Daniel Houghton: Full Interview

Alexa, play Machine Yearning. Here is Machine by Regina Spektor. But it's the only thing you've played for days.

But she understands me.

She really gets who I am. Well, Alexa, do you want to talk about it?

M-A-C-H-I-N-E. The thing that I have found, and this is kind of a small sample pool of 10 or 12 companies, I've never met one that was like, "We have our data shit together." Not one. By the way, guys, sorting all that shit out was really difficult.

It's Machine Yearning from Assist. We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we're reshaping our culture. You wouldn't think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand, and the future of digital creative agencies would be Machine Yearning territory. But they are when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton. Daniel is the CEO of PYXL, that's P-Y-X-L, a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build, and measurement. Before joining PYXL this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet, where he partnered with Amazon and Google so that travelers could access Lonely Planet products through the Alexa device and Google Home. The company launched a platform for digital videos with GoPro and did a ton of e-commerce. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company's 2018 Most Innovative Companies list, and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30. Now Daniel is on the agency side and diving into a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist, and a student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken. And this was his first interview as Pixel CEO. This is machine learning though, so it's not the typical arms-crossed looking manly on the magazine cover CEO interview. Hang out and enjoy. Here's Shane and Daniel.

What's up, buddy?

How's it going?

So what I was really actually thinking about was when you were a kid, were you always the gadget guy who had the latest thing, always the newest thing, the newest tech digital thing since you were a child?

Such a good question. I'm trying to think exactly when it happened because there's definitely a point— well, I guess when I got my first job.

Now, what was your first job?

Oh, I pumped gas at a, uh, at a marina in Alabama.

So how did technology and gas pumping go together?

They didn't. One made money to pay for the other. The first obsession was probably cameras. Really at the time when digital cameras were kind of just not a joke anymore. They started to become serious. And anyone that's a photographer has a camera knows you buy one thing and it's like, oh, welcome, now you're going to spend every other penny you own on everything else.

What was the first camera?

The first camera that I bought myself, I think, was a Canon 30D.

What did it do that you couldn't do before?

It actually had a friggin screen you could see.

That was the innovation.

I mean, like, all the cameras before that, like the 20D and the 10D, like the first digital cameras that Canon made that were like for professionals, the screens were like the size of a postage stamp. And then the 30D came out, it was like a 3.5-inch screen, and it was like, I can see everything. It just changed, it just changed a lot.

What drew you to photography? Was it the technology or was it the photos?

I think it was a mix of all of it. I mean, The technology was fun. That's just fun after the fact. It's fun— everyone knows it's fun to go take pictures. After that though, like, the entire process— I mean, I learned how to develop film in a darkroom and I was like, 'This is fun. Don't know if I need to really do that every day.' But there's kind of an equivalent process in the digital world, and it's just importing and just your entire workflow around that and trying to understand how you tone your images and how you capture them and the entire thing. It occupied my brain for a long time.

When you say workflow, is that how you think about input, outputs, work in general? Like, compare a workflow in photography to a workflow you do in digital today.

I, I think today I probably think of the word which is like systems. Yeah, like I have systems and I'm trying to constantly assess those, but I do have like routines and just the way I go about things. It's less about cameras today and more about like, what programs am I using and am I using them the right way? And you know, it's just whatever makes work easier.

Take me from the photo world to being someone who led something through a digital transformation. When you think about the digital world and what's happening in the digital world and the rate of change that's happening, How did you even set out, for you personally, to be someone who was thinking about the future, understood where it was going, and were curious enough to learn faster than anybody else what to even go focus on to be good at digital in the last 6, 7 years?

I mean, a couple things. One, I've always thought that like consumers are a lot smarter than we think they are. And I didn't— I never was taught how to think about things from a business perspective, so to speak. So I didn't know if I was right or wrong, or I could only approach things as a consumer. And so if I use something, as someone has kind of constantly loved just new technology my entire life, if I use something that didn't make sense, I was just like, why would anyone else use this? So let's just not do that. I know that sounds really simple and stupid, but I didn't know what ROI meant or P&L or zero business terms. I just knew, like, would I want to use this and could I explain this to other people? And if not, then we're just not going to build it. I don't understand. Or if there was something better and we're going to build a competitor, why? What are we going to do that's better?

