Modernizing the Home Service Industry with Roland Ligtenberg

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos? Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping Fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times A crappy beer and coffee My coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in pesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Hoya shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders who who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SDTechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

Startups get the party. Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Blum, San Diego's tech ambassador, and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Thanks to our friends at Cox Business for being an instrumental resource to our startup and tech community here in San Diego. As a partner in San Diego Startup Week, quick pitch and top tech awards, Cox Business has helped our ecosystem grow into the community it is today.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom, and I am joined with longtime startup community member Roland Langenberg, co founder of Housecall Pro. Roland, thanks for being on.

Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to chat.

Likewise. We go back quite a few years, back to our Evo Nexus days where we both were incubating our companies. 2013. 2012, that timeframe.

2013. Yeah, 2013. We started back in August, in 2013 when we went live and I feel like we're in. I forget what cohort, but. But we took advantage of some of the evo Nexus stuff here, which is obviously super cool in San Diego. That was a great time. It definitely gave us a little bit of a boost and we're off to the races anyways, so it's just added more fuel to the fire.

Yeah. We'll talk about those days a little bit because I remember you were always a special case. You couldn't even really even be in the office because you guys were doing so well. But why don't you quickly tell us what housecall Pro is?

Awesome. Yeah. So for those of you guys that are listening that don't know what housecall Pro is, housecall Pro is an all in one app that helps home service businesses run their business from their pocket. So if you think about, you take a merge of QuickBooks plus Google Calendar plus Square plus Mailchimp plus Calendly, and then you merge it all into one app and it's for plumber. That's what we do. So it gives them the ability to do invoicing, dispatching, scheduling, automated marketing. It's just everything they needed to run their business. And all they need to focus on is really turning the wrench and finding and training great employees. So we fill in all the rest around their business and then we sell it to them as a SaaS platform. So we're. We're a B2B SaaS company. And then through the platform, we give their availability out to other people so that they could get booked. So we recently announced a partnership with Google, which is great. So you can book directly from Google into our Pros Calendars partnership with Amazon. We also have our own House Call app, which is kind of the consumer app. It's less used in the greater U.S. which is where our customers are. U.S. in Canada. But in San Diego, people still use the House Call app. There's still pros that remember it from back when we first did our first pivot, but that exists. And you, you can still find some great local trusted pros there that have been using the platform for a long time.

I was one of them. I used housecall Pro to find a mover and move me and put my stuff in storage back in 2014. Does that sound right in the timeframe?

Yep. Totally.

Yeah. Reliable man movers.

That's right. Reliable. I remember them. That's so funny. I feel like you always remember your first thousand customers.

That's hilarious. Well, take us through a little bit about your history, because obviously you weren't born and raised to build a house called Pro. You were a tech guy. You were an engineer working at Qualcomm, right?

Yeah. So I grew up in the Silicon Valley. My dad did two IPOs, if you know what JPEG is. His algorithm is a compression algorithm, and he Helped define the standards for that back in his AT&T Bellups days. So he built two business off of that. So I've always been around tech ever since I was kind of a kid and moved down to San Diego to get just far enough away to go to college. Figured out that college wasn't really for me. So really I wasn't going to college. I was just playing poker online. Back then it was the party poker days. Just played a ton of poker. And actually it's funny because at startup poker we, you know, in San Diego tech scene, if you haven't been doing you're not a founder, you should definitely go participate. It's a great, a great platform to meet great other interesting local entrepreneurs. But played some poker, figured I won a lot of money, let's put it and buy a boat. Built a scuba diving business in Cabo, lived there for three, four years, then figured it would be good to at least finish my degree at ucsd. Got my degree in economics, I think. You got a degree in economics too, right? Or did you?

No, no, I was a mechanical engineer undergrad at ucsd.

