#77 - Meet the Startup Helping Dev Teams Build Better With AI

Welcome back to The Land of Tomorrow. This is a podcast brought to you by the folks at Alumni Ventures, The Tech Optimist, where we talk to the future innovators that are shaping our future.

I think my first articles of incorporation I filed in middle school, my first patent I filed in high school. Like, this is just what I love to do and it's what I've always loved to do.

That is Eric Severinghaus, co-founder and co-CEO at BloomFilter.

You're really addressing at BloomFilter this growing complexity in software developments.

And that is Chris Sklarin, managing partner here at Alona Ventures. If you were to ask me very candidly on the table, what is software development? I don't really know I could give you an accurate answer. So I'm going to give you an accurate answer so that when we listen to the rest of this interview, everyone knows what's going on. And that's me. My name is Samantha Herrick, the guide for this podcast. Okay, a little bit more into the startup that we have today, BloomFilter. BloomFilter is an innovative startup focused on improving the software development lifecycle through process intelligence and process mining. Founded in 2022 and based in Akron, Ohio, the company aims to make software development more transparent, predictable, and efficient. BloomFilter's mission is to create a more measurable and efficient software development process. They apply process mining techniques traditionally used in industry like manufacturing to the software development field. This approach allows teams to analyze digital footprints left in development tools to understand and optimize how software is built. The company offers an AI-driven process mining platform that integrates with common development tools, provides real-time visibility into software development, identifies process weaknesses, workflow deviations, lengthy cycle times, and areas of rework. Um, Bloomfilter was co-founded by Andrew Wolf and Eric Severinghaus and Chris Stoll. The company has raised a total of $7.12 million in funding, with its most recent round bringing, uh, $1.5 million to the table about a year ago. Uh, recently Bloomfilter has announced a significant partnership with Celonis, a leader in process mining and process intelligence, and this collaboration has led to the creation of Celonis for the software development lifecycle. Bloomfilter's goal is to address the persistent challenges in software development where a high percentage of projects ship late, over budget, or not at all. By developing tools for better visibility and analysis, they aim to help CTOs and CIOs make more informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and improve overall development efficiency. The company's approach to an open SDLC reflects its commitment to bringing clarity to complex software development environments and helping teams focus on what drives Success. Now a little bit more into the Solonis, uh, announcement here. They recently were a lot— were at Cellosphere 2024, which is a kind of software development convention, um, and they had a video done. Bloomfilter had a video done on, um, you know, what their partner with Solonis is, how they are, um, at the convention, all the people they met, uh, and how they're sort of, um, exemplifying their technology. And so I'm— we're going to start off the show with the video from BloomFilter from this convention, and then we're going to hop into disclaimer ad and then right into the interview. So sit tight and enjoy.

Good morning, Cellisphere. My name is Eric Severinghaus. I'm the co-founder and co-CEO of BloomFilter, and I am here to announce for the first time Solonis for the software development lifecycle powered by BloomFilter.

We're here at Cellosphere 2024.

There are thousands of people here focused around how do they make process better. We believe in opening the black box of the software development lifecycle as we use the power of Solonis's process mining tools to make the software development lifecycle more observable, more predictable, more efficient, and more nimble. We do that by pulling all the information out of the tools that you're already using so we can find the inefficiencies in the process. We can help you understand what are we building, when are we going to get it, and how much does it cost.

For us at BloomFilter, we think it's a natural partnership to be able to take what we know about the software development lifecycle and blend it with what Solonis knows about process intelligence. I'm a big fan of going from 0 to 1, and I think working with you guys, it's really been a speed run from 0 to 1. So with Solonis, we're very proud that we're source system agnostic, we're process agnostic, but by no means does that make us experts. So when we partner with BloomFilter, you guys bring a lot of the SDLC knowledge and we can combine it with the Solonis platform with techniques that we know that really add depth

So, Cellisphere 2024, thank you so much for your warm reception. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for this opportunity. We are so excited. Thank you, Cellisphere 2024. Thank you. Thank you.