Would you compare— because you basically led a company through the mobile era and going to mobile and digital, which is hard— would you compare mobile optimized websites that you want to use versus ones you don't want to use as the camera before the big screen and the one with the small screen.

Yeah, it's always about content, right? And so like you go, especially running a content company, you go to some of these content websites, you can't see the fucking content. There's just boom, bam, pop up, and then you start scrolling and then it's like this other thing comes in. I don't know what that is. The only thing that doesn't load is actual fucking words you're trying to read. And there's so many ads and none of them work, and it just— that's all so broken. So yeah, there's a pretty clear differentiator. I've always been heavily influenced just by good design, and then when I learned that product design was, was different than just design— there's many types of design— I just started to have an appreciation for that and have always tried to drive towards just really good user experience over everything.

How do you change your mind about a system, or who do you listen to to know when you're using an outdated system or you need a new system?

Well, the easiest one is if you have been using something for more than 2 months, I know you're probably not going to switch off of it.

What do you mean?

Well, like, we started using Quip so heavily and I fell immediately in love, and I had been an Evernote user since 2008, but I started calling it Evernot Sync because it just never— it just wouldn't sync. I had the notebooks, I like, I had everything. Thing. Had the— I think they made a pen at one point for that. Like, I, I was so into Evernote, and it took me about 10 minutes using Quip to be like, I'm never opening that again, ever. It was just so good.

So you're saying you've been in Evernote for 5, 6, 7 years, and in under 5 minutes you knew you were gonna switch? What was it exactly that was like, this is so much technologically better, I'm gonna switch?

The first thing was just the ability to reference other documents within So just to be able to type and then the name of a note so that I could build like a master file because like I know you can do all that with Google Docs, but that's just so much— like there's so many easy shortcuts in Quip. Just be able to like search and like create a new note, reference another one, throw in an easy Excel sheet. Everything was just so simple to jump back and forth between notes. And I saw you're like, hold on, I reference this over here, boom, click, and then that was there. And then I just started getting really upset that all my information was in Evernote, and you were like, "Oh, don't worry about it, they have an importer." That was the end of that. Haven't opened it since.

Who's the person you've worked with specifically that really changed and taught you what you didn't know about product design?

Probably the original is our, I guess, my former creative director, head of product, Brad Haynes. But he actually came and found me and said, "I think I know what you're trying to do." and I know you're a photographer and you have this kind of visual background. I think we can make something really amazing. And I wish I could claim I was smart enough to be like, hire great people and get out of the way. I didn't know any of that stuff. I just knew that every time he would bring me something, I was like, that, that works.

You knew it when you saw it.

That is so much better. And that's— and we did work on stuff like, this is better than this, or different things like that. But definitely like him as the beginning, and another designer that I had, Adam Moore, he was the designer on my team, and it just fueled just kind of an obsession with just well-done design and user experience.

How do you even explain to someone what good product and bad product, good design and bad design is? What's an example?

I think more than anything, I just try to show it to people. I'm a visual person, and I guess the most recent example I have in my head I bought a car the other day, and I bought 4 or 5 cars in my life. Kind of like with cameras and computers, I'll have one for a couple years and sell it and go on to the next thing, just because I'm curious. And when I was doing all my research on the car, I found out that it had this whole suite of mobile apps for iPhone and Android. One that does your navigation, one that does third-party apps, one that is specifically designed to turn the car on and off, see where it's located. Is the valet going too fast on the way to the garage? All that kind of stuff. And I got really, really excited when I found out about that. Like, my eyes rolled back in my head because I was like, tech heaven. And Katie was even joking with me like, oh great, yeah, of course, now you're gonna buy the car. Like, it has apps that it comes with. And I got really excited and I went to the App Store and every single one of the apps had a 1-star review. And that baffled me because Their product is rolling technology, but then they couldn't figure out like the one— like, we're kind— I think I'm an idiot, right? Like, but I can help build applications. How could they not figure it out? And it just blew my mind that something that you would think that would have been the easy— and I get it, it's hardware, maybe really difficult integration for all that to happen, but it was more just about like the product is, and it just didn't work. Does it work or does it not work? That's the only way I know how to explain that to people. Machine learning. Machine learning.

