He Blew Up His Own Winning Product Before AI Could - Eoin Hinchy - Tines - EP#115

We were just like, man, this sucks. Like, why won't anybody build the product that we want? And so eventually we were just like, you know what, fuck it, we'll just go do it ourselves.

My guest today is Eoin Hinchy, co-founder and CEO of Tines. Eoin spent 15 years as a security practitioner before starting Tines. Tines has raised over $270 million from Goldman Sachs, SoftBank, Accel, and others. And now they're approaching $100 million in ARR. I'm pretty sure you bootstrapped for a little while before raising. Was it hard to raise? We've never done a pitch deck.

We've never proactively raised capital, and we found that the fundraising has kind of taken care of itself. We did our seed round with a kind of boutique firm out of the UK called Blossom Capital. They sent us an inbound email and were like, hey, are you guys raising? And we were like, nah, thanks very much, not interested. And they showed up at our front door of our office.

My guest today is Eoin Hinchie, co-founder and CEO of Tines. Eoin spent 15 years as a security practitioner before starting Tines. He spent time at Deloitte, then eBay, then DocuSign as director of information security. He and his co-founder Thomas, also a security practitioner, were frustrated with how brittle and complex the existing security automation tools were. So in 2018, they left to build their own. Out of a small office in Dublin, Tines started as a no-code automation tool for security teams. Now Owen is betting the company on a next-generation product, Tines 3B. It has a bigger surface area than just IT and security. It's an AI-native environment for every team's most important agents, apps, and automations. A lot of CEOs are talking about AI creating their refounding moment. Owen is one of the few actually doing it. Tynes is now 450 people across Dublin, Boston, San Francisco, and Sydney, has raised over $270 million from Goldman Sachs, SoftBank, Accel, and others. And now they're approaching $100 million in ARR or revenue. Eoghan Hinchie, welcome to Not Another CEO Podcast.

David, what's up? Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me.

I'm very excited for this. I feel like this is many years in the making. We met many years ago, and I'm excited that we're doing this. Okay. First question outta the gate I ask everyone, what's the one thing that you've done at Tines, big or small, that's had the biggest impact and you would do again if you're CEO of another company in the future?

We picked a problem to solve that we knew intimately, that we'd lived personally, that we cared deeply about and were extremely passionate about. And I cannot tell you how much of a difference that has made in almost every decision that we've made. We were building a product and building a company very much from a place of empathy with our users and with our buyers. And that just made things so much easier in so many ways. Now, it does very much limit the second part of your question, which is like, if I was doing it again as a CEO, will I ever find a problem that I'm this passionate about or that I care this deeply about? I don't know. But for now, You know, solving a problem like this that we have lived, that we care so much about, has just like transformed the way we think about things.

At the founding moment, what I'm curious about is, was it like a— was it a build for you? Like, I'm frustrated, I'm frustrated, I'm frustrated for like, you know, 10 years, and then you're like, okay, I'm gonna go start this company? Or, or was— did— was there a specific moment that occurred where you said, that's it, fuck it, like, I have to go do this?

Well, I love that you've just given me the green light to swear.

Oh, please, please do. Please. Yeah, yeah.

No, I'm kidding. You know, I had the idea for Tines probably back in like 2010 or 2011. So I was working in a security team in eBay, and we had invested in all the best tools. Like we had every possible tool at our disposal, but so much of our time was spent gluing these tools together and taking information from one, putting it into another, taking the result of that, putting into another product, And back and back and back and forth until we eventually had enough information to be able to make a decision. And so much, so much of our time was spent kind of like hopping between these different products. And so I had this vision for a platform that would essentially glue all these fragmented tools together and dramatically improve the efficiency at which we could make decisions and take action. The challenge was back then, as you'll remember, is like APIs weren't really that much of a thing, right? Like, you know, Stripe was founded in what, 2011? Twilio was around the same time. And so it was really hard to actually programmatically get data from these various tools. And so, yes, the idea was great, but there was actually no real technical way to implement it. And the products that we saw, which attempted to solve the problem and glue these tools together, didn't really work. They were kind of clunky. They relied on all this kind of like weird technology to make it happen. And it just was a terrible user experience. And then the frustration and the problem just kind of like grew and grew and grew as I progressed through my career. And as technology stacks became even more fragmented, and the amount of repetitive work that my teams had to do as I became a leader just became so crippling. And, you know, at that point, there were products which had come out to solve this exact problem. And we spent probably about 6 months looking at all the available tools on the market to buy, Like we were looking to buy these products and we hated every single one of them. Like none of them came close to like meeting our requirements. And Thomas and I were working together and we were just like, man, this sucks. Like why won't anybody build the product that we want, that like our teams need? And so eventually we were just like, you know what, fuck it, we'll just go do it ourselves. And so founded Tines really to go build the product that we'd wished we had as practitioners. So something that was fast, lightweight, easy to use, and would solve the problems we had experienced ourselves.

What do you think is the biggest advantage that you— I mean, there were so many advantages from being an expert in the space, obviously. What is the biggest advantage that you think? Was that because you had a bunch of people in your network you could call on to buy the product right out of the gates? Was it because you knew the actual product roadmap, you know, because it was your own product? Like, what was the number one It's hard.

