Etienne de Bruin - Founder of 7CTOs

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge technology and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neal Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador and together we're going to uncover what technology San Diegans are creating with our own blend of local lifestyle. This podcast episode is proudly brought to you by our friends at Cox Business. Cox Business provides broadband, Internet and cloud services to the modern tech company. Cox Business, a long time sponsor of San Diego Startup Week and the San Diego startup community, also puts on the Top Tech Awards, which have recently expanded the startup category to recognize your favorite CTO. Join us at the Top Tech Exec Awards on May 10th by visiting TopTechExecs.com to see this year's winners. Thanks again to Cox Business for their support of our tech community. On this episode, we get to know Etienne Debruun, founder of 7ctos and previous CTO of Munk Development. Etienne is South African and recently became an American citizen. He originally came to San Diego in 2000, but was looking at multiple jobs around the US before realizing the weather was a big draw.

That's how we came to San Diego, was we lived in Germany, so we're South Africans, moved to Germany and then unbeknownst to us, we lived in the rainiest town in Germany, which helped me appreciate sunshine not only as a human, but as a South African. And so when we looked at our next place, we applied for jobs all over, including South America, North America, the uk and then I had two very real opportunities in the us, Boston and San Diego. And I never thought I would do this, but I went to CNN.com weather because San Diego is a problem for a South African because it's not only very far north, it's very far west.

So travel or the time change.

Travel, time change. When you're awake, your family's asleep, and the other way around. So 10 hours ahead. 10, yeah, depending on daylight savings. And it was very, very tough in the beginning because the landscape, everything is just completely different, as you'll see. And my point is we thought we'd be here for maybe two, three years, and that was 2000.

Wow. 18 years later.

18 years later. And it's, it's our town.

18 years and a whole new citizenship.

And a whole new citizenship.

Well, congrats again on the citizenship.

Thank you. Well, what?

So you talked about the difference, the stark difference from South Africa to here besides geography, I mean, what's country wise? Even the pulse of business. How different is technology?

I would say it's three Words, Size of the economy. How many words was that? Four words. It's just unbelievable to be in the United States with such insane economic power. Probably the simplest way to describe it is someone somewhere is gonna buy your shit. Can I say shit on this?

Yeah.

So it's just incredible. It's, you know, in South Africa you have 50 million people, you have an incredible economic imbalance. I mean we all talk about the top 10 and top 1%, but even in the world economy. But in South Africa it's very pronounced. So I'm going to say that there is generally a scarcity mentality, locking down agreements, exclusivity. The entrepreneurship is amazing, but the focus isn't so much on that. Hey man, assume yes. It's the assume no mentality. And so a lot of times when I fly back now, people are talking to me about well, how can we get the sole agency for this? Or how do we take what was built and worked in America and make it work in Africa? So business wise, I think there's just that I would say that the levels of entrepreneurship are probably the same. I mean people want to work for themselves. There is a feeling of hope in both countries. There is a, you know, there's a fantastic entrepreneurship in South Africa and I find here. Except that the economic buying power is. There's no comparison.

Yeah. What about the technology aspect? I mean, is there the software technology developer ecosystem in South Africa?

I would say it's less geographical and it's rife. I mean we have a lot of software titans down there. People, of course, Mark Shuttleworth is South African, the other one launching rockets who shall remain nameless. So I think, I think when I think reflect on those two people, I'm not surprised. I mean it's, you know, I spoke with the founder of Fan Cam last night, Fancam, you've probably used it.

South African company.

South African company. His name is Tinas, he is visiting. Comes out a lot. But the Fan Cam is the picture of the stadium and find yourself zoom into where you said a technology that's been prolific. I mean NFL games, U2 concerts, you name it.

Is that different than FanPix?

It's probably in the same space. I don't know. Fan pics.

Fan Picks is a local company. I had cameras in San Diego stadiums, Staples Center.

Yeah. So it must be similar.

Interesting.

So sort of having this sense of no end to your abilities and just, just doing things I think is very, very much South African as well. Yeah.

And so when you moved here in 2000, did you immediately Feel that in San Diego or what was the vibe?

No, I did not.

Because it was still like the boom, right when you moved here?

Well, it was post. Post the, the bomb. In fact, the company in Boston disappeared overnight. It was crazy. I'm talking full on interviews via telephone and then the next day, just nothing. Emails bouncing, phone disconnected.

Good thing you chose San Diego.