Ucsd, yeah. So we both went to UCSD and then after that, you know, graduated in the middle of the recession, 2008. So what better way than start a new business? I just started consulting for free for people. That worked out really well because I said, hey, if your business grows, I get 20% of the net increase. You don't have to pay me anything until next tax year. It worked. It was a great move. And then from there actually ended up joining Qualcomm. That's where we built out a really cool platform and spent a lot of time on really nerdy stuff. Very, very nerdy stuff. Building SDKs, which are software development kits for those of you that aren't engineers so that other people can build and implement them into their own apps. And that's where I met my co founders for housecall Pro. And at a certain point we left and we started. Was actually first Housecall and then became housecall Pro.

Ah, got it. So everyone was at Qualcomm working there.

Yeah, that's right. We have five co founders, which is pretty rare. I feel like, you know, the common startup lore and advice is don't go at it alone. Have at least one, but don't have too many because otherwise it's highly dilutive. Of course there's dilution, but when it comes to just starting a company, you need as much good talent as you need. And if you have everyone on board for the same mission. To this day, you know, I think we're what, seven and a half years in all. Co founders are still there, which is very rare. But we'd all previously work together at some way, shape or form at Qualcomm. That's kind of where we met, which is kind of cool, seeing the San Diego tech scene. There's big companies here, there's opportunity to meet people everywhere. And it just happened to be. That's where we met and started a house call from.

So, I mean, who had the idea? Were you guys working on your lunch break or what was the impetus or how did it start?

Yeah, I mean, I can't tell you when we were really working on it or not. But I will say the real problem was when you're out there and you're busy at work and you only have your weekends, you know, maybe for your kids, wouldn't it be nice if you could find a trusted local plumber, you know, a trusted local home service person through an app? And back then, Uber for X was all the rage. So why not Uber for home services? And that was kind of the original, the original concept. But really quickly as we started building it, we're like, holy moly. Like, no one has served the home services space to help them actually build their business. And so, you know, about a year or so in, we pivoted into housecall Pro and just building the tool back then it was called Pro Tools. So a little bit of lore there, but it's Pro Tools. And we launched that. We launched that in 2015, and then we went to market with that. And that's the SaaS platform for them to run their business day to day. So it started off as just a simple. A simple calendar and a way to accept credit cards, and then just grew from there. But the original idea was, you know, how do you help connect homeowners with pros in a very transparent and trusted way? And so, you know, what was nice about Uber was, hey, before, if you called a cab company, you're like, I don't know where they are. I don't even know what they look like. I don't even know if they're legitimate. But how could you do that in the home. The home services space? So we did that in the home services space, which, you know, everything around the transparency, like a picture of the technician as he shows up. You can track them on the map when they're coming, be able to check out online. You know, you just have your credit card on file. You you don't have to pay them cash, which seems sketchy on the side. So those are kind of the founding tenants of what we built. Everything from that now is just house call pro.

Oh really? Cool. So what, so starting, and I guess not starting you started. But what did going all in mean? Like what, how'd you all quit your jobs? What was the inflection point that made you feel like you're comfortable doing that?

You know, it's a great question, but I feel like people aren't truly all in until they actually quit their job and they don't have an opportunity to go back. And so you need to feel comfortable with the idea, have it to a point where you feel like you can make that jump. And that's different for different people, depending on where you're in life, you know, because you might not have the same responsibilities. Some of your other co founders, for me it was pretty easy. I always knew that I would go do something else. You know, for my other co founders, they're, they're a little older, have, you know, families and kids and mortgages, it's a little more difficult. But obviously putting together just a great team, play them on the field is like the first step, just having a great team. And we pivoted our way to where we are now. And along the way there was definitely sketchy points where you're like, oh my gosh, not much money left in the bank. What are we going to do? Just like any startup story, but inevitably, if you have the right kind of product building mindset, you'll get to a point where you can, you know, comfortably feel pretty good about the decision you've made. Even if when you made that decision you were 100. Sure. But at some point you can't just side hustle your way to victory. That's not going to work. Maybe if you're doing lifestyle business and there's nothing wrong with that, that might be a really good income stream. But if you really want to go build a business at some point you need to, you know, step away from whatever you're working and work on the new thing wholeheartedly. And that's definitely a jump and a leap of faith.