To your point, there were so many, like, you know, the, the fact that we could get meetings with pretty much any security leader that we wanted because our reputations were good. The fact that we understood what the pricing model should be for these companies. The fact that we didn't need to spend weeks and weeks and weeks doing user research. There was just so much advantage. I think honestly, the single biggest one though was The airtime we got amongst our buyers because we were able to say, I'm just like you. I've been in your shoes. I know the exact problems that you're having. Do you want to look at a product that we've built to solve those problems? And then the kind of like the, the kind of like leeway you were given in those early conversations. And I'll give you an example. Like one of the very first opportunities bake-offs we were involved in was with like a large pharmaceutical. And we were in a bake-off bake-off. And at this stage, it was just me. It was just me. Thomas hadn't joined yet. And we were in— I say we, I'm using the royal we. We were in a bake-off against like a $60 billion company and a $30 billion company. And on the other side, it was just me and like had no right to be even in that conversation. But because I had the respect and could speak to the teams that we were competing or that were evaluating the product, even though like You know, maybe the product wasn't quite there. They knew and could bet on me and on Talents because they're like, this guy gets it. He understands it. He's speaking our language. Whereas these guys over here are clearly just trying to sell software. So there was a missionary versus mercenary sales team.

I love that. I love that. I love that because I, by the way, from what I remember when you launched the company and I remember my security team talking about the product very early on, And saying something to the effect of how you had been doing security before, like this was perfect for security. It was like they felt like it was literally one of their own.

Yeah.

Who built it and they wanted to support that. And I, what you just said about the missionary versus mercenary in the early days, I want to, because a lot of people listening to this are first-time founders or early, want to think about starting a company. And I don't think they appreciate how much a buyer on the other side cares about that missionary and cares about when the founder shows up against a salesperson from a $60 billion company, the founder actually more times than not will win because the salesperson is one of 2,000 salespeople that are showing up, that are doing a deck that's been, you know, prepared for them that they memorize versus the founder who's coming and talking to them about, I actually feel you, I understand your problems.

Yeah.

So when you— I think that's really important for early, like the very early customer acquisition.

Yeah, I got some great advice from a former CEO early days in Talents, and it was that people will buy from you just because you're the founder. Like, you know, like literally people will buy from you just because you come in and you talk deeply, passionately about these problems and can listen to them. And I always kind of feel a little bit bad for like my sales team where it's just like, I've got this unfair advantage if I'm involved in an opportunity where it's just like people will take a meeting with me where like they wouldn't necessarily with a salesperson, or they will kind of like give me the benefit of the doubt because I can say like, oh yeah, I used to work in eBay security team where like they don't have that kind of cheat code. So you're, yeah, you're absolutely right. But like, I think at the heart of that isn't just the fact that you're speaking their language, or you can empathize with their problems in a different way. It's also that like you've taken the risk to go and solve their problems. And you're not just asking these discovery questions, for want of a better term, or like seeking the feedback to close the deal. You're doing it because you really care about building the better product and building the best product. And so there's no ulterior motive most of the time when you say like, oh yeah, you know, what do you think about this feature? Or tell me a little bit more about like what you're doing over here. It's not so you can understand what's the budget. It's so that you can understand like, oh, I wish I could use this to build a better product.

Right. So you, my understanding is you spend a lot of time with customers still. I mean, now you're a pretty big scale, a lot of people, but you spend a lot of time with customers. Can you give me a sense, like now 400-something people, almost $100 million of ARR, how much time are you spending with customers now?

I try to spend about 30 to 50% of my week engaged with customers. Now, that has changed over time in terms of like how that happens. In the early days, would have been like me meeting with customers, talking to them, onboarding them, doing their customer support that way. But as the company has gotten bigger, it's less like that. And it's more kind of like listening to Gong calls or sales transcripts or like reading their customer support emails. But I still probably spend about 30 to 50% of my time like involved in that way. And some people kind of like are a little bit shocked when they hear those kind of numbers. But I just don't think there is a more valuable use of my time. Genuinely, like, I get like loads of my time should be spent on recruiting and product and sales and so on. And I spend a bunch of time on those things as well. But just for me, and what gets me energized and excited is like deeply understanding how our customers are using the product, what problems they have, what their frustrations are, and how we can add more value to what they're doing.

Mm-hmm.

And I hope like that I don't get jaded in that. And I hope that I continue to want to spend that level of time or even more time doing that type of stuff.

Hmm. So we— I talked about in the intro this refounding moment for you, and I've always known you as this security platform. I mean, I think most security people probably in the world know you for that. And but it's evolved in a big way. Can you talk about this in terms— I want to start with like, What's that moment, that moment that you said, I'm going past my people, my security people, my IT people that I know so well? What was the moment that that occurred? Not when did you start building, but when did you know that that needed to happen?