I did. Oh, I chose San Diego. So luckily also I was insulated from the dot com bust because of. I joined the biotech industry. So I, you know, I, I went from Germany straight into the biotech sort of that regulated Sarbanes Oxley was huge at that point. It was new and I was in the business intelligence ERP rollout team. So I was insulated from a startup scene. And then in 2005, a friend and I started a company, Monk Development. And even then I just really went from my cubicle into my home office. That was the big difference for me. I never felt like there was a scene that I could tap into and learn from and be mentored. I just figured if I write the code, he would sell it, sell the app. And you know, quite on accident, we did a lot of things right and built a pretty nice, nice little company.

Yeah, congrats on that.

Thank you.

Along the way though, building the company, I mean, I feel like you built a bit of a scene around you, right? I mean, you started hosting meetups, creating a developer scene.

So in 2009, I remember I had, and you know, it's funny, I have, I have this conversation regularly with CTOs. You're face down, working. I have this image of just, you're just typing away and coding and managing and hiring and trying to race profusely towards just being a sustainable company. But there does come a moment, and I think it's twofold. One, you kind of have this moment where it's like, man, I built this huge monolithic app and it's just not scaling anymore either because I can't hire people anymore to work on this older code base. Or B, with the advent of cloud and scaling challenges, you find that you can't break up the app anymore. So you realize that what worked for you in the beginning just isn't working for you right now. The second thing that happens is when you do become a sustainable company, you can relax a little bit. So that's a bit of a juxtaposition there, but so there's that moment where you kind of lift your head from the desk and you're like, okay, well, I wonder what everyone else is doing. And that's what the moment I had in 2009 was. My combination was we were a PHP. I built everything in PHP. Lamp stack, a content management system for nonprofits and churches. And. And then, you know, Rails was. Ruby on Rails was starting to become a. An architecture that I could no longer really ignore, mostly because of developers. You know, people were coming in, I was, I was interviewing people and more and more of them were like, well, have you looked into Rails? Rails, Rails? And so anyway, so I had that moment. And then secondly, I also realized that our scaling, our code needed some in flight repair, you know, and so that's when I decided to start. This is a funny story. I started SD Rails.

You started it?

I started sdrails. That's great. Patrick is a close friend of mine, Patrick Crowley, and he's the found organizer. Him and Rob Kaufman basically run SD Ruby. And I was so naive about it. I didn't really understand that the Rails community and the Ruby community was sort of the same thing. And also, if you understand Ruby on Rails, I mean, where is the language? Where is the framework in that sentence? What is that? It's three words. It's not like it's C sharp or it's JavaScript or this is like Ruby on Rails. Anyway, So I started sdrails. I went to meetup.com created my group, and four people showed up. And Ben Hughes, who was a friend of Patrick Crowley, came and he was very nice. And then he just pulled me aside one day and said, you do know that there's a vibrant Ruby community called SD Ruby, right? Oh my goodness. And I felt so embarrassed. Immediately, SD Ruby acquired sdrails for $0.00.

I'll take it.

But I was just thankful they were so gentle with me about it. It's just something to be said for harnessing someone's enthusiasm and not breaking them. So I became, I guess I just bulldozed my way into becoming an organizer at SD Ruby. I'm still a huge fan of the whole SD Ruby community.

But on that though, that says a lot about. And that's that common theme where you want to start something and then realize, hey, that maybe we can join forces. It actually is a very San Diego thing. Like we've seen, like we break down silos often and say, hey, we're better off together. And this is one small example, but it seems like that is a momentum.

I totally agree with you. And it's the way I was encouraged and managed by sort of the SD Ruby crowd had a profound impact on my Ability to organize, my enthusiasm to organize. I really love. I love the developer communities. And, you know, I started something called Magic Nights, which I'm not proud of the name, but Magic Nights was a. We started doing hack nights at sd, Ruby at Monk Development, and then we did gem nights where developers could talk about the gems that they were using. And then I turned it into Magic Nights, which was really a. It's a whole different conversation, but it's basically a mini hackathon that we did every. Every month. I took that to Portland or went to Portland and to some other communities. And it was interesting for me, the differences in the vibes. San Diego being a little more inclusive and open and, and sort of in another city, we got bogged down by who owns it and how should we manage it. And it kind of died. And so it's kind of validating for San Diego. I think it could be an example of how we do things in San Diego. I'm sure it happens in thousands of cities, but it definitely was a nice thing for me in San Diego.

Yeah. So that momentum of one your head's down building a company, then next you're like, oh, wait, I'm also a community organizer.

Selfishly, you need talent.

Right.

You need new technology.

But then you realize you like building community in the developer world. That seems to have just come to a really big head with seven ctos. So tell me, kind of the genesis of that.

