Brian Samson on Startups, Foster Care, and Global Businesses

This is Brian Samson, and you're listening to the Matt Belacher Podcast.

Today's guest knows what pairs well with a Malbec. He's a fellow Bruin, world traveler, foster child advocate, and founder of Plug Technologies. Please welcome Brian Samson to the show. How you doing, Brian?

I'm doing great. Thanks for the opportunity. Opportunity?

Well, it's always exciting to talk with someone who's been to way more countries than I have, which, you know, that in itself isn't a huge accomplishment, but you've accomplished some very impressive feats. But I know you didn't start off the founder of a company. Where did you grow up, Brian?

Yeah, I grew up just outside of Chicago, about an hour outside in the suburbs. And that was my life for until I went away to undergrad.

Okay. So you're a Chicago kid. My mom grew up there, so everyone from the Chicago area is, is basically a saint in her opinion. And I'm not, I'm not one to argue, but what was your first job? Like what was, what was the first thing you did that someone paid you for?

Yeah, so I think there's, there's kind of two threads there. There's the, um, I mean, I grew up like you had to earn it. So, you know, cutting lawns, tarring driveways, shoveling snow, raking leaves, you know, whatever I had to do. And then. Gosh, it must have been like a week after I turned 16, you know, was eligible to work. I was, I was in the restaurant game. So I worked for a restaurant called Fuddruckers. Not everyone has been there. Um, but you know, it's, it was a really kind of weird first job because my position was like, uh, guest service relations. And, you know, I made like, I'm going to date myself. I made like $5.25 an hour. And, but I was tip eligible. but I was in a role that nobody knew if they should tip me or not because at Fuddruckers, for the audience who's been there, you, you know, place your order at the counter. You know, it's not a sit-down restaurant. You place your order at the counter. There's a whole like salad bar to dress your burgers and everything and get your, your sodas. And they would call, you know, Matt, your order's ready. And you know, you come up and dress your burger and go sit down. And then I would appear and go, you know, would you like Would you like a refill of your soda? And I'd go fetch it for you. Or, you know, would you like a balloon for your kid? Or can I take your plate? Or here's a menu for the bakery. Can I go up and buy you a pie with your money? So it was very awkward. You know, like if I was lucky, I made an extra $3 in tips, which I really had to work hard for.

So you had to be like, here's a slice of apple pie. Do you know I'm tip eligible?

Exactly. So I kind of feel like I was ahead of the game because now anywhere you You know, they flip that screen and you feel obligated to tip. I really could have used that back in the day.

Yeah. Now, now they ask you to tip machines. I've seen that at places where there's no human interaction, but they want you to tip. So we've, we've come a long way. I think everyone should work in food service, at least for some point. You really see how much of a pain in the ass some people can be. You also improve your own customer service skills. What are some of the more important tenets or lessons you learned from your days at Fuddruckers?

Yeah, man, I'll admit I was probably pretty lazy, but it was a pedestal. For me to get to a very famous Chicago restaurant that has since gone nationwide called Portillo's. And I worked there for 5 years to help pay for college and, you know, kind of got promoted and learned all about, man, you know, there's so many different line managers there and different line manager styles. And the kitchen staff was mostly from Mexico. So I learned about cross-cultural and like work ethic. And I had this one boss who, man, like I just loved, you know, you would kind of walk down the line and You know, there was, uh, you know, like you're, you're always used to someone correcting you when you're doing something wrong, right? But he, he totally flipped it. And whenever he saw you doing something good, he'd say, that's why, that's why Brian, you know, that's why you're the guy, you know? And man, that meant so much to me. And I think it totally flipped like the way that I, I saw leadership at a young age.

So how did you see leadership?

Well, I saw it as, you know, it didn't have to be this like bad authoritative figure, you know, like it could actually inspire you to, to, to do your best.

Yeah. I've, I've, I mean, there's lots of cheesy quotes about leadership, but one of my favorites is, is basically what you're saying. It's like a leader is someone that motivates others to do great things or just to, to improve whatever you're doing. And it's, and it's, it's pretty hard to be motivated in the long term when you're always being yelled at, you know, it's like there's, there's a balance. So, so I understand you, you did, you didn't stay in Chicago forever. Tell us about your move.