Well, that was always our ambition. So when we founded Tines, our ambition was always to create this enterprise-wide automation layer that would allow any team automate their most repetitive, most mission-critical work. So that was always the ambition. We felt that the most, or maybe the quickest, easiest, and most kind of predictable way to achieve that was to start in security and make security teams wildly successful. It was almost like playing the video game on expert mode. So if we can make security teams successful, then we'll definitely be able to make these other frontline business teams successful as well, because security teams' requirements are so difficult and they're so skeptical and they generally kind of like, like, will put you through the wringer in a way that other teams won't. And we also felt that like our big bet was, can we build a product in such a way that will solve for the acute needs of security teams, but would allow us to then pretty seamlessly move into adjacent teams as time goes on? And we were being pretty successful in that motion. You know, by this time last year, 40% of our customers were using the product outside security. And so we had penetrated into IT operations, marketing, revenue, now pockets, right? But like, it was definitely happening. And so we were already kind of on this path. But we felt like, you know, it's probably another decade of continual product improvements, usability improvements, iterations, to get to a point where we can genuinely say this product is easy enough for use to use and powerful enough to use to solve for security teams' problems and HR or marketing or like, you know, recruiting, whatever the case may be. And so we're already on that journey. And then about 3 years ago, as large language models began to emerge and enter the public consciousness, we were like super excited about what this could do for us and how this might accelerate that ultimate ambition. And over the course of the last few years, we've released a ton of AI capabilities from data transformation tools to Universal Copilots to agent builders, and they've been like really successful. But genuinely, like one of the things that we've struggled with was like, what's the killer use case for agents and AI? Like what are these things just best at? And so about 18 months ago, we started to realize that really these things are just uniquely good at writing code. They are just so, so good at writing code. And we can talk about like the reasons for that and so on, but genuinely they are just uniquely amazing at writing code. And so we started to ask ourselves, in this world where large language models can write code to an extraordinarily high level, what does that mean for our customers? And what does that mean for our product and us as a business? Because we invented Tines as a platform to allow people who couldn't write code we built all these abstractions to allow them essentially produce the output of software engineers. And, you know, we invented low-code, no-code for security and IT teams. And we started to ask ourselves, geez, like we're heading towards this world where all those abstractions that we created, they're no longer necessary because all I need to do is describe what I want and software is going to be output. And that output is going to be extraordinarily like a prepped and accurate and performant. And so about 12 months ago, like, you know, the company was doing incredibly well, David. Like, we were growing faster than ever. We just had a whopper Series C, uh, we'd had our best quarter in history. Company was growing great. But there was this sense that I had, and a bunch of other kind of like people in the company had as well, that like, you know, there's a change coming here. And if we don't get ahead of it, like it won't always be as successful as it is. It won't always be open to the right. I don't know if you've like the analogy. I think of like, there's this French movie, man, from like the mid-'90s called like La Haine. I don't know if you've, if you've ever heard of it, but it opens, it's kind of a cult classic thing, but it opens with this parable of a guy falling off a 50-story building. And every floor that passes, he's like, so far, so good. So far, so good. So far, so good. And I kind of felt that like, for every quarter that passed, we were like, so far, so good. So far, so good. But like, eventually, you know, you're gonna hit the ground. And so we really felt that like, hey, we're heading towards this world where low-code, no-code has a sell-by date. And it's a category that frankly no longer needs to exist. And we need to help our customers navigate this shift and navigate that change. And so what we ended up doing was taking a handful of extremely talented, passionate, creative product people, and taking them out of their roles, and essentially locking them in a room and saying to them, look, reimagine the core experience of Tynes using all this incredible knowledge, which we've gleaned over the last 8 years and experience, and combine that that with the technology that's available today. So still an unwavering belief in our mission, but using the technology and experience that's available to us today. And what they've produced is what you mentioned there is called 3B. And essentially, it leans into the concept of everybody is now a builder, and everybody can produce software. The constraint is no longer producing software. It is how do you execute this software in a secure way? How do you govern it? How do you manage the dependencies? How do you deploy it? And how do you ensure that the innovation which this seismic change unlocks is captured, but in a way that doesn't introduce unnecessary risks to organizations? And that's what 3B solves.

So like I said, I've talked to so many people who I think this refounding story, there's been a couple like Intercom and Fin, and there's been, there's been a couple that have been very widely publicized. And, and but I believe that a lot of the SaaS founders and companies, you know, similar size, they've been scared maybe to, you know, to, to go through this kind of moment because you said it, you're kind of cannibalizing Yeah. A very successful business with a lot of revenue and a lot of customers with a new one. Um, when you went through this process and you made that decision, call it a year ago, did you, like, how did the, did you communicate it first to the board, to the team, to the, did you want to get, I, I know it's a weird way of that, but did you want to get like approval from everyone to do it? Or you just said, this needs to happen, show up at a board meeting, we're doing this, we're putting this many people over here. Just wanted to let you know. Like, can you walk me through the ins and outs of the actual, like, how you communicated it and did that?

Absolutely. So I think I don't remember the exact order of operations, but I do remember this is, this is kind of like textbook innovator's dilemma, if you're familiar with like the book. And, you know, if when you read that book, you hear that the hardest part of the innovator's dilemma is like recognizing the change and embracing the change. digital cameras, iPods, digital music, whatever the technology change is that you want to pick. For us, that really wasn't the hard part. It seems so blatantly obvious to us that this is where the future was going. That was honestly the easy part, was recognizing this change and getting ahead of it. For us, the hardest part was communicating it to the team because we had just, again, come off this incredible quarter, massive fundraise, and we were taking top performers out of their jobs and essentially taking them out of the company by choice. We're kind of saying like, yeah, these guys are doing an amazing job. You won't hear from them for the next 6 months. And that was kind of like, why are you doing— what are you doing? The company's on fire. We need these guys. There's deals in flight. We've got roadmaps to present, et cetera, et cetera. And so what we did was we very much framed it as an experiment. And that's what it was. That's not just lip service. This was an experiment. And we had no idea if it was going to work. We'd done some kind of like, experiments in the past around this concept of using large language models to produce code, which we would then execute in a secure environment. But they'd all failed previously. They'd all been like, nah, the models aren't good enough. Or, you know, it's too slow, or it hallucinates, or whatever the problems were. And so we just kind of framed this as another experiment. Yes, it's a little bit more committive of an experiment, but it's still an experiment. And chances are it's going to fail. And that's okay. And we are not going to punish anybody. And the guys who are working on it, they have the complete freedom for this to fail. And we'll check in every couple of weeks, see how they're doing. And we'll be really intellectually honest at the key milestones and say, it's working great, or no, this isn't working, let's go back and do something else. And that's the way we framed it to the board as well. We said like, look, here's our thesis, here's our philosophy. We're going to take Steven and Eoin, who are the 2 guys who kind of like bootstrapped the project, out of their And they're going to go work on it, and we'll let you know if something cool comes out of it. And if it doesn't, they'll come back and let you know that the experiment failed, and here's why it failed. And it was as kind of like laissez-faire an approach as that. It wasn't kind of like you know DEFCON O, everybody ring the alarm, the company is screwed. Like we're betting everything on this. We were like this is an experiment, and if it works amazing, but if it doesn't, we've still got an amazing business that's like growing incredibly well, and we still have a three-year plan that's going to help us achieve.