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But, but you yourself, you had a remarkable journey with successful exits going back to eye contacts, the sale of Vocus back in the day. So, so what inspired you to dive into the world of startups? And what keeps you motivated?

Yeah, you know, I'm the weird kid that like, I started reading the Wall Street Journal in probably 4th grade, and I started programming in 2nd grade. And I'm an okay athlete, but I was never athletic enough to like be able to play right field for the Chicago Cubs. And so if I wasn't going to be a Major League Baseball player, the thing that I really always wanted to be was a startup entrepreneur. Like you can Like, I think my first articles as a corporation I filed in middle school, my first patent I filed in high school. Like, this is just what I love to do. And it's what I've always loved to do. And, you know, I've tried to do everything else. Like, I've tried to be a ski mom, I've tried to be a mountaineer, I've tried to be an author, right? Like, I've tried to— I've tried a million different things that I enjoy as hobbies. And I've thought maybe that could be a profession. Yeah. And what I keep coming back to is this job, I think, is the most fun, interesting, fulfilling job there is in the world. And so I get excited that I've got the opportunity to do it every day.

Very cool. So what lessons from previous ventures, you know, like SpringCM or Simple Relevance, you know, what's been most helpful to your role now at BloomFilter?

Yeah, there's a few things that that I say all the time. The first kind of tactical one, capital is oxygen. So, raise capital when it's available. I have tried to solve big problems undercapitalized before and run out of money, not because I don't think I had the right idea and not even because our execution was terrible, but we just didn't have the capital to make it through the ups and downs. And you guys have been a fantastic partner around that. We certainly appreciate that. So, job one is be appropriately capitalized for the problem that you're trying to solve. Another thing is like recognizing that this journey only gets harder. I think some people go into entrepreneurship thinking, man, once I raise my seed round, everything will be easy. And you know, I've operated at like every point in the curve from zero to publicly traded, right? And I've seen the whole movie. And once you've seen it all, you recognize that like even though like this part of the journey is hard. it's still only act 1. And like, it's only gonna get crazier, it's only gonna get worse, it's only gonna get more wild, the stakes are only gonna get higher, like the stresses are only gonna get bigger, the stakes, you know, and all of that kind of stuff. And so, um, for me, it's recognizing that like, these are the good old days that I'm living right now. Like, these are the days I'm gonna look back on and go, ah, remember when you could just do that? And, um, and, and so have fun with it, enjoy it. You know, be proud of the fact that I've earned the right to the problems that we get to go solve right now and don't let them overwhelm me. Like, that's, that's kind of the, the big stuff.

Got it. Got it. So from scaling businesses to building teams, you've sort of seen a whole wide variety of challenges. What do you think the key traits of that successful entrepreneur in today's tech landscape?

You know, Patrick Lencioni describes the ideal team player as somebody who is humble, hungry, and smart. And I don't know that I have found a better framework for people that I want to bet on, that I want to work with, that I want to generally surround myself with, than those 3 things. Yeah. And so, you know, those are qualities that I try to cultivate in myself. They're qualities that I look for in others, whether I'm investing in them, whether I'm hiring them, whether I'm partnering with them, you know, whatever it might be. I am always looking for that, that kind of, that rare combination of humble, hungry, smart, because when you find that, special things tend to happen.

Got it. Got it. Perfect. So, so on to BloomFilter, you know, in particular, what, what do you think led— so the origin story of BloomFilter, what, what sort of led to the idea of using process mining to optimize software development, you know, between you and Techstars? How did that work out? How'd the company sort of come to be?

Yeah, so, you know, BloomFilter actually started before I got involved with it. Andrew Wolf and 3 friends. Andrew is my co-founder and co-CEO. Andrew was running a consulting company called SkipList. He likes to name his companies after data science terms. And so, he was running a company called SkipList.

Yep.