Yeah. Gosh, I'm going to sound so old on the show.

You already do. So just lean into it, Brian. Yeah.

So let's see, end of 2007, I had been at a staffing company in Chicago. Did pretty well, you know, was running by the time I was in my mid-20s. I had a team of 16 in multiple locations, but they decided to close the Chicago office and kind of move everything to Boston where their headquarters were. I decided not to make that move and had an opportunity in Southern California. So I moved there, lived in Huntington Beach for a couple years and found a house, you know, with two other dudes from Craigslist and lived by the beach. And that was fantastic. Not really like big career years for me. That was kind of a quality of life years, I like to say.

Big bro years for sure.

Yeah. And then, but then, you know, I needed some challenge and stimulation, so I ended up doing the inverse of that. Moved to San Francisco and I felt like all I did was work for 5 years, so it was quality of work over quality of life. But I was challenged, stimulated, made more money, made a lot of contacts, and that kind of led to the next chapter of travel. But San Francisco, you learn a lot about the ins and outs of tech startups and VC and startups grow, they flame or they keep growing. And there's a lot of nuances that I learned there.

I lived in LA for 15 and the, the kind of cliché was you're at a coffee shop and someone's working on a script. And then I moved to Mountain View about 50 miles south of San Francisco. And the cliché there was you're at a coffee house and someone's working on getting seed stage funding. Yeah.

Yeah.

What was the reality from, from your experience?

Man, Matt, you nailed it on the head. I mean, it's just like startup t-shirts and hoodies and MacBooks and You know, everybody, everybody trying to look like they're building the next billion-dollar company.

And what was your role there? Well, I know you're working, but what did you do in the Bay Area?

Yeah, I was, um, so, um, funny you mentioned Mountain View. I did spend a year as a contract recruiter at Google. So, you know, did the whole Google bus and ride my bikes to, you know, grab as many Otowalla smoothies as I could, you know, the 21 restaurants and cafes and stuff. But, but ultimately, you know, that got me into the tech startup world in San Francisco where I was living. And I started off in like the recruiter role, but ended up as a head of talent for 4 different VC-funded tech startups. A couple did pretty well. You know, we had an IPO at LendingClub and then an acquisition. Soch was where I was at, the Series B company got acquired by Postmates. Some of you might remember them and Postmates got acquired by Uber. So my role was to, as soon as a company had some capital to spend, 70% of capital is usually spent on labor in software companies. So, um, you know, I was basically the biggest allocator of capital, you know, by hiring the right people. And, you know, you learn a lot about, you, you get the wrong people, you can quickly sink a startup. You get the right people, it can quickly. Multiply it. So that was my role. And then, but as a head of talent, you're never, you're never out of the recruiting game, even if you're also trying to set strategy and think through the systems and the processes, you're still recruiting people all day long too. And if you, even if you've got a team, so that was really my focus for the 5 years I was there.

What tips do you have for people who are either in a startup or they want to create their own?

Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that I'll say, and this, this is probably more generic business advice, is you don't have a business until you have a customer. And I think everyone kind of, like myself included, like I remember my very first business that I started and I'm up at like 1 in the morning tinkering with the commas on my website, like thinking that that matters, you know, or spending a week on Google, like, should I do an S corp or a C corp or who cares, get a customer? So that was something I think I've learned. And then maybe the second advice is more hiring specific is we all want to do as much as possible by ourselves. And I think there's some power in that. And we all think that hiring is something we should do by ourselves. So, if you look at the first 10 hires at startups, it's almost always people that were already in their network. Um, and I mean, that could be great. You look at companies like PayPal, you know, the PayPal Mafia is, you know, it's quoted all over Silicon Valley and it's like the first 20 people are all like billionaires and have gone on to create their own other companies. But I think that's rare. Mostly, uh, I think founders make mistakes by hiring people so close to them. They look like them, they talk like them, they think like them. So that's where recruiters tend to add the biggest value is usually bring a recruiter on as soon as you've exhausted your network. But what if you did that a little bit earlier? You might get different points of view, different ideas, different levels of creativity, perspectives, and so forth. So go a little earlier to the recruiting well than wait.