And now you, you have the product, you launch the product, and, and now you go to the market and you tell your team, sell 3B to every net new customer.

Correct.

You say, you know, account management team, go to the existing customers and number one priority is move them to 3B, or how does that work?

You know, we, we made the decision very early on when we decided like, hey, this is something that we're going all in on. And we believe that this is the next generation of the platform. The very first thing we did was we said, we're going to put our existing customers as our number one priority. These are the folks that have gotten us to where we are today. They've invested time, energy, commitment, blood, sweat, and tears into like building workflows and times. So the very first thing we did was get all our CS leads leadership and CS managers into a room. And we said, like, this is coming down the pipe, you're the first people to know about it. We're planning to launch this thing in the summer. And here is what we are going to tell customers. What do you think? And we got their opinions and so on. And like, one of the things we've always tried to do has been really honest and transparent and candid with our customers. And we said to them, look, this we believe is the future. But the existing platform, Tynes Stories, as we call it, is going nowhere. Like, we are continuing to invest in it. We are continuing to hire for it. Here's the roadmap for its development. You will never be forced to migrate your workflows from Tynes Stories to 3B. We will continue to support you, et cetera, et cetera. We think that naturally over time, you're gonna wanna spend more time in 3B than in Tynes. But if you have workflows that you've built that are in production that are crushing it, you are not going to be forced to migrate these things. Absolutely not. We want to make this an experience that you volunteer into rather than we force. Because as you know, Matt, like getting an email from a security vendor saying like, hey, here's this great shiny new thing. The first thing that you think about is like, oh Christ, this is going to be a lot of work for me. I'm going to have to go and like migrate all these things.

Exactly.

And Like, you know, so many companies, I think, and partly maybe this is because, again, we have so much empathy for our customers. Like, it's a lot of work for us to go and maintain these 2 products and to support these 2 products and build migration tools between these 2 products, but is undoubtedly the right thing for our customers. And if it's painful for us, so what? It's the right thing to do for our customers. And so that's the approach that we took. And so as a result, the conversations we're having with our customers is kind of like, hey, here's this really cool new thing that we have built, that we think is going to solve a whole new set of problems that are barreling towards you. Don't worry, the existing product is getting better and better every single day. But check out where we're going with this product. And so instead of them being worried about the amount of work and the future, they get to kind of like, see this new thing, you know, deeply appreciate the investment that we're making as well. And probably, frankly, be the heroes inside their entire organization as they bring out this new product that enables frontline builders in a secure way.

And the new logos, the new customers?

For the new customers, like there's some edge cases where we will sell tying stories, but in the vast majority of cases, we think that 3B is probably the better fit if you're starting from scratch.

Got it, got it. And then in terms of, again, back to the point of your brand, your brand is so strong. I mean, really, in terms of security, IT teams, how do you evolve that? Do you go still new logo sales through the, through the, through the security team, IT teams? Like, do you go— even though I know it was expanding before, I'm just, I'm curious. My— yep, that's what I'm trying to get my head around because I feel like that's the challenge for so many of these refounding conversations is you're kind of running 2 companies simultaneously.

Sure.

You know, which, which to your point is overhead, confused. Like, how do you handle that?

Um, with great difficulty. No, I'm kidding. Like, I think, um, like the, the good news is that people love the Tynes brand and we've got a great reputation and NPS is through the roof, etc. So like people like Tynes. And so when we were building 3B, the question of, hey, like, do we rebrand the company around this? Is this a new company name, etc. We felt that the brand, the existing brand, albeit quite security-centric, was an asset rather than something that we had to kind of course correct on. I think that the challenge that we face now is that mostly go-to-market motion and sales motion. Like, for the vast majority of CIOs, they hadn't heard of Tines anyway. Like, we were selling to their security team. Or if they did know about Tines, it was through the security team. And so for the most part, we're educating people on Tines anyway. So it's not kind of like this, like, hey, you might know us because we were this security automation platform. We're now something else. It's kind of like, hey, we're Tines. This is 3B. This is the problem that we solve. And they're like, okay, great. This is a real problem that I have, et cetera. So you don't have to spend like wasting your breath explaining how this is like a company that's been around for a long time that's changing and so on.

Right, right, right.

So like, it's a little bit easier in that sense. But the buying motion is more complex. Because, you know, now we're selling to probably like the CIO, the CISO, maybe the CEO, the CFO. And so sales cycles are a little bit more complicated. And that's been a bit of an adjustment. But for the most part, the sellers who have been most successful at times aren't necessarily security sellers anyway. They're folks that understand APIs, data, and automation, because that's really kind of the value that we add rather than the like traditional, you know, we stop breaches or whatever it is.