And he kind of had this vision as a product guy of like, I want to create a better way for people to build software. And I got to know Andrew in Techstars Chicago, where I was an entrepreneur in residence. And what I realized is, you know, having started programming since before I knew how to walk practically, I mean, again, I taught myself to program in second grade. I've been building software my entire life. I've been operating software companies, primarily either venture-backed, private equity-owned, or publicly traded for the better part of 20 years. And Man, I have never been at a place where it feels like the executive team really understands what are all the neckbeards in the back room building in this software stack.

Yeah.

That manifests itself in all kinds of terrible outcomes. 78% of software is late, over budget, or doesn't ship. You know, ask, ask your CIO in the next board meeting, hey, how easy is it for you to get answers to like the 3 core questions? What are we building? When are we gonna get it? And how much does it cost? And what you see everywhere, you know, never mind second-order questions like, how do we do more with less? How do we, you know, reduce the risk of defects? All this other kind of stuff. Nobody even has observability. They don't have an understanding of what's happening in the process, much less a deep understanding and a deep level of communication around how we can improve it. And I really think this is one of the, if you think about the executives at the C-level of the companies that you invest in, Chris, and you think about the board meetings, this chief revenue officer probably has Salesforce and Clari and a bunch of other tools that allow them to understand what's happening in their business. And the chief financial officer almost certainly has an ERP system and they've got their payables and receivables and they may have something like Salonus that's process mining that in order to get visibility into it. And then you think about the CIO and the CTO, and you think about them in the boardroom, and you ask these questions of like, what are we building? When are we going to get it? And it is almost certainly presented on a series of Excel sheets.

Yeah.

That require a tremendous amount of manual work as well as human judgment. And those spreadsheets get copied and pasted into PowerPoint presentations that are out of date by the time they're being presented. And nobody has operational decision-making and process intelligence around what's happening within what is the largest source of OpEx growth in most organizations. OpEx and even CapEx in many cases is like software spend, right? Like, this is incredibly expensive, it's growing everywhere, and nobody has a clue what's happening inside this big, big black box. And so it leads to arguments, it leads to organizational dysfunction, it leads to late deliverables, it leads to misalignment on scope and requirements. And it's not because anybody's doing anything wrong. It's not because the CFO is a bean counter that doesn't care about the technology. And it's not because the CIO doesn't care about the finances. It's because it is so hard to understand what's happening and how to translate that between different parts of the business. And so anyway, that's a really long answer to the question you asked me, but like what I saw in BloomFilter when I met Andrew and when I started first thinking about investing myself, and then ultimately Andrew invited me to come in and help him run and build this business. What I saw was, oh my God, we have the opportunity to solve what is the biggest unsolved problem in most organizations, which is the dysfunction happening inside of the software development lifecycle and between technical executives and business executives around how those things get translated. And, you know, that's the problem that we set off to solve. It's what we've been investing in for the last couple years. It's what our customers are starting to see that we can make meaningful headway towards. And so it is an incredibly exciting journey for us.

