, not like last five sites, but maybe 10 or 20 sites from there, like six porn sites. And I’m looking at this and I’m like, I can’t really say anything to him. But I’m like, dude, and they’re and by the way, they weren’t like, just like, straight and narrow porn. They were like, weird shit.
Rolando Rosas 39:15
And it was the fringe stuff. Like,
Dan Maccarone 39:17
I’m like, did you guys watch this together? Ya know? And Google’s tracking that. And so what is that’s the more scary thing than type ahead as far as maybe with the type edge shows you. If you’ve watched some wack stuff, and then
Rolando Rosas 39:32
maybe keep surfing. Yeah, it’s just yeah. Wow, wow. And it’s only gonna get more more and more sophisticated. The more I like listening to you and other folks that are in this space, the AI engines behind them are getting better and better and better. And so I’ve seen a couple of put stuff out where you’re essentially talking to an AI and it’s talking back to you. Oh, yeah. Oh, understands human language, which is the hardest thing for a machine to do is the human language aspect of it, and emotion. And so you take money behind ads, products, services, and you tie the more the sophistication of AI behind it has the potential to give you exactly what you want more of those fringe sites cool. I’m gonna, I’m gonna bring in some money for fans only, and they’re gonna, they’re gonna go further into this for you, right from a searching for a platform.
Dan Maccarone 40:29
Yeah, I think that’s right. Look, you look at what they’re doing with it like that. And then you look at what they can do with deepfakes right now. And basically, we’re all going to be replaced and
Dave Kelly 40:38
demo on some AI for a couple of months ago. And I saw the demo. And I was amazed by the demo. And Rolando and I got off the call. I think I saw the AI that was replacing me and I just walked out.
Rolando Rosas 40:57
Yeah, we’re getting better. It’s getting better. You’re right about the deep fakes and all that it’s getting better. There’s, I don’t think I don’t think it’s gonna end this computer power, processing power and cost around that goes down, and storage capacity as well as it goes up, and that the cost for storage goes down, all of these things become much more real. Hey, Dan, I want to ask you one other thing here. I’ve read businesses that start in an economy like right now where it’s starting to soften up a company like Google, Facebook, Salesforce, and Netflix, I believe we’re all starting in around soft parts of economy. They all obviously Netflix’s who they are Google, Facebook, and Salesforce, those are all dominant companies. What are you hearing from folks that are maybe they’ve been laid off? Or they’re getting ready to start do a startup? What are your hearing right now is we’re in that spot where the economy isn’t taking off? And it’s like, oh, yes, going gangbusters, people throwing money around the VCs. And maybe they’re holding back. What are you hearing from folks as in during these times? And is it a great time to get into the pool and become an entrepreneur?
Dan Maccarone 42:07
I’ve started three or four companies in my life. And I’ve started almost all of them during recessions or downturns in the market. So I tend to be a person that’s very pro, that idea when things are in a downturn, you have more opportunities for innovation and people looking to figure out what’s the next thing that can take me away from this big gargantuan company, despite taking a lot more money than I’d like. So I think it’s a good time for that. Certainly, look, I’m, I share my office with a very large venture fund, and I’m an investor in their venture fund. So I, their job is to write checks and find companies that to invest in and you know, what they think about venture is, you have your fund is limited to a time period, right? So if you raise whether it be $5 million, or $200, you have you have to write checks, and over a three year period, so people are investing and there are there is money to be raised. And I think it’s really about what are the right problems that we’re solving right now that needs to be solved. So I am very pro entrepreneurship right now. I think that if you can figure out how you can actually solve a problem out there for business or for a person that can scale for it. 100%
Rolando Rosas 43:14
Absolutely. For starting during the downturn.
Dave Kelly 43:17
Listen, we’re gonna wrap this up, Dan, I know that you gotta run jump on the train. Hey, listen, we’ve been talking with Dan Maccarone, CEO of Charming Robot and author of Barstool MBA: Why Running a Bar Beats Running to School. Hey, Dan, where can people find you want to learn more?
Dan Maccarone 43:38
You can find me on Twitter at Dan Maccarone Instagram at Dan Maccarone. You can email me dan@Charmingrobot.com. And pretty much out there on the internet. Don’t be afraid to get in touch.
Dave Kelly 43:49
Not hiding. Thank you so much for joining us. We really do appreciate it. It was a great conversation.
Dan Maccarone 43:55
Thank you guys. Good chatting lately.
Rolando Rosas 43:57
Absolutely.
Outro 43:59
Thanks for listening to What The Teck? Be sure to check out our other episodes featuring awesome tech and amazing guests. Find them on circuitloops.com or wherever you consume your favorite podcasts.
Recent Comments