Yeah. Don't wait till you absolutely need it, folks. Um, and how did you end up at UCLA Anderson?

Yeah, I, um, It's funny. So my wife, she grew up as a child of expats. So her dad worked for a hotel. He grew up all over Asia. And I was just fascinated, you know, like here I am, like kind of sheltered Midwest kid. For vacations, we go to Wisconsin, you know, and she's telling me about like, oh, you know, this one summer we went to Hong Kong and this other summer we went, you know, Oh my God, like this is cool. But I really wanted to be an expat, so I started looking at a bunch of different international programs and I applied to UCLA has this cool program where it's like tied to the hip with National University of Singapore. And most people have never heard of NUS, National University of Singapore, but it's actually the number one university in Asia. But you know, here in the States, we don't care about anything that's Singaporean. So I learned that pretty quickly. Yeah. You know, you see that diploma from NUS? Oh, we don't care.

Who's, who's NUS? Yeah. I've never met her.

So anyway, I thought that would carry a lot of weight in Asia. So, um, so did the program really cool though, you know, spend a few weeks in Westwood, then you go to India and Singapore and China. And it was about 18 months. And the whole time I'm in this program, you know, I'm thinking like, okay, I'll just name drop to all these people in Singapore. Hey, you know, NUS. MBA guy over here, what do you think? But it, it didn't carry as much weight as I was hoping, or just really hard to, you know, land an interview over Skype in a different country without visas or, you know, living, living where you live. So, so anyway, about halfway through that program that led me to a totally different side of the world and, you know, different things. But my intention with the UCLA and US was be an expat in Asia. I just didn't. Didn't happen like I wanted it to.

Yeah, there are probably cheaper ways to be an expat in Asia than, but I mean, you have a piece of paper, so I guess it's not for nothing. I want to get more details on this story you had where you were at a medium-rare steak and a Malbec. What's the situation there, Brian?

Oh, well, I don't know if there's a specific story there, but I'll tell you right around that time period, I found an investor who was open to like different things that I was looking at. So I put a business plan together to build a company that built minimum viable products, MVPs, for fintech companies. If your audience doesn't know, fintech is like the new way of saying startups that do something in finance and usually one thing really well. Like investments, like Wealthfront or Robinhood or insurance startups, you know, or lending, you know, like Lending Club where I used to work. So, so I saw this big opportunity for building the MVPs for fintechs and I ended up raising about $2 million, which seemed like it could have been a billion for, you know, from where I grew up, but it got me like Started to add up the costs in San Francisco. You know, what if I had done that there and, you know, I would've run out of money in like the third month. So ended up getting my expat experience, you know, convinced my wife and we moved to Buenos Aires and that's where we found amazing software engineering talent, you know, live like a local and your dollar goes really far in a place like that. I describe it sometimes as maybe like the most first world, of the third world countries. You know, it's developing. There's a lot of, there's a lot of volatility, some chaos, you know, high inflation, big queues, subway strikes. But then you also have tree-lined streets and this just kind of beautiful, beautiful roads and flowers and cobblestone streets and cafes and old Parisian architecture. 'Cause you got this very European style to Buenos Aires. Vegas city, 14 million people. And I just loved it. And if you like steak, there is no better place in the world. And I'm not talking about like, you've got to go to the high-end steakhouses there. This is just like the average, you know, corner diner that has a steak and you get steak, you get Malbec, you know, this amazing red wine they have there. And my wife and I would eat out every night for like $40 total and just eat like kings. It was incredible.

So, why'd you leave? I don't know. I guess as I, as I talk about it, I was like, you're in heaven and you, you left.

Yeah. As I thought about it, I should stay, but you know, we, we wanted to start a family, so we ended up relocating. We live in Hawaii today. Wow.

What, what island?

We're on Oahu. For those who've never been to Hawaii, there's 4 major islands. Oahu's the biggest, the most populated, I should say. So about a million of the 1.4 million live on Oahu. It's where Honolulu is. We have a Costco, you know, all that.