Yeah, that's great. It sort of leads right to my next question, which is you're really addressing at BloomFilter this growing complexity in software development. So, so share a bit more now about how you actually help businesses streamline operations. Like, what is it that you're doing that Before this, they were trying to do it with spreadsheets, right? And chewing gum, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, before we get into a bit more about Bloomfilter's story and their technology and their innovation and why they do what they do, I want to take us a few stepping stones back and answer the question of what is software development and kind of how it works. Now, again, I'm not a software developer. I'm not a machine technologist, I guess you could say. So, if you were to ask me very candidly on the table, what is software development? I don't really know I could give you an accurate answer. So, I'm going to give you an accurate answer so that when we listen to the rest of this interview, everyone knows what's going on, right? There might be a few listeners out there that are a bit confused by this process. I would be one of those. And so, I'm going to try and break that boundary and sort of get us all on the same page so that really we can really appreciate and understand, uh, the innovations that Eric and Bloomfilter are making. So software development is a structured process of creating, designing, deploying, and maintaining software applications. It involves a series of stages that transform an initial idea or requirement into a fully functional software product. So a bit of an overview on how this all works. It's a systematic approach to conceiving, designing, programming, testing, and maintaining software systems. Its primary goals are to create efficient and reliable software solutions, meet specific user or business needs, and deliver high-quality products within time and budget constraints. So the process. The software development process, often referred to as the software development lifecycle, or SDLC, which you'll see a lot and hear a lot today, typically consists of several key stages: requirement gathering and analysis, so understanding and documenting the project's goals, collecting Detailed requirements from stakeholders, analyzing feasibility from technical, financial, and operational standpoints. There's the whole planning sector where you define the project scope and objectives, you estimate resources, cost, and timeline, and you create a project roadmap. Design, so you can develop a system architecture, create detailed software design specifications, and plan user interface and user experience, whether that's UI or UX. Development and implementation. So you can write code based on design specifications like you decided before, implement these features and test their functionality, and you follow code standards for best practices. And then testing. So there's a whole phase with this as well where the team can conduct various types of testing, unit, integration, system, or user acceptance, identify and fix any bugs or issues, and, you know, ensure the software meets quality standards and requirements. There's deployment, so preparing the software for release, installing and configuring the software in the production environment, providing necessary documentation and user training, and then support and maintenance. So it can address post-release issues and bugs, implement updates, yada, yada, yada, yeah. So there's a few different software development approaches that people can take. There's different methodologies, I guess you could call them. There's something called a waterfall, which is a linear sequential approach where each phase must be completed before moving to the next. There's Agile, which is an iterative approach that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and rapid delivery. There's Scrum, so it's an Agile framework that focuses on short development cycles called sprints. You've probably heard that phrase a lot in the software development world. And then there's DevOps, an approach that combines development and operations to improve collaboration and streamline the delivery process. Now, some key components. Successful software development relies on several crucial elements: team collaboration, version control, development tools, testing frameworks, and project management. So each of these components is not an easy feat, right, where you really need to have a trusted team to help you design this software and technology and innovation that your team is working on. And then the software development process is never static, right? It involves continuous improvement through regular review, optimization of the processes, incorporation of feedback, and adoption of new technologies. So in conclusion, let me wrap this all up. Software development is a complex, multifaceted process that combines technical expertise, creativity, and project management skills to create functional and valuable software solutions. By following a structured approach and employing best practices, development teams can efficiently transform ideas into robust, user-friendly that meet the needs of businesses and users alike. So Bloom Filter is focused on improving this entire lifecycle that I just broke out— broke down for you. So as you can tell, some of the things that I brought up seem pretty complicated and hard, right? To be candid and upfront, a lot of the pieces of this puzzle and a lot of the step-by-step instructions for how to create software seem really complicated and really hard. So Bloom Filter's So this whole process is using intelligence and process binding to really help streamline and make this lifecycle so much easier for these people that are developing this software. All right, we're going to take a second for an ad. I hope you found that interesting. We're going to get through the AV ad and then we're going to finish out the interview with Eric and Chris. This is a, you know, the end of this interview is super lively. There's a lot of discussion here. I think there's a lot of value. Uh, points that come up and really excited for you to hear about it. So sit back, relax, and we'll be right back.

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So if you look at most people's software development lifecycle, there's anywhere from 11 to 15 tools. If you think about like, how does a bill become a law? Like, how does an idea become a piece of shipped production code? You know, it sits in roadmap systems, it sits in requirement systems. So things like Aha and Productboard and Miro. And then it makes its way into roadmap systems. It gets managed in project management systems. So things like Figma for designs, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Jira, Trello, Asana. Then it goes into development systems like GitHub, GitLab. It's gonna be deployed using CI/CD systems like CircleCI and Jenkins. There are DevSecOps tools in there. There's just a million things, never mind communication platforms like Slack. Teams, et cetera, right? And the list goes on and on. We could spend another hour talking about all these different

systems. Right. Let's talk about

dev tools. Right. So how the hell are you supposed to understand what's happening in an end-to-end process that's hitting all of these different systems? It's impossible. And so people are spending unbelievable amounts of time and energy creating Excel spreadsheets to try and manually extract, transform, and analyze all of this different data from all these different sources.

Yeah.