Great. So very. I'll try to keep this brief and. And Neil and I have a hand signal for you if I go too long. So really I have to credit my two co founders at Monk Development A, because they model to me what it means to have a growth mindset and be willing to be wrong and to learn as a tech person, you. You don't give yourself that grace, really. And maybe it's a human condition, but in the tech space, your code either works or it doesn't. And you're constantly trying to get it to work. But I saw in my two co founders a willingness to grow. And so they joined various networking organizations and I saw the change. I saw us going from metrics driven, culture driven, understanding financials, and I realized that I was lagging. I was becoming the naysayer, skeptic, tick, always angry person in the executive sync ups. And then our CEO brought in a coach to actually coach us. Michelle Saul with Possibilities Consulting. And she absolutely, I would say, was the glue to our partnership. Any startups that have any types of management challenges or as you're breaking through different growth Cycles Possibilities is incredible. And Michelle and Michael. So I started hosting CTO dinners. So I saw what was happening in LA. So I found out that a lot of CTOs were driving up to Los Angeles to the LA CTO Forum. And I spoke with those guys and they didn't seem interested in really expanding a chapter down to San Diego. So I just decided to start the San Diego Diego CTO Forum. Pretty innocuous. I just started hosting and I ended up meeting with Lisa Kennedy, who was really instrumental in those days, to help me get dinners up and running. She managed sponsors and she just got it from day one. She always talked about, since she was in the restaurant business, she always talked about how the CTO was the chef in the back of the kitchen. And so, long story short, 300 conversations on one on one conversations. 30 different events in three different cities around the country. Austin, Portland and San Diego. I realized that we all have the same problem. We, as CTOs, we are all siloed and we're all doing our own thing. And that's when I decided, you know, I would like to start an organization that puts the spotlight on the CTO and is proudly San Diego. Whether it be for conferences I always talk about, I would love a giant spotlight shined on San Diego through seven CTOs.

So what's the big plan? Where are you headed with seven CTOs?

So I've always said, the moment I decided to start seven ctos, or let me put it this way, the idea was incubated in 2000 when I moved to San Diego.

Now we're going to tell the world about it. I hope you're okay with it.

I think if we as CTOs can become a force, an emotionally intelligent, collaborative force in the C Suite, I believe that we can apply our skills of problem solving, our skills of logical thinking, and instead of being so harsh about it, to be in a position where we are actually influencing and inspiring the C Suite. So we're bringing that into the boardroom. I think oftentimes we see, hey, we're going to have our strategy meeting and then we'll bring the CTO in so that they can go do it. No, I'm saying let's bring all those skills, those technical skills, bring it into sort of the leadership realm, and then let that be a positive force for the company.

That's awesome. That's very much needed here and around the world, that's for sure. Switching gears, this is the Tacos and tech podcast. Here in Mission Valley or elsewhere, where do you find yourself frequencying for tacos.

There's to me, only one place I go to for tacos. It's on Park Boulevard. It's called El Zarape. Not the weird one on Adams. And I actually think there's another one that just opened on Adams and that was actually pretty good.

Park Boulevard.

No, but the Park Boulevard, I think it's the original one, right? Yeah. It was walking distance from our house in University Heights, and, man, nothing beats El Zarape. Yeah.

How can people follow you and find you to stay in touch, see what you're up to?

Probably the Twitter is probably. I'm at the Bruin E T D E B R U I N. 7ctos is pretty active as well at the number 7ctos. And email. I'm also open to random emails from everybody. It's basically my first namevenctos. Com.

Awesome. And you're always a big guest speaker during Startup Week, so people can come see you in June.

Absolutely.

June 25th through the 29th. What's awesome about Startup Week this year is it's all in one location. We're taking over the civic center and we had 4,400 people last year, so we're expecting over 5,000 attendees. To see that all in one place is going to be pretty awesome.

I tell you what, and I have to congratulate you guys, what you've done with Startup Week, I've seen it now grow over the last five, six years, and I was absolutely blown away. I think two or three years ago was when you guys basically burst your seams and it just became this whole other beast of an event. And I'm very fortunate to be part of it. I always try and do a couple CTO panels so people can get various perspectives on tech challenges. And. And we've. Every year we've had great, great conversations come from that. So awesome.

I look forward to more of that.

Yes. Thank you.

Well, thanks so much for your time. It's in.

Okay, Neil. Anytime.

Absolutely. All right, take care. Thanks.

Cheers.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. This has been a partnership with the San Diego Venture Group and the San Diego Regional Economic Development Council's SD Life Changing Campaign. You can find Neal Bloom on Twitter eelbloom and on Linked.

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