And I'm from Southern California and actually had a guest who grew up in San Diego and lived in Maui for about 15 years. And culturally, it's different living there than being a tourist. What was your experience like?

Sticker shock. Well, and I also realized that a lot of people like to visit Hawaii and they blow it out, you know, for the week that they're there. But so I think we realized within like 6 months of having guests, because they would come and they wanted to like do all these things and we do those things with them. So like, we're not going to make it here.

We have to say no.

Yeah. It's so, yeah, we have to learn how to say no. So I'm not saying that it's not expensive here. You know, groceries are highest in the nation, but I think the secret to living here, sadly, is make your money from a different place in the world. It's almost like that arbitrage people might talk about of like, I'm a digital nomad and I make my money from clients in the States, but I live in Bali, right? It's kind of that same thing. There's no Fortune 500 companies here. There's not a lot of big money jobs. You have to kind of create it. you know, to, to do it here.

And what, what keeps you there? I mean, it's obviously natural and beautiful. You're pretty close to Asia. What, what's, you know, yeah. Tell us about the good stuff.

Yeah. Both our kids were born here. So they're 5 and 6. So they've spent their whole lives here. I mean, quality of life and raising a family here is unbeatable. Like amazing weather, you know, just 2 days ago. I mean, this is December and, you know, my, I picked my son up from school and we went, we went, you know, hanging out at the beach, right? And we're swimming in the water and I live in Southern California, but we didn't do that in December.

No, it's a very different experience.

You know, we're just kind of riding the waves and, you know, and eating sushi and poke bowls and it's, it's really special. It's a really, really nice place.

It's another kind of paradise. It's incredible. And I obviously want to learn more about Plug, but before that, I understand you're an advocate for foster children. Obviously great cause. How did that come about, Brian?

Yeah, thanks for giving me the chance to talk about that. In early 2020, so this is like right about the, like, like right against that pandemic, you know, when COVID started to happen, my wife and I were at our church and someone came to speak about foster care in Hawaii. And, you know, there's a lot of kids that need homes. And I'll be honest, I didn't, I don't think I knew a single foster kid or foster parent at this wasn't in my circle. And it was really interesting to me and also really sad. You hear about, uh, these kids and they kind of go from home to home in a trash bag. And, you know, we're, you know, Matt, you and I are fully formed adults and like we've gotten to where we are in our lives by our, the choices we've made. Right. But these kids, they didn't choose any of this. You know, they didn't choose to grow up in neglect. Abuse, sex trafficking, like just like the worst of the worst, you know, and drugs. They didn't pick any of this stuff, um, but they did. So anyway, we got inspired to, um, become foster parents. You know, we have the time, the resources, and, you know, and also if it's not us, then who's going to do it? You know, it kind of like sunk in that way. So, um, we went through the whole process and then in, uh, February of 2021, we took in a little 6-month-year-old girl and fostered her for 2 years and ended up adopting her.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

And I guess what— you're a success story. We hear a lot, lots of concern or people get intimidated to do something. What advice do you have for those people?

Yeah, well, you don't have to go all in like right away. There's something called respite care. Which is another way to say you can give a foster parent a break for a day or a weekend. Because by the way, like it's, it's kind of tough on foster parents. So just being able to have like a night off or a weekend off. So you could kind of come in as like the fun aunt or uncle and, you know, like hang out, kind of take care of them, get a little bit more acclimated to this world. And it, I don't wanna airbrush any of it. Like it, it's not easy to do it, but I think like anything great in life, you gotta work for it a little bit. Yeah. But there's nothing valuable in life that you, that, that's not something you had to work for.

Right. I think there's air and that's about it. But any, anything that like you, you, you accomplished, it take, it takes some effort. And that, I mean, that's awesome to know that there's ways to kind of dip your toe in.

Yeah.

You don't have to say, all right, I'm going to have someone or I'm going to adopt them till they're 18. There's, there's ways to kind of ease it. And, and yeah, you hear these horror stories about foster parents, but I'd imagine like most things, the vast majority, 90+ percent are great and it's the others that make the headlines. So you can help relieve those great ones by giving them a vacation or a date night every now and again.