Talking about the titles that you sell to, do you— I've read all this stuff about like these chief AI officers and, and I've talked to— I don't see it that much. I mean, I have seen some of it, but only in like very large companies. Is that a role that you're seeing show up at all or not? Or not really? I'm curious because people say it and it's like, this is happening.

Yeah.

But I don't see it that much. I see like they make the CIO Also in charge of AI, you know, or they make this person— but what are you seeing in that area?

Yeah, a little bit about— and this might sound like ridiculous, but like, in the early days of large language models, which is like 2 years ago, like, we actually saw more of your kind of like AI officers then than we do now. And like, you know, I think there was this kind of trend a couple of years ago where it was like, hey, we're gonna have this person who's responsible for AI strategy for the company. And they're going to go and evaluate vendors and so on. I think that's become like less popular, just as there's been so much grassroots adoption of these products. That's kind of like, okay, like, we don't really need this singular person who's going to like manage the strategy for the entire company.

It's just part of the business. I mean, it's just part like—

Exactly, exactly the same way you wouldn't necessarily have someone who's like responsible for the strategy for spreadsheets in the company. Like, it is just— it's how we work now. Everybody has to be a part of it. It's part of everybody's job. Um, uh, but I think what we do see more and more though is like buying committees, for want of a better term. And in that committee, there will be somebody who's like deeply understands the technical implications of AI and large language models and like will ask questions around things like model gateways, or, you know, they have it like an art. No, it's like more of an architectural lens than like a business strategy lens. So we see that more and more.

Got it. I want to shift gears for a second to, you know, you've raised money from some, I mean, amazing investors, you know, and, and a lot of it in the early years when you raised, because I'm pretty sure you bootstrapped for a little while before raising. Was it hard to raise? Easy to raise? Has it been easy to raise every round? Like, can you talk about that? Especially first company, you know, really kind of coming out as a security practitioner, raising venture money. Like, what was that first, that first raise like?

For sure. So you're right, we were bootstrapped for the first 2 years. So myself and Thomas TK, customer funded, bootstrapped, etc. And it's not that we were philosophically opposed to raising capital, David, it was more like we we just felt that everything would be easier, hiring, winning more customers, building a great product, if we had wildly successful customers. And so everything that we did was focused on that. And we just didn't do anything else. Like literally, we did nothing else except make our early customers successful. And that included fundraising. And so when eventually it came to fundraising, we did our Series A, our seed round with a kind of boutique firm out of the UK called Blossom Capital. who were the first external money into the company. Awesome investors, have been great to work with over the course of the last number of years. But they sent us an inbound email and were like, hey, are you guys raising? And we were like, nah, thanks very much, not interested. And they'd kind of heard about times through the grapevine, but we said no. And they showed up at our front door of our office like a couple of weeks later. Physically?

Like actually just showed up?

Yep, actually showed up at our office like a couple of weeks later. It was like, hey, let's go for lunch and drinks, et cetera. And we kind of just hit it off. And we were like, yeah, this sounds great. Like, here's the term sheet. We're like, okay, cool, sign the term sheet, and like got back to work. I know that sounds kind of farcical, and I hate telling these stories because I know how hard it is for like some companies to raise capital. But for like us, David, like that's kind of the story for every round that we've done. We've never done a pitch deck. We've never proactively raised capital. We've always just been focused on building a great product and making customers successful. And we found that the fundraising has kind of taken care of itself. And again, like, you know, did we maximize every single round? Did we build deal heat the way you hear some people talking about? No, we didn't. But like, like, that's not for us. Like, that's not really what gets us excited or what we care about. I know some founders are masters at raising capital. And we'll do these like incredible rounds at like extraordinary multiples, etc. And kudos to them. But That's not us. And that's not what we want to do. We want to like, yeah, we want something that's fair. And that allows us to keep building a great product and continuing to make customers successful.

What is it that you— based on what you're saying, it feels like you've had the choice each round whether to take the money or not. You probably didn't need it. How did you decide Who you wanted to work with and take the money from?

In terms of like the investors, the firms?

Yeah, was it because it was like these amazing funds? Was it because the partner that you were working with was someone that, you know, what was that?

Yeah. I think it mostly came down to what did we need at the time? And what was our priorities for the next couple of years? And so, you know, we did the kind of like the tier 1 VCs in our early round, because like we felt that that would help help lend credibility to the company so that we could use it as a way to win more customers and win more business, et cetera. And then we did the growth funds, like the Softbanks and the Goldman Sachs in the latter round, because we felt the next phase was all about scale and selling to these Fortune 500 CIOs, and that this type of firm would help us achieve that. So it was really about, and of course, Almost like the obligatory thing was that we liked the people critically and they had a good reputation and we felt like we could trust them. And I know that sounds kind of like puerile in some respects, but genuinely, that was so important to us that we wanted these board meetings, we didn't want to dread going into these board meetings. We wanted to go in thinking like, these guys get it, they understand it, and they're fighting our cause. So that's— they're kind of like the motivations.

I think that that part about the trusting the people is the part that a lot of early-stage founders, they take the highest valuation.

Sure.

And maybe from the biggest-name firm. Yeah. While not realizing that that partner is the one who's going to be sitting there for the next decade. Or yeah, whatever period of time. And I think that what you just said is really important in that, like that point, which is trusting the person. I mean, that person that's going to be in your corner is totally— is the most important thing.