And so, what we do, you know, is we connect into, first of all, these various systems. We extract the data around how the process is flowing. And so, we can show how stuff is moving, where is it moving forwards, where is it moving backwards, where is it stuck, where are there long cycle times. And so, we pull all this information out and we use an academic technique called process mining. to stitch together and understand what is happening inside this complex process. And what it allows us to do is it allows us to understand how's the process working, where's it going right, where's it going wrong, where's the rework, where's their waste, where are their long cycle times, are you actually gonna ship this thing on time, some of this other kind of stuff. And so we present that in a series of business intelligence dashboards that we have built inside of our platform. We also now have some pretty amazing AI capabilities Both to stitch that information together and then also to use an AI copilot to interrogate that. So all the questions that you typically ask a project manager or a product manager around things like status and where's stuff going right, where's stuff going wrong, we're finding that LLMs can answer that with an unbelievable amount of accuracy to help interrogate what's happening within the process. And then we just announced, and this is what we're so excited about, a partnership with the world leader in process mining, a company called Celonis. which is, I think, widely regarded to be the inventor and world leader in the space of process mining. And so, we are now partnered with them and have just released Solonis for the software development lifecycle, and it's powered by BloomFilter. So, we can look at this stuff within our own bespoke software-as-a-service platform. We can also look at all this information using all kinds of amazing capabilities that BloomFilter brings us, or sorry, that Solonis brings us. And, and, and, and so there's even sort of a broader ecosystem that we have here now.

So that ties really nicely to the, the Celonis section I wanted to get to. I know you made a huge announcement this week. That's awesome. There's this process mining leader that you're now partnering with. How, how'd the partnership come about and sort of what strategic value does it bring to both of you? I mean, obviously, you're the little guy here, but they clearly saw something that was worthwhile partnering with.

It's really a cool story. I've known Salonus for a while. I worked with them in a previous life, and when I got involved with BloomFilter, we really sort of put up on the vision board, hey, what's our goal? What Salonus has done for the CFO, we want to do for the software development world, for the CIO or the CTO. And so we have always sort of had them as the goal and the vision of the value that we aspire, you know, to bring into build. And, and so we got reintroduced by an analyst at Forrester, actually, who said, hey, you guys should talk to each other, what you're doing is really cool. And there's some potential for overlap. And based on that introduction, we reconnected. And we sort of saw, hey, there really is something here. Like, there's a really exciting partnership, a lot of the stuff that we do could be accretive to their platform. And help fill in some gaps around this particular use case. And a lot of the ways that they're thinking about the world dovetail to the ways that we're thinking about the world. Solonis also is aspiring to have more and more ISVs like us develop on their platform. And so we kind of get to blaze a trail here that ideally additional entrepreneurs will follow in this path. And so we looked at this together and Salonis said, hey, we would like to build a software development lifecycle-specific process mining application. And we'd like to do it in conjunction with BloomFilter and using BloomFilter's intellectual property to power, you know, much of the native intelligence to it. And we thought that sounded fantastic. And so, it has been a really, really exciting journey that to date has culminated in the big announcement that we made this week, Salonis for the software development lifecycle powered by BloomFilter. And then I get to head to Munich next week to sit down with Celonis customers and prospects at their Cellosphere, their big industry conference, to talk to them. Okay. Most of the people at Cellosphere already understand the power of process mining. It's kind of the interesting thing, right? There's basically 2 types of customers I talk to now. I talk to customers that understand the software development lifecycle really, really well and are interested in learning why process mining might be helpful In making that lifecycle more observable, predictable, efficient, and nimble. And then I also am now getting to talk to people that already understand why process mining is so incredibly important, but they're trying to figure out how do they apply those concepts to the specific use case and the domain of software development. And so, I get to go over to Munich next week and have a lot of those conversations, which I'm really excited.

That's awesome. So, how does this create, I guess, better ways for you and Solonis to stay competitive? I mean, it's obviously a competitive world out there and there are other folks trying to do this. What does this bring both of you?