Yeah. And there's, there's about 140,000 foster kids in America right now. So there's a lot of kids that need good parents. Actually, you know what, just as like the first step, there is a really good movie with Mark Wahlberg of all people called Instant Family. And when my wife and I watch it, we feel like it actually represents this experience really well. So first step, watching Instant Family, second step, Respite Care, third step, um, give me a call. I'll be happy to All right. To talk me through it.

Well, I, I love Mark Wahlberg, and so I'll, I'm gonna watch that. And then everyone, you know, call, call Brian, especially late at night. He'll, he'll love it. Well, that, that's, that's very cool. And I wanna learn more about the origin story of Plug Technologies. I know a little bit about it, but can you tell the good people out there what motivated you to create this thing?

Yeah, so that first business I had about in Argentina for minimum viable products, and I ran that for 4 years. That business is still around today. I just sold my stake in it. Because it got really, really arduous to travel from Hawaii to Argentina. You know, there's really no, no easy way to get there. And, you know, we started having a family and I didn't want to be away, you know, for that long. But man, did I love Latin America. And I saw the 2020s shaping up as the decade for Latin America. So I knew that this is where I wanted to focus, but I also saw maybe some, some faults in the way we structured the business. That first company, we, we were steadfast on having a centralized office and everybody come to the office. And this is, you know, long before like COVID made it cool to work remote. So, you know, we were all in one office and we, you know, went all in, like we had a bar and Sado, like, like a parrilla. So you could, you know, grill meat, you know, on Fridays for the team and, you know, FIFA on a pool table and all that stuff. So we, you know, we really invested there and then we paid our team in local currency, you know, to try to get the currency boost, currency arbitrage. And then we had all these layers. So if a client wanted to, you know, talk to our engineer, first they had to go through our director and then the architect and the project manager, then the lead, and then finally, you know, the engineer who's doing the work. And So I thought those were like 3 issues. So I wanted to create a new company called Plug that was more like kind of clean, easy staffing. So we, we optimized from day 1, everybody is remote. We have almost 100 people that are, we've recruited that we're paying, but are working for clients directly. Number 2, we, we pay them all in US dollars, so it gives everybody kind of peace of mind of a low inflation currency, or at least, I was like, well, US dollars are low inflation, I guess, relatively speaking, but yeah, relative. I mean, you know, let's pretend the last couple of years didn't happen at all.

Yeah, fair enough. We'll pretend it's 1971. It's pretty stable. Yeah.

Yeah. We're on the gold standard. And then number 3 was we got rid of all the layers. So now that, say, director of engineering at a client, is talking directly to our engineer and there's no layers in between. So there's not this kind of confusion for the engineer of like, am I wearing the Plug t-shirt today or am I wearing the client t-shirt? You're wearing the client t-shirt always. And I want you to feel you're, you're part of the team. We just happen to facilitate the introduction and we make sure, you know, all the, the payroll compliance, everything in your country is is fine. So the client can be a US company and pay us as a US company and not have to worry about anything that's happened south of the border, but the relationship can be direct. And I think that's really important for great work to happen.

Nice. And you mentioned it's not a business till you have a customer. You don't have to give the name, but like describe your first customer.

Yeah. Um, gosh, we, uh, let's plug, do I remember this one? We had a lot of, um, venture-funded tech startups at the beginning and we've broadened out. So work with a lot of like mid, mid-size, mid-market type companies now too.

Okay. And you've, you've worked when recruiting in the States and now Latin America. What are some of the bigger differences in the talent pool across the countries?

Yeah. Um, well, you know what I'll say is that I think the gap is closing and closing fast. What I really like about Latin America is the English level is not only really good, But it's like US style English, you know, if you get, if you call United Airlines, you know, and you get caught up with a call center in Asia, yes, they speak English, like no doubt, but it doesn't feel like it's our English.

You know what I mean?

It kind of feels like it's scripted or.

It's more the King's English, not the Revolutionary English.