Yeah. Like the way I think about it, man, like is the board and your investors should feel like an extension of your team. And I'm not the first person to say that. And so as a result, you should almost kind of treat it as a hire Hiring process in many respects, and I know that kind of like the power dynamics can feel a little bit weird there in some circumstances. But like you know, these people should feel like a member of the team that you like enjoy hanging out with, that you feel have the company's best interests in heart, that are motivated by your mission, etc., etc. I think the other like the other thing that a lot of early founders get wrong is that like VCs and great VCs. like, are incredible salespeople. And you can leave a meeting with a VC feeling that they're the only person who's going to make your company successful. And especially if you're kind of like a young founder who hasn't been like haggard by the world, like, you can kind of fall into that trap by thinking like, oh man, like, if I don't sign this term sheet, like, I'm screwed. And the reality is like, they can have like a small impact on the future success of your company. But really, what's going to make your company successful is building an amazing team, having wildly successful customers, and building a great product. And like, your VCs can't help you with that, unfortunately. Like, they may be able to give you a couple of like introductions to customers and executives, etc., but you're kind of on your own to figure the rest out.

Yeah, you know, I've interviewed some, some, a number of VCs on the podcast, and it's been very interesting for me because I ask them, And, and I say, what's your value to companies? And the ones that are honestly the most successful who have been around the longest, their answers have all been, there's probably 2 or 3 moments in the history of a company, in the journey of a company where I've seen that story before. I have that connection. I know that where I can help in those crucible moments, give some piece of advice, some— they're like, but other than those 2 or 3 moments or whatever it But it is, you know, the day-to-day, I'm not going to make the company better, you know.

Totally, totally. And I think that's like, there's nothing wrong with that. Genuinely, that can be transformative. Like, you can get a piece of advice from like an investor, but like, I love all our investors and all our VCs. They're like great people who like genuinely care about the future of Times. But like, you kind of like, you could fall into this trap of thinking I need to do what's right by the board, or I need to do what's right by like my investors. And like, that is not how you build an enduring generational company, right? What you do is you put your team and the company first, and like everything else should come after that.

Um, let's talk about the team. The— you have offices all over the world, um, with a lot of people. What is Why do you have the offices all over the world? Is that for customers to be close to? Is that because that's where the talent is? Is this an in-office culture where everyone's in the office every day? Like, just give me that. This global company, was that on purpose? Like, talk me through that a little bit.

Yeah, so we founded the company in Dublin in 2018. We almost immediately started to win business in North America. That's where our networks were. That's the environment that we knew really well. So something like, in a relatively short space of time, something like 75 to 80% of our revenue was coming from North America. And so we always knew we were going to have a large presence in North America. We were 5 people when COVID started in March 2020. And so we did a lot of our growth during lockdown when you couldn't have offices and you couldn't have in-person. And I think by the time we had our first, by the time it was possible to have our first all-company get-together, we'd grown to like 80 people and we had folks in like 27 states in the US, something like that. So like we had hired people wherever we could find them, wherever they were close to customers, wherever we could find the best people. And so that's always been our belief. We have hubs, as we call it, in cities like San Francisco, Boston, Dublin, and Sydney. Nobody is obliged to go to those offices. As you can see, I'm working from home today. And so we, we're not the kind of like the 996 culture that you hear about. That's just not for us. We hire people and trust them to do their best work. And if they're not doing their best work, we have hard conversations. Kind of simple as that.

Hmm. What is the biggest challenge you've faced since starting Times?

Yeah, like, it's not a single challenge, man. It's something that like reoccurs almost on a freaking weekly basis. And it's this idea that like, nobody cares, right? Like, like you as the founder and the CEO, you just like, you're in this world where you almost necessarily believe that everything you're doing is like important and critical. And that if you mess it up, like people are going to care, or that like, when you have this big product launch, it's going to like light up the world, or you make this big hire, it's going to be a step change to your revenue. But like, the reality is that nobody cares. And like, that can be really disheartening in some respects, because you're like, oh man, when we launch this product, our revenue is going to go through the roof. And like, it doesn't. Or, you know, you're going to make this great hire, or we're going to do this fundraise, and that'll be the step change that sees us explode. And what I've learned is that challenge is quite liberating in many respects because it means that all you need to do is just keep showing up every single day, and it's going to be like a 1% incremental compounding change every single day. And if you just keep doing these things, launching these products, talking to customers, building great things, making ambitious bets, That like it's almost inevitable, right? It's almost this unstoppable juggernaut that just continues to like build momentum. And so that's been the challenge is that like realizing that like you know the failures aren't going to be these dramatic explosions. Like that's not how it works. They're going to be this kind of like quiet, underquieted efforts where you put in all this hard work and like everyone's kind of. like, yeah, cool, and moves on. And like, that is— that I think is like, you learn that lesson the hard way over time.

That is such a good— there's so many examples when you say that go through my mind of like, you go in to pitch a VC and you think— in your case, you didn't pitch a VC, but other people go in to pitch a VC and they go in and they think that their company is the most important company doing the most important thing. And that VC has already met with 12 other founders that day who believe the exact Same thing, you know, and you go and you launch, you talk to your customer and you have this meeting and they love you because you're as practic they trust you. You tell them about this new things you're building, and they also have 42 other vendors that they work with that all told them about some other new feature that got launched. And I always remember this conversation with this person at Slack, one of the top product people, and I said, "Wow, I must be so lucky to be you, like to be at Slack and everyone cares about your product." He said, "Dave, every time we launch a new." Feature, no one uses it. Yeah, he's like we we do the launch, TechCrunch covers it. This person, no one uses it. And so when you say that, it really like you know. But if you look from the outside, I don't know if you feel it, but if you look from the outside to a different company, to a different founder, to a different person, their announcements seem bigger and more successful than you're you know you're inside. No one no one listened to this. No one. But then you look at that one who posts one time on LinkedIn about something. And you're like, oh, they're killing it. Why are we not successful? When it takes you a long time to realize that everyone is in the exact same boat.