Does it work or does it not work? The design and UX baseline for Daniel Houghton. Blisteringly obvious, right? But we know from operating in the new frontier of voice, AI, and conversational commerce, hitting that mark isn't the same as when we were designing for Web 2.0. With voice and machine learning, the error is baked into the process. Kathryn Hume spoke eloquently about this in an earlier episode of Machine Yearning. We have to figure out how to reconcile the tensions of UX, client expectation, and performance so the brand thrives in the talking internet. Machine Learning is a place where we spend time asking smart people how all of us can better navigate the emerging space. We focus on the culture of the work in companies as leaders and how this impacts our wider culture. We're about how we think about this new space and how we make good choices as we lead our teams into this unmapped terrain. Please make sure you subscribe and a quick rating and review helps more people find the pod. Up next, Shane and Daniel go headlong into voice.

Take me to Google Home, Alexa, Siri. Do you use them all?

I have used Alexa, but I don't use that like as part of my daily routine. I would say I use Google Home the most, Google Assistant, but only through my speakers. I don't use really the app on my phone. If I'm on my phone or my watch, I'm using Siri.

And do you like voice?

Yeah, when it gets it right.

How often does that happen?

If I'm talking into my watch, it happens every time. If I'm talking to my phone, it never works.

Why is that?

I mean, I assume that it must be a hardware thing. I don't— I mean, I'm not really getting any closer to it. I feel like when we all talk to Siri, we like jam it into our face and she's still like, I haven't ordered any pizza for you yet today. Thanks. Okay. I was asking about if the lights were off, but thank you for that. Whereas if you say to your watch like, hey Siri, text Shane and tell him that like I'm on my way but I'm a couple minutes late. Yeah, that works. It like somehow just writes that perfectly and then it also knows the difference between what you wanted the message to be and what you were just talking to it about. Every time it gets it right. I don't know how it does that because I know it's sending it back to the phone, but it's something with the hardware. It has to be.

And what is the use case you use it for the most? Because you have one of the most IoT homes I've ever seen, and which is where we're sitting right now in your, in your dining room. Do— is that the best use case? Is that it unlocks your doors, it turns on your lights, it sets it to night mode? Like, is that your number one use case?

Yeah, and I, in some sense, I haven't really spent enough time to hook them all together and automate them like I could have, because I know that I could set it up in the Home app and say, "Hey Siri, I'm going to bed," and it would turn off the lights, change the temperature on the thermostat, lock my doors, and all that kind of stuff. In reality, I sort of end up kind of glancing down at my watch or different things to see, make sure my doors are locked, and then when I'm ready to go to bed, I just say to Google, like, "Good night," and it just handles the rest. And it just, it just makes sure all the lights are off and stuff like that. It's not so much about voice necessarily, although I think it's going to be. It's more about the fact that like, if I run off, you know, on a business trip for a couple days and realize I left all my lights on, I can just turn my Philips Hue lights off from my phone. It's just nice to kind of see the status of all that stuff. So.

Status, status is a popular one. What are other use cases? That could be taken to voice that you think would be really powerful for status?

In theory, I've got CarPlay in my car. I get in the car, drive down the road, and Siri interrupts me and is like, hey, keep your eyes on the road, I know you're driving. Did you know you left your front door unlocked? It knows that. And then you're like, shit, I gotta turn around, or I need to pull over, or, or Or let's go better, would you like me to lock those doors for you? Yes. Ding, locked. That's what it should be and we're not there. I think we will get there though.

What else are you excited about when you think of voice messaging bots use cases? 'Cause you're a consumer-centric brand person. What are the use cases you dream about?

Efficiency in talking directly to a customer. Like the ability to sort through whatever the issues are very, very quickly. And I'm not talking about like, say, one for customer service. I'm talking about like your messaging on your phone, and it can immediately, in like 3 to 5 questions, route you to the exact person. So you don't have to hit some operator, like all that kind of stuff. If you have an issue with something, to just go— it doesn't matter if you're trying to buy tickets to a concert, and I'm in the Ticketmaster app, and I've seen the seat map. It's really hard to tell. Like, I just want something like within 75 feet and I don't have more than $300. Can you do like, boom? And for them to like route you to the right person to do that, or the right ticket, or the right ticket, or whatever it is. Don't have to be a person. But I feel like, at least for me, I don't really reach out to a company or a brand or anything unless I feel like I've tried it all myself and I just can't figure it out. And I think at that point I just want to talk to a person. Because everything else, like check packages on Amazon, you go see exactly the status.

Like, you don't really need to ever call, but you still do have to log in to get that status.

True.

Do you think one of the benefits of the new voice and messaging space is that it's inside the most used app on your phone, messaging?

Yeah, I think if it, if it evolves the way I think we all hope that it will, I think that's absolutely— yeah. It just takes away so much other, like, here's another app and another login and another thing I have to go into 1Password for to get my— like, it just doesn't matter how many times you log in, it's always fucking logged out every time. And the—

every non-optimized mobile website to log in is just painful.

Well, you just give up and leave like 90% of people do, just like No, a lot of people just get in the car and try to go find a store. They're just like, I'm not even doing this. This was supposed to be easy home shopping. It's terrible.

Take the last use case for what you dream about voice to something that's very, very specific to you, which is flying. You're a loyal Delta customer. Yep, always have been. And if you could wave a magic wand and you're sitting there designing the perfect consumer use case in messaging and voice for yourself, what are the 3 or 4 areas that you still find friction in that you would love to see solved by Delta?

That's hard. Delta takes such good care of me, and I'm not even bragging. Like, I'm, I'm part of this 360 program that, uh, I can get someone on the phone in less than a minute every time.

So take that and say I have the best experience in the world. How can with AI, automation, and machine learning, or messaging, voice, whatever, all these buzzwords that I just said, how can you help teach them how you can give that service to every single Delta customer?

There should be a lot of ways that that could happen.

Or what do you get as 360 that if you had an AI assistant to do it, you could give to everybody?

Yeah, in fact, even with the status that I have, there's still a couple things that I don't know any airline that gets right. Like, you know, whenever you— it doesn't have to be Delta, pick whoever, whatever airline that you have an app, right? You're going to open the app, it still doesn't know what gate you're arriving at. It still can't tell you where their next gate is. And I, I could literally be like idiot abroad here, but I walk out of every flight, and I have a lot of connecting flights because I go through Atlanta a lot, and I get out And I still have to go look at the frickin' board to see where is my Nashville flying. It's not in the app. And there's some problem there where like they're changing all that stuff on the fly. But you would think that if it's on that board in there, it could be like, just ping me, boom.

And it's still in FlyScanner. And I'm still also getting a text message about a change, but it's not in the app because disconnected systems.

It's— that's literally a real-life example of what we were talking about earlier. And I could call them and be like, what gate is this going out of? But I'm not trying to bother them over something so stupid. I'll figure it out. But the proactive, like, here's some information we knew you were about to ask for, because by definition, to continue to use our product, you're going to need to know this. Don't make me walk out and like go find the sign while I get trampled by everyone else getting off the plane. I still don't know an airline that's fixed that, and I've tried every— and it's just, there's something with some system in all the airports because Delta doesn't get to control it end to end, right? They're in someone else's airport, and it's just one of those problems that's really annoying. They figured out with the bags because they do control that, so they can tell you exactly where your checked bag is. Is it on the ramp? Is it on the way to the carousel? It's a carousel 7. Somehow in the last couple years they figured that out. Which is really impressive.

Where does it show up? Where does Carousel 7 show up? Because I have this problem every single time I get to an airport.

I can't even find the Delta. You need to fly Delta. Yeah, I've seen people use it, like sitting next to me, and I used it and it was magnificent. And it's in the app.

Daniel Houghton, CEO of Pixell.

Machine Yearning.

In this final segment, Daniel and Shane go even deeper on the ways brands can use simple, people-centric design solutions to make everyone much happier. Listen up, J.Crew. We love this kind of conversation at Machine Yearning. It's practical, it's specific, and it gets to the ways tech and commerce and culture intersect. Other folks can do the doomcasting about the ways AI is going to eliminate jobs, or the gee whiz of conversational commerce. At Machine Yearning, we like talking to people who are on teams that are actually doing the innovation. If you like this too, we hope you'll share Machine Yearning with a friend, or a colleague, or what the hell, a friend at work. Go wild! More from Daniel and Shane.

Being someone who's at the forefront of digital transformation, technology in general, what are you thinking about now? What are you excited about? What do you see that you think others might not see yet that excites you?