And if it goes off script, like you kind of feel like, like this is going to go sideways fast. So I think with Latin America, all this volatility we talked about is actually an advantage. And why I say that is if you're hiring people, you typically want people that are gritty, scrappy, proactive, humble, hungry, clever, critical thinkers. So growing up where you lose money overnight to inflation, government mismanagement, crazy political infrastructure, you just become like, this is just traits and intangibles and attributes that you just develop overnight. And it's a lot of stuff that if you live in like the safe, developed world, we take a lot of that for granted, you know, like that everything just kind of works. And when it doesn't, we freak out because we're not, you know, we don't, we don't understand how to deal with it.

We need a mental health week.

So like you see all these job descriptions, like I want people that are gritty, scrappy, you know, outside the box thinkers. I'd argue that Latin America produces that even better than the States. Because they're used to it. You know, and then all the other things are leveling the playing field, you know, all the software languages and, you know, VC money is going to Latin America. So they're building their own tech startups. They're getting used to that AI, all the different tools there. So all this is really kind of leveling the playing field. So I think the gap is really, really close, but the cost is not. And that's where arbitrage comes into play.

Well, there's, you're a good businessman. And you brought up some important points. You said when people hire, they want people that are gritty, hardworking, industrious. And at least when I was dating myself growing up, you think, oh, well, if you graduate from Princeton, people are going to really want you. Or if you have a Harvard degree, people are going to be lining up. I know there's, I'm going to be very stereotypical. A lot of those kids, grit, you know, like there are some, don't get me wrong, but it's like, chances are they come from means. They are very book smart but have never really had to struggle. How do you kind of square that circle? Or is that where, I mean, do you think people now who have Harvard degrees are going to say like, no, I don't, I grew up in Argentina. How's this going to play out, Brian? Yeah.

Well, maybe what I'll say is that, and this might be a slightly different thread is I think what you often see with, you know, a lot of the people that go to, like, go where they're supposed to and then they follow the next track of they work at Google or Apple or McKinsey.

I was about to say McKinsey. You beat me to it.

Yeah. Yeah. Or investment banks, you know, so they all kind of go the typical path. And they kind of do what's expected of them, right? And, but I think this world is changing fast, you know, with AI, machine learning, wild career paths, and like people just need to be super creative and not afraid to take risks, right? Because like you're not competing with— you're, you know, I think 15 years ago, if you graduated from Princeton or Harvard or Yale, you're really competing with the top Ivy League kids, right? But I think now your competition, your total addressable market of competition is so much bigger now. And the differentiator has got to be creativity and scrappiness.

And how do we teach— we're parents, how do we teach creativity and scrappiness?

Yeah. I mean, as a father of a 5 and a 6-year-old, I think about this a lot. You know, I think what I'm doing, you know, at least from the scrappiness is make sure my kids always have chores, you know, nothing is given to them. So, you know, they've been washing the car since they were 4 years old and, you know, doing all sorts of stuff like that, you know, feeding the dog, walking the dog, you know, like making sure they have responsibility and purpose. And then from a creativity standpoint, I don't know if I have the answer for that. I think I'm still searching. So if you have any advice, I'd love to hear that.

I'm waiting for you to tell me. So maybe when you figure it out, could you email me or give me a phone call? I'd really appreciate that.

You got it.

What have you done career-wise, Brian, that you're most proud of?

Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this the other day that with Plug, for example, we have a team of about 100, you know, when you do our internal team and all the engineers that we're billing out. So I take pride in having, you know, 100 families that, you know, this vision for Plug from a few years ago is now supporting 100 families. And I, I really, I'm proud of that.

Very cool. And what are you optimistic about?

I think there's a lot to be thankful for. I think a lot to be optimistic for. I'm excited about when the world shifts to meritocracy. So when it's, I think, equal opportunity and everyone has the chance to shine in a meritocracy. Democratic process, that's what gets me excited about it. And I think we're there.

I'm happy to hear that. Where can people learn more about you, Plug Technologies? How can, where can we funnel these folks, Brian?

I appreciate that. Plug Technologies, the website is plugg.tech, T-E-C-H, and my email, and you guys can email me anytime, Matt especially, I invite you anytime, brian@plug @brian_samson.tech.

All right. Get, get those emails going. Brian Samson, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Matt Ballaker Podcast. To learn more, please check out mattballaker.com and encourage your friends to like, subscribe, and share. Really appreciate it.