Yeah. So, there's a couple of really exciting things that come out of this for us. So, for BloomFilter, first of all, about half of the Fortune 2000 is already using Celonis.

Okay.

And as we know, many of those companies have large and growing expenses in software development that we know that they would like to better understand and to, you know, sort of get a handle around that particular area of operational expense. And so for us, we get sort of a natural opportunity to earn some of those conversations that would have been much harder for us to get into

Yep.

And then the other thing that we get is an enterprise-grade platform that allows us to iterate much faster on a series of building blocks that have already been battle-hardened, right? So, so when you think about it right now, like Bloomfilter, we've been spending a fair bit of time reinventing the wheel of process mining in the very specific domain of software development. We no longer have to do a lot of that. Our product accel— our product development becomes accelerated manyfold because we get to build on top of a set of capabilities that already exist and are already in use across the Global 2000. So it dramatically accelerates how fast we can get to creating value for our customers. So that's, that's awesome from our side, right? From Celonis's side, What they see in all of this is they have built this set of tools and capabilities around process mining, and Celonis is the undisputed and universally recognized leader of doing this for the chief financial officer, right? Yeah. Celonis would like to have these capabilities be opened up by other entrepreneurs like us who say we can take this idea of process mining and we can apply it to a whole bunch of domains and use cases. So there are dozens to hundreds of other domains and use cases where process mining can be transformative, and it's way beyond the scope of any one company to try and do all that themselves internally, right? And, and so while Celonis concentrates on what they do best, we can unlock the power of the platform to go take it in a completely different direction in a way that accelerates the amount of value for our customers, for both of us.

Right, right. And I heard there was some network effect that Alumni Ventures was able to bring to you. What was that, if you want to describe what we were able to do for you from our platform CEO Services Group?

Yeah, so I mean, I'll just give the quick plug for Alumni Ventures, man. Your CEO— every investor says they add a lot of value. You guys having a bespoke and focused CEO team that helps me get everything from desks and meeting rooms in far-flung locations to, you know, better visibility for my application to custom introductions where we need it. It's just an unbelievable differentiator for Alumni Ventures.

All right, quick plug from Eric here for all of the insanely great work that the partners, associates, and investors here at Alumni Ventures do and, you know, just how much they can help startup companies just like Eric's. And so a little bit of information on kind of what that AV process looks like. So Alumni Ventures' platform team, which they call CEO Services, introduced Eric to the VP of Engineering for AI at Salonis, which we're going to hear about in a second, who is a member of, who is a member of the AV Expert Network. So this is just one example of, of all of the incredible ways that AV offers value to their portfolio companies outside of just writing checks and having that sort of, uh, equity, equity standing that, um, the guys kind of joke about here in a second. But, um, I'm mostly gonna let Eric take away, uh, you know, how important the, um, the connection to Salonis was. And he gave us a really good intro, um, just a few minutes ago, and he's gonna get into a little bit more. Um, but So Bluefilter and Solonis have partnered to offer a software development lifecycle management tool for enterprises. The platform uses AI insights to help organizations improve efficiency and reduce cost and risk in their software development cycles. It identifies and addresses common issues like bottlenecks and delays that often lead to project overruns, particularly valuable for large companies relying on streamlined software development to support rapid innovation. So Just like how Eric was saying that Solonis wants to, you know, open up their doors to other entrepreneurs and how their technology can be applied to other circumstances rather than, you know, financials, right? Where Bloom Filter is about technology. And so it's kind of like making their technology more nimble, as Eric would say. And more valuable for more people and not just defined to the sort of financial sector.

So the size, scale, breadth, and depth of your network is unparalleled. I think Alumni Ventures is the most active early-stage investor in the world, and you guys have just a massive LP base, right? And so when I'm looking at something like, hey, we think we've got a transformative partnership with Solonis, Just thought we'd let you know. And your CEO services desk responds back with, well, would you like to meet the guy that's running their AI strategy? Oh my God, it accelerates what we can do dramatically. And so that introduction, actually, as we go to Sellisphere next week, because of that introduction, Chris, and that connection that you guys were kind enough to make for us. We now have a really cool demonstration of our AI stitched together with Salonis's that we put together very, very quickly. And we would not have made that magic happen were it not for, you know, the introduction and the connection that you guys were able to make.