I mean, for one, the internet has been a pretty complicated place for a long time and probably is going to be for the rest of our lives. But what I think, one of the things I think is going to happen, I think things are going to start to get a lot easier for consumers, easier to pay your bills, easier to just check on stuff. And you can look at that as I'm just talking about AI or different bots and things that we're talking to, or you can think of it like I like to think of it, which is just the first time I ever paid my cable bill on my laptop and just scanned my fingerprint. I was like, holy shit. I've done it on my phone before too, and I'm like, that's, that's great, that's convenient. Scan my face, pay my cable bill. But when I did it on the computer, for some reason you're just expecting this long process where you have to enter in all this crap. You already know where I live, but here's where I live again. Here's my billing information. You miss one number in the credit card, you gotta start over, redirect back. And it's— and then just like, oh yeah, we got this for you, Apple Pay. Ding, boom. Wow, I don't have to teach my mom and dad how to do that. They're just gonna do it. Oh yeah, I know how. Boom, done, ding. Like, I just feel like that is good for consumers, it's good for the business, it's just all-around good. And in those types of innovations which don't really come off as that remarkable, like, oh, you got a new laptop because you scan your finger into it, it's a lot more than that. Like, when you think about what that's gonna look like a couple years down the road.

What is it gonna look like a couple years down the road? What do you think?

I think that people are going to, in a similar way that people had their favorite brands in like retail stores, like I always loved Best Buy because it was like a toy store for me, and I always loved Target because I thought even though like getting dragged through there as a kid was kind of boring, there was like an electronics section. Mm-hmm. I've always kind of wrapped my mind around different brands that I like, and then I try to go all in on that. Because whether it's clothes that I know just going to fit or a car that's not going to break down or whatever it is, I think it's going to be easier if you're building good products and maybe you're charging more for them because of it. I just think it's going to be even easier to have people become more and more loyal to those products. So like for me, the couple of examples are like Patagonia clothing for anything outdoor. It's just almost indestructible out of the gate, kind of lasts forever. That's their whole ethos. And then if something does go wrong with it, like, send it to them in California, they'll just sew it back together and send it back. I love that. J.Crew for like actually work clothes, and it's kind of boring and basic, but it fits, and I'm 6'4", and kind of hard to find pants that fit and stuff. Or it's like a car brand or whatever, and there's all these new brands. Like, I have now 3 pairs of Allbirds shoes because I know they're great.

Take J.Crew. Perfect example. What would J.Crew do in a new AI voice digital world that would make your life easier?

Oh, there's a couple of things they could do. I mean, they've gotten pretty good on like commerce, Apple Pay, and they were never bad at that, but I think they got a lot better. I mean, I could throw out some different things like Warby Parker. They introduced the feature where you can try on the glasses before you ship it to yourself. Out of necessity because they had no stores. So I could, I could throw an example like that, like, how's this, these clothes gonna look on you? My biggest issue is that I often don't know when they're bringing out new stuff, and I feel like there could be some proactive way for them to be like— I mean, obviously they email me, right? But those are in some, like, spam folder. I don't really walk into the store that much anymore, but I do want to know when there's, like, I don't know. I just feel like there's something to do with content and I'm very biased towards content. And then like little things like just proactively letting me know. It sounds so stupid and so basic, but like your order is on its way and like, yeah, you can do that in email. But like if my Google Home just said, hey, by the way, like in my daily morning, like I always get up and I say, hey, read me the news, tell me what's going on, and it'll roll off on these are your calendar appointments, blah blah blah. And it's like literally while I'm making my coffee. If it was like, oh, and by the way, your order from J.Crew should be here this afternoon. I feel like that sounds so stupid, but I'd be like, oh, they're thinking of me. Yeah, that's— it would just— it just makes you like, why would you ever buy from anyone else?

You say it sounds stupid, but I think most people forget the basics, especially in a one-to-one world, because we've been operating in a one-to-many world, and therefore the one-to-one things that are seemingly basic are very important. But didn't seem achievable at scale. And the J.Crew example, to just go back to one more time, you're a repeat buyer, right? They don't need to try on anymore. You're 6'4", you're not growing.

I know I'm wearing large and 32-34 pants and I'm good to go.

They should know when you need to buy again, even if it's not new. Anticipation versus automation