Totally. And I think there's like, there's different modes of operating depending on the type of company that you want to build. And like, there's a bunch of like great founders and CEOs whose like aim is to like spend 5 years building a company that's like revenue is like hockey stick growth. Kind of like kill a million salespeople, burn themselves out, like develop a coke habit, but then sell for like 100x revenue multiple, right? And that's like amazing, good for them. And so you have to behave in a different way. Like, with Tines, I want to like, I really want the company to be around in like 2 decades' time, like genuine, like I really do. And so as a result, you kind of can't treat it as a sprint. You can't treat it as this thing where I'm going to like bust an absolute gut over 5 years, burn myself out, and then collapse across the finish line and just have to spend the next 2 years living in a dark room decompressing. We want to build this enduring generational business, so we have to behave a little bit differently. And we can't, or we don't want to, I should say, build a culture that's going to punish people for not working working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. We want to build a company that's enduring, that's generational, that's around for a long time.

So speaking of that, where is Tines in 3 years? 2030, let's say. Where is Tines?

It's like, if you'd asked me this 3 years ago, I think I probably would have said in and around where we are today, funnily enough. Yeah, I think so. I think so, man. I think that the last 3 years have been like almost Almost textbook to where our forecasts have gone. Genuinely, I think the next three years are just so different because the parameters for how companies are operating is like completely and fundamentally changing. Like the ground beneath us is moving, and like you're seeing things like SaaS companies, like every single SaaS business out there is now being questioned about like the value it's adding. Like, I can, I can literally build this product right now. And internally in Tynes, we're ripping out SaaS companies because we're building equivalent and better products in 3B in hours. Like, so the world has just fundamentally changed. I think the investments that we're making in building a platform that's really deep and differentiated in terms of its technical foundations and what we're building instead of like being a feature factory, which is kind of what we were for the last 3 years, sets us up to be, and this is going to sound like hubristic, but like sets us up for being one of the most important software companies over the next few years. You know, I think the world is changing so much in that like, maybe the analogy is let's say, oh, it's like, it's almost like overnight, literally overnight, everybody, literally everybody can now produce produce Michelin star quality food at home. People who never could cook a slice of toast now have the ability to cook Michelin star food. And so as a result, the restaurant industry, it's so hard to predict what's going to happen. But all you know, all you can reliably say is that, well, shit, people at home are going to be cooking a lot more food. And so what does that mean? And so that's kind of like how we think about it at That Loud. Literally everybody in every single company can now produce software to solve their very specific problem, and they're going to do it. And so I think that we now have a— we're in a unique place to be able to empower and enable that innovation and that trajectory and that trend, but also do it in a way that makes enterprises feel really good about not introducing new risks into their organization. So have me back in 3 years' time, Matt.

I'm going to.

We'll answer that question more Okay, awesome.

Let me— I want to transition to your background. So from Ireland, obviously, did you grow up knowing you wanted to be an entrepreneur at some point in time? Was there— were you one of those people, kids who had a business, you know, doing something, you know, something like that? Like what did the early years for your life look like?

No, man, I had no ambition. Like no one in my family was an entrepreneur. I never thought about being an entrepreneur. Like I was, I was pretty good in school, like generally speaking, but I was like really obsessed with like sport. That was my thing. I played every sport. I did a lot of running as a kid and like was really into computers. Like that was kind of it. And so like went to study electrical engineering after school, did that for a couple of years, got a degree in that, got a degree in computer engineering. Then shortly thereafter got a job as a software engineer building software, etc. And then kind of accidentally found myself in security, like working on kind of like encryption projects at a large company, and really enjoyed like that end of the space. And so ended up then getting a master's in security and forensic computing, and then kind of got involved in working and helping to build and run security teams. But I was always like, I was always really, really interested in building tools to solve my own problems. So like one of the reasons I was able to kind of like move through my career and progressed through my career relatively quickly was because like, I was able, always able to solve the problem that I had by building a little bit of software to do it, whatever that problem may have been, like the technical problems, obviously. And so when I kept consistently coming across this problem of too much work, fragmented tools, not able to like scale headcount horizontally to deal with the ops challenges, I was like, fuck, like I wish someone would just go and build this software. And like, they didn't. And so when push came to shove, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to go and build this software myself. And was so naive to the challenges and difficulties of like building a company and all the stuff that came with it. Had never sold software, had never worked in marketing, didn't like— had never heard the term like sales engineering even. I distinctly remember like our first sales leader telling me like, hey, I'm going to hire some SEs. And this is like years into Tynes. Like this is like year three, man. And they were like, "Hey, I'm gonna hire some SEs." And I was like, "We've got loads of software engineers. Like what are you doing hiring like SEs?" He's like, "No, no, sales engineers." And I was like, "What's that? Like what what do they do?" And this is like three years into the journey. But I've always been like like always very willing to admit when I didn't know things and very kind of like eager to learn and like very comfortable kind of like immersing myself. in like, and like failing, you know what I mean? Like kind of, hey, I'll have a go at that. And like, you know, falling flat on my face and then trying again and so on. And even to this day, like I love, one of the things I try and do in times is I'll spend a quarter, a week per quarter working in one of our frontline teams. So like I'll do a week in recruiting or a week as an XDR or a week in customer support or whatever it is. And I kind of that sense of like, I have no idea what I'm doing. Like, here I am, like cold calling somebody and like not having a clue what's happening. And so I've always been quite comfortable kind of like embedding myself in that, in that unknown.