The biggest thing for a lot of entrepreneurs and I think to safe to say most of you. This was your first startup that you, all of you had done before. Is that true?

I mean I had, I'd done four startups before that which were my own, not in tech, but for, but for them. Let's see, I guess Ian had done one or Two of his own before Qualcomm, Adam and Chris. Not as much Reza, a little bit of freelance stuff, but yeah, I mean this is the first legit real tech funded, you know, or VC funded startup, you know, that we've participated in. And it definitely takes a lot of, a lot of learnings along the way to get to be successful. And I feel like now, knowing what we know, maybe, you know, the next time around, whenever that is, you know, we'll, we'll take those learnings and apply them differently. But there's nothing that would have really changed so much because we wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't make the decision that we did.

Totally.

It's always easy to look, you know, look in hindsight and be critical, but, but you are today where you are and easy as an entrepreneur to do that. But don't get stuck in that mental rut because it's better just to look forward.

Yeah, and I think you bring up some good points around about being self aware as well too though, realizing yes, we've done some things that we could leverage, we've done our own businesses, but maybe we haven't done the VC raise before. And so you surrounded yourself at least with people in the community who had, whether that was applying to evo Nexus, so having some sort of, a little bit of a community there. But even just like you said, startup poker, right. I mean you just put yourself out there. You easily could have not engaged in the startup community and you guys were always out there. So I think that's a really good lesson as well, is to engage and find other people like you so that you can build your network both for catharsis, because you just got to feel like someone else is running through walls like you are. Right. Or banging your head against a wall like you are, but also asking for that intro to that investor. Right. That just helped them. Right. That's another piece that you get a lot around the poker table.

I feel like it has a lot to do with lux surface area. You know, it's just working on something really cool and telling as many people about it. And obviously as a startup people are like, well, the best thing you can do is say no to everything and just focus on your thing. But also the opposite is true, which is tell as many people because you don't know where your next big deal will come from, your next big VC intro will come from, your next big customer will come from. And so, you know, between myself and the other co founders, I was out there always Creating lux surface area. And they were heads down, really working, like saying in the know. So I think, you know, find a balance within your company where you've got someone that's out there getting the word out and increasing that lux surface area for, for your startup. At the same time, make sure you're just working on your product and building something that actually is worth talking about. And you, you can't do one or the other. You, you truly need both to become, to become truly successful. Otherwise maybe you hit lightning in a bottle and something you build in a silo, but the chance of that working is, is really slim to none because in the very least, you need to be out there talking to your customers all day, every day and you're going to create luxurious area even if you're not trying to.

Yeah, you mentioned some of your pivots. Do you want to talk through just some, like, learnings or things that happen, inflection points within the company that over time that you've learned from?

Sure. I mean, the first big one was like when we first started the company, it was called Housecall. And so we're really all about the consumer. So this is the homeowner, you know, or renter looking to find and book a trusted local service pro. And so we really built it with the lens of the consumer. And as we were building that, you know, we started to realize, even though we were making money from day one, which I highly advise every startup do, charge something, even if it's just a dollar, because the act of getting a credit card on file is a good barometer for whether or not you have some sort of product market fit. Giving things away for free, extended trials or betas or whatever. And then after a year or six months, asking people to pay, it's not a good way to get started. So even though we started to monetize right out of the gate, making the payback on those dollars was beyond a couple years. When we were looking at that, we're like, all right, this is cool. This would be a great lifestyle business. You could absolutely build it. You'd want to raise money from someone that doesn't need money return really fast. And it was the type of business we wanted to build. So from there, while we're building that, we were using our own tools, so we're dogfooding it. We were our own technician. So for those of you that are in San Diego, that are listening, that had booked one of us for one of your tech calls, you know, we were like, you know, who are The Geek Squad. You know, the Geek Squad at Best Buy, we're the Geek Squad on demand. So we would go out and fix routers and printers and IP problems and wipe computer hard drives and install cabling. So we were the pro on the other end. And while we're doing that, we're like, holy moly, we need more. And what the heck are plumbers using? What are H Vac people using? And from there, you know, is a true pivot. We're like, okay, we think we can build a better sustainable SaaS model, which by the way, is a lot easier than building a marketplace in my opinion. B2B SaaS is a lot more straightforward because you're getting value and it's recurring and you don't have to wait for episodic bookings, which is. Marketplaces are built on. And so from there, really building out housecall Pro and fine tuning it and increasing the price every other month, a lot of people are like, oh, you gotta price high. You can never increase the price. No, we priced for something out of the gate. I remember it was like $4 per user per month, you know, and I'd go pitch it at coffee shops and meet plumbers there, or I buy them coffee and meet them at the job site and pitch them there, you know, and sell it for four bucks a month. And I'm like, yes, I got a 2 user, 4 bucks a month. All right, $8 a month, mrr, you know, and hand to hand combat now, you know, we do that times many in any given day. Plus the price now is quite a bit more. So don't be afraid to increase, increase your price as you add value because you can charge for it. I feel like that was a, that was a great pivot for us to make because that helped us go raise our Series A from August capital up in the bay here and kind of continue down the path.

So that time frame, what just a few years ago was kind of the pivot that brought you into today. Or have you seen some other, I don't know, some other areas that you guys have grown into?

Yeah, I feel like, you know, if you're running a SaaS business, definitely take a look at the payments part of your business. Obviously there's some great platforms out there. We happen to use Stripe, but obviously, like, if your business is built for it and it makes sense, then build it in. Don't just throw it in and slap it in, just hoping that someone uses it, because that's not the right way to think about it. But if it is, it is a great vehicle for success because then you can really start capturing the GMV generated through your platform, which previously maybe you were not because you're only just doing the monthly SaaS piece. And what's really great about building a SaaS business is you can have things that are obviously on a more fixed MRR basis, but you always want to have some usage components to it where you can charge to. Whether it's like if you do a thousand of these things as 10 cents per thousand, you know, and then it, and it scales from there, or payments for example, or we have postcards in our system, for example, you know, like things that aren't necessarily tied to just a linear amount of dollars, but something that as your company grows, they'll start spending more on other parts that are tangential or inside of your system. So you can really drive that net revenue retention above that 110% which you want to get to. So make sure you have those in there because it's going to make life a lot easier for you to hit those numbers in those cohort metrics that you really want to show past your series. A really, those are good points.

I know from the very beginning you guys, you were always kind of body heavy, right? You always needed a lot of people around, whether it's for sales, engineering. Do you want to take us through kind of designing culture and recruitment and what that's been like over time?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like a business goes through different states of types of people that are willing to join a startup at a given startup size, obviously with a more increased risk, you know, the smaller you are. I think throughout the entire process we've always been very meritocratic in the way that, you know, what you do every day matters and it's measurable and you can see essentially the output of your activity, whether it's engineering and you see people using the feature you built, whether it's sales, you know, you can see obviously a direct metric in what you're doing, whether it's CS and retention numbers. So tying things to that. I think from a culture perspective, you know, what's been interesting is throughout building this, up until Covid, people would walk in the office and you'd feel the buzz. People were packed in tight and by design, but also because we didn't want to have lavish big offices. You know, at many times you look at some other startups and like, wow, they've got such a cool, fancy looking office. But our office was always just, it felt like a startup. There Were cables everywhere. You know, the fire department was never happy with us. You know, we had whiteboards up everywhere. And when you walk through, from a culture and from a recruitment standpoint, those things make people feel like, wow, I want to be here. I'm guessing that at some point there will be a return back to some sort of office. But recreating that vibe is really important, I feel like is a great way to hire just based on culture. But make sure that things are very metrics driven and everyone's efforts are easy to see. You know, I don't have to dig and figure out what is Neil doing over in the corner. You know, what is he shipping, what is he building or what is he in charge of? You know, just make sure that every little piece is visible and that that builds a whole level of transparency into the business. And then for us, you know, we go back and, you know, oftentimes we talk to everybody at our town halls. You know, how's the business doing? We're in a very transparent way. You know, all the metrics are everywhere. There's nowhere to hide. So there's no surpr. And I think the other edge of that sword is there's probably some angst, you know, that anxiety that's created. Like, you know, what's the Runway like? Oh, we're not doing so good this month. What's going down? Oh, yeah, it's a bad season for home service. Right. But I think by and large, the opposite end of that roller coaster, which is like, the highs are really great because you can rally behind big numbers. And that really drives retention of employees. It drives just contribution and people just feeling positive towards a mission that we're going through. But I feel like we've done a good job at those things. And if you don't have good reporting or very clear KPIs and things that you. You can measure against, or at least just a North Star or two that's visible to the entire company. Make sure you get those out there, because I feel like there's nothing better than everyone contributing to the same number and feeling that they can actually move the needle, which is very true in a small startup, but still, even, you know, at a company of our size.

Yeah. How big are you guys now?

So we've got a couple hundred people here in San Diego. We have an office in San Francisco. We have an office in Denver now that we're building out. And then we have, you know, a sister company that we work very closely with in Mexico as well. So from. From our Standpoint now, you know, we've got well over 35, 40 open RECs across all different parts of our business. And so we've been really lucky to be on the the better end of this Covid because as people are home more, well, they're noticing their home more for good and for worse. And so what that means is, you know, you maybe are using the toilet more, you're using the H Vac more, you know, you're putting more stress on your home. You're starting to feel, is it the right size? You know, do I have enough space? Especially for people that have kids, you know, like, do they have enough space for that? And not only working from home, but schooling from home. So I feel like because of that, home services done really well through Covid. Obviously initially you have your essential home service businesses and then your non essential. And so the non essential took kind of a hit. But the essential businesses have been doing as good or even better than ever before. And so that's really been great for our business where, you know, we saw a lot of other tech startups on the the other receiving end of kind of the COVID stick. And that's always tough to see, especially for something that's like to no fault of their own, you know, just an anomalous black swan event that, you know, just crushes you. And there's no amount of growth hacking you can do or changing or working harder to change. You know what happens there?

Yeah, yeah, that's just this big divergence, right? A bunch of people doing really well, bunch of people doing not so well, all because of the COVID It's been fascinating to watch. Something interesting is to watch is the people either staying, trying to stay relevant with their business or because their business is doing so well, they're able to accelerate certain things, whether it's R and D stuff or new technology being implemented. Anything around that that you guys have been able to do or is it just been volume has increased?

I would just say that taking a look at things, you know, early on when Covid first hit, we changed our marketing mentality. So less about tooling, more about just figuring out where to set the demand curve or what we can do to affect the demand curve. Given that a lot of people are thinking about more of their own necessities rather than things that they might or might not have to use. Like our tool, for example, you can run a home service business on pen and paper. That's why this home services business is great, because most of our customers are coming from pen and paper. So you don't necessarily have to change, but can you do it much better? For sure. And that's what companies do and that's what we sell. They do much better on our platform. But in the early Covid times, what we did from a marketing approach is we just started delivering a lot of value and putting content out there that was very relevant to the situation. So for example, we started looking at the PPP loan forgiveness programs, the EIDL programs, all the things that were coming out from the government as it related to home service businesses, but just small business in general, like how can they take advantage of it? Whether loan forgiveness terms, what's the interest rate, what should you do? Which banks are open, which banks are closed? You know, are they local banks, are they bigger banks? Who's giving money, who's not? So we really invested a lot of time and of our own research resources just looking at and trying to understand all the legalese. I mean the documents were massive and we would spend weekends parsing through it to try to like extract the relevant tips for our customers so that they didn't have to because they were worried about how am I making my next paycheck, you know, they were worried about can I stay open, can I not? Am I allowed to roll the truck on the road? You know, am I going to get pulled over by police or no. So for us, we just did a hard pivot and allocated a bunch of our marketing time and funds into just trying to create that best content that was like hyper relevant to within the week. So we were doing our home service evening update where every day at five o' clock we'd go live online, do a state of the world. We kind of did our own news segment and then everything as it relates to home services that was coming out day by day. So we did that for a couple months and then we scaled it back to four nights a week and then finally we scaled it down to one day a week. It's not Covid as much related now. Now just bringing them really great content which has turned into our own podcast, our own webcast, which is Protox. And we've had the blessing to be able to interview Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Jocko Willink, Simon Sinek, and then a whole bunch of industry titans and Jack Carr, novelist, all kinds of really cool, interesting people as it relates to really good tactical advice for the home services. So everything had a home services spin to it, which was unique and it's unique content you don't hear anywhere else. And so we just deliver that to the pros. So that's what we ended up doing. But I feel like it's not always necessarily just volume or text or tools or those things, but really like going back to your customer and how can you support them in any way? Even if it was like they didn't come to us for learning material, they didn't come to us for interviews, that wasn't the problem they were looking to solve. But we knew that if we put that in front of them at that moment it would help them, which it did. And so it's returned dividends and spades into our company. And because it's helped our pros stay in business and be more successful and get those loans they needed to, you know, keep people employed and work their way through that kind of the tough first two, three month lockdown period.

Yeah, that's incredible. Way to lean in to seeing what everyone needed at that time, even when you probably were just going to get busy regardless. Right. Because that was going to happen. Looking back, hindsight now, we know people are going to do home services for their, their essential house stuff, but what do you see going forward? I mean, it's all pretty up in the air for how long we're in this situation of living at home. Right. So I've got to imagine for you running a business, you're thinking through how long is my team remote? Or maybe indefinitely. And then, you know, is there ever, I guess, the slump that comes back down where people aren't doing as much on their homes? Like, how do you prepare for all that? How do you prepare for the unknown?

Yeah, I think by and large you can't prepare for the unknown. So that's the first thing to prepare is just know that you won't know what you don't know. And so being able to be very agile, be very flexible, be able to shift as things change. Obviously with this election cycle coming up, there may be some interesting shifts that that'll be happening. Still still unknown there. And so I feel like just the general macroeconomic trends will drive a lot of consumer behavior which will affect our pros, our customers.

Right.

That's our lifeblood and just being ready for whatever that might be. And so what that means is everyone's always thinking and having weekly iterations. You know, don't, don't be afraid to reset okrs just because you're doing them on a quarterly basis. Change it to monthly basis, change it to weekly, you know, weekly iterations, whatever it is, just shorten that feedback loop in Times of uncertainty. Rather than like setting a plan, be like, this is our year goal and come hell or high water, we're doing this. Like, that's a really poor way. You shouldn't be doing that anyways. As a startup, you should be shorting those cycles as quickly as you can so you can do more feedback loops. So you can just like test, learn, iterate, ship, you know, and just keep doing over and over and over again. So I feel like that's probably the best advice for us as a business. You know, we're, we're at a really good point and we're hiring aggressively. So if you're in San Diego, you're interested or if you, if you like what you hear about Housekel Pro, or if you have some calling to the home services space or your dad's a plumber or whatever it might have been, go take a look at our careers page. If you just go to HousecallPro.com careers, you can go take a look at that. But for us, we're in growth mode. We will continue to be in growth mode. We see big demand for home services. It will not go away. I think that this has made people realize how much their home matters to them. It has made them realize what they're willing to spend for their own essentials, their own needs. And I think that it's just wildly changed what people expect from a consumer profile. They want to know that people are coming to their house with ppe, what's their process? They want to know the picture of the technician that's coming even more now than ever. Those things are important. So I feel like it's really accelerated a lot of stuff across our business. So for us it's, it's really pedal to the metal and just keep on growing and, you know, become that, that San Diego unicorn with a couple others that are great companies that are here. And you know, San Diego is a great place for our headquarters. What it means to be remote or not or in office is still all up in the air. We're all remote. You know, we'd love to go back to some sort of model where we can meet in person. I feel like there's a lot of serendipitous moments and things that you can't create quite as easily in a slack heavy world, no matter how much zoom you do. So I feel like whether it's quarterly off sites or monthly retreats or I don't know what it looks like, but getting FaceTime and building bonds is critical to culture and I feel like, we've been lucky enough now to still have the big core set of people going into Covid and having them, and now it says we're bringing in new people. How do we bring them into the mix? I feel like that's, you know, onboard them, get them to understand a culture. That's all. That's all new to us as well. And I know it will be for a lot of startups. So I feel like it's a little early to tell there, but definitely something to keep an eye on for sure.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're getting ahead of it and you're thinking through the best way. It's kind of fascinating to think, you know, there's people you're hiring that you will never met in person. Right. That purely just like this. This is the way to suss out if they're good fit for. For culture. I think startup people are the best to at least learn to pivot and figure out a new process, a new playbook. It's great to still have the founders around who've built it from five people to hundreds now to build that new playbook. That's awesome. Being San Diego, obviously, we're still living here, whether we're working remote or not. We could be anywhere in the world, I guess, inside our little offices. But we gotta eat, and we love our tacos in San Diego. Do you have a favorite local taco spot?

Yeah. So for me, there's. I'll give you three. So if you're in San Diego and you're north, Pee wee birdwalk area, I'd first make sure you check out Oscars. You want to go to the original location, which is actually on Turquoise Street. There's one that's closer over to the Garnett area over there. I've been to that one once, but it's not the same as the OG spot on Turquoise. So that for me is the number one.

And the ceviche. The ceviche is a great side order. It's here at Taco at Oscars.

Totally. And they've done a cool setup now with COVID You know, they got like outdoor seating. Before it was like informal outdoor seating. Now they're like, they double down on the outdoor seating. So it's been really cool, really, really cool to watch. Right up the street from there, probably like a block. Not even a block. There's a great place. If you're looking for that late night burrito, breakfast burrito, or early morning breakfast burrito, go check out Los Dos Pedros. I just Call it Los Dos, but they have an awesome burrito called a loco burrito. So if you're into burritos, not so much tacos, go there. And then obviously taco surf, you know, that's on. That's on mission. That's a, that's a classic. Great for catering too. But those are my, my three suggestions. Looking for Mexican food, specifically tacos. They've got tacos too, at Los Dose, although I've never ordered them there. But the burritos there are great. So if you're coming to San Diego and you haven't been here before, go check those out. If you're looking for good tacos, great plug Taco surf.

Also their California burrito. After a day in the water on the beach. Oh, my God, you are like such comforted comfort food there.

Those are great businesses, you know, and I've been kind of. They've been increasing their prices and part of me is like, oh, why are they increasing the prices? But I'm like, you know what? Good on you for increasing your prices because you guys have a great product and people want to pay and I want you guys to stay in business forever, you know. So for me, I'm like, I'm quietly applauding them, but I'm like, oh, man. All right, don't increase them. But okay, keep in business, you know, so it's good to see.

And it's semi a commodity in San Diego. Right. Like, we'll take, we'll. We're always looking for tacos and burritos, but like, we also have our favorites, so like it actually pricing, they should be taking that into account. It's not going to like, we'll pay two bucks and we'll pay ten bucks for our different burritos at different times of the day and at different inebriations.

That's right. Or, or if you're in La Jolla or whatever, you can go pay puesto 20 bucks a taco too. So that's like the upper end for a taco. They're good, by the way. But. But the price to value, there's better. Plus there's better spots.

Totally. No, this is great. Well, Roland, I really appreciate the time on the podcast. I'm really excited. Always continue to be excited for what you guys are doing, building, growing here in San Diego. So we'll make sure. Plug your careers page in the show notes. And thanks again so much for being on the podcast.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Neil. This is awesome.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos and tech podcast.

With Neil Bloom.

Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Blum on Twitter eelblooms as well as Fresh brewed Tech and Tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech. You know we got it.

Hey.