That's awesome. Well, that's great. And of course, we want you to succeed because we have an equity interest, obviously.

I understand that it's self-serving, but that doesn't mean that I don't very, very much appreciate it.

Absolutely. All for the better. It's all good. So rolling backwards a little bit on the arrangement of Bloom Filter and growing it, how's your co-CEO arrangement been with Andrew? I know he was there, brought you in, you know, Techstars, you sort of loved it enough to say, hey, I want to buy into this business and I want to help run this business. How's that working and what are the advantages or challenges of the setup?

Yeah, you know, I think being co-CEO as an investor, I've seen it go both ways. It's either the best modality you could ask for or the worst.

Mm-hmm.

And for us, it's been that former category. For us, it has been— for me, I can say, because, you know, Andrew's not here, but I would, I would imagine he would say similar things. For me, it gives me a true partner in building and running the business. In a way that I've never had before, a guy to carry the heavy load and the heavy backpack, a guy that I just have zero question about his commitment, his focus, his intel. He is just right there in the boat shoulder to shoulder, and man, we get to partner on everything, and I love it. The shout out that I'll give to Andrew personally is he is the most emotionally intelligent. technically brilliant person that I've ever encountered. I've met a lot of really smart technical people. Yeah. I've met a lot of emotionally intelligent people. I have very rarely found those 2, those 2 things at the level that he has them in the same person. And so I think that's the difference between a relationship like this working incredibly well and one that ends up in a really challenged state. Honestly, is it's not— it's, you know, we have adjusted roles, we've taken over different parts of the business, we've shifted around domain competencies, we've had a series of hard conversations with one another to make sure that we get on the same page. Right. And that only happens and it's only constructive if If the people on both sides of that conversation are able to put their ego aside and say, look, man, this ain't about me. This is about how do we build something that's amazing and transformative. And Andrew is just aces at that. And it makes it a privilege to have the opportunity to operate with him.

That's great. Well, it's great to find that combination of skills in one person, right? And partnering.

It sure is. It doesn't always go that way. And I'm very lucky to have found it.

So, to wrap up, I guess, what's your primary ask or need for BloomFilter at the moment, and how can all of my ventures in our community help with that?

Yeah, we are always obviously looking for customers who want to change the way they build software, want their software process to be more observable, more predictable, more efficient, more nimble. So, So, you know, there is an omnipresent ask of if any of this sounds interesting to you, check us out.

What's that ideal customer profile? I mean, it can't be like 2 guys writing software. It's got to be more than a few people, but maybe it's not 5,000. I don't know.

It's got to be more than 2. We actually have customers that love us. We have customer references as small as 10.

There you go.

And we have customers that are at 10,000. And so, So, you know, I don't know if that's the textbook right answer for how to have an ideal customer profile. But, but we're seeing, we're seeing success at all ends of the spectrum so far, because the problem is so prevalent and so consistent.

Yeah.

Um, you know, the other asks, I mean, we're certainly not at the end of our capital journey. So if the, if there are investors listening to this that are interested, we enjoy having conversations. We've been very blessed to have an unbelievable cap table and in challenging times for early-stage companies. We have been well-capitalized, and it's something that we certainly appreciate and expect to continue. And then, you know, great employees, man. I mean, we're open for business, we're growing, we're scaling. And so, you know, if this problem set sounds interesting, particularly if you're in the Chicago or Cleveland metro areas, you know, we're looking, we're looking for great people to come join us.

Excellent. Excellent. Awesome. Well, thank you for spending this half hour with us. Great to catch up and good luck in Germany next week. That'll be an awesome trip.

Thank you so much, Chris. Really appreciate it.

All right.

Thanks again for tuning into The Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a rating on whichever podcast app you're using and remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode. Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions. So please email us at info@techoptimist.vc with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at av.vc. As always, keep building. Thank you.