Do you— did you have— have you had a mentor or coach or advisor or something in this journey? Or you're one, like you just said, just to learn from?

Yeah. I've had countless people who I I've learned from, like loads and loads who have taught me stuff, who have said things, who have like helped me learn lessons. But I've never had like the formal mentor-mentee relationship. I've also never been a formal mentor, man, honestly. Like, I just find the formality of that like a little bit off-putting. And like, I don't want to be a burden on somebody, you know what I mean? I'd rather just kind of like steal their knowledge from them without them knowing, type thing. And then kind of like have someone steal Steal my knowledge from me without me knowing.

Yeah, um, that's, that's interesting. Um, that's an interesting take. I don't think anyone said it that way before. I like that. Um, in terms of, was there a moment in your career— I mean, not starting the company, obviously, before that— was there like a big break somewhere in your career that put you on the trajectory, you know, to those companies? I mean, to pretty big brand name companies in important key roles. Was there like a moment that you can look back on and say, that was the moment, that was the person, that was—

Yeah, I think it was probably my first big job or my first job in like big tech. Because I like coming from Ireland and growing up using products like Google and MySpace and YouTube and all these products, there's this kind of like sense sense that it's created by these absolute geniuses in some far-off paradise. And like, you could never be good enough or intelligent enough or hard enough working or bright enough to build those types of products. And then I got a job in those companies and I was like, hang on a second, like, there's no secrets here. Like, these are just like normal people and I can do all the things that these people can do. So there's this kind of like realization that actually there's no magic to doing this. It's just kind of like, you need to see it with your own eyes. You need to see behind the curtains to realize, like, in some ways it's a bit of an illusion to be able to do it yourself. There's this story of like, I don't know if you've ever heard, like, of a footballer called Wayne Rooney. He was like a quite, like, well-known English footballer, but he was like a bit of a prodigy. And he played for, like, Everton as, like, a 15 and 16-year-old man, which was unheard of. And he got a big transfer to, like, Man United, Manchester United as a teenager. And he goes into the dressing room and he's like, hang on a second, these guys are all kind of fucking shit. But it was a big club and there were all these amazing names. But when he saw them in training, he was kind of like, actually, these guys, there's nothing special here. And so you kind of have to see it with your own two eyes to realize I can not only do what they're doing, but I can probably do it better than a lot of them.

I like that message for people. I tell people sometimes they say to me, oh, I'm doing this job, then I'm going to get this, then I'm going to get this title, and then I'll be ready to start my company. You know, like after I do all those things, I tell people, there's not much more you're going to learn doing these jobs and moving your way up. Like you might, if you have the idea, you might as well just do it now. Because it's not, it is a little like the Wizard of Oz, you know, you get behind the curtain and you're like, even with the investors. I mean, for me, it was, it was VCs. For me, it was VCs. I was like, these VCs, oh my God, they must be genius. I mean, they must be geniuses, you know, and like, They must be able— they choose something, they're always right. Because I didn't really understand everything behind it. And then you get into it, you're like, it's luck. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you have to be a good person to attract the founder. You have to be helpful. But at the end of the day, it's luck, you know, in a big way.

For sure.

What is it that drives you? Like, is it a chip on your shoulder trying to prove this, you know, that you can do it just like anyone else or better? Is it like, what is it that like really, really I like, I just love to compete.

Like, genuinely, like, the competition is what gets me really excited. And like, I've kind of always been like that. I've always loved like competing in sport, like even playing like stupid computer games, I'd get really competitive. I've got an older brother who I'd be competitive with. I'm like competitive with my kids playing games. Like, there's just something in me that's like, like loves to compete. I love to win as well, but I'm also okay losing. But I just love the competition, man. And I love kind of like the race. And I love kind of like weighing myself up or weighing the company up against like competitors and like being honest and saying like, they're kicking our ass over here. Like, that's not good enough. We got to win this. Or like saying like, we're doing a really great job here. Let's put like step on the gas. And so I think what drives me, man, is like almost the competition of the whole thing. And like, sure, there's this market is like huge and there can be multiple winners. But I don't want to be second. I don't want to be third. Like, I'm not here to come like like as a runner-up. Like, I want to win. Uh, and so like, that's honestly what drives me, for better or worse.

Okay, last question for you. Knowing everything you know today, all the experiences that you've had, if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice before you started your first job ever, what would that be?

The piece of advice I would give myself is just do your job and that little bit more. Like genuinely, and I think so many people don't even do that. Like genuinely, so many people just aren't even doing their job. And you can have a really successful career, make a ton of money, have status if you just do your job and a tiny bit more. Like you don't need to start a company, you don't need to be a genius, you don't need to be an amazing innovator, but you do need to do your job. And like if you do your job and that little bit more, you will be incredible.

That's a good way of putting it. That's what I tell people all the time when they're like scared to go into the quote unquote real world. They're coming outta college or whatever. And I say, trust me, just show up.

Yeah.

And work your ass off. Just show up and work your ass off. And you, I guarantee you, you'll be doing more than 95% of the other people around you.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah, I like that advice a lot. Owen, thank you so much for doing this with me. I really enjoyed this conversation. And I, I would love to have you back in 3 years and see, and see where you guys are.

I'll put a reminder in my calendar right now, man.

Okay, good. Awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. For all of those listening, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please share this out with your networks and we'll see you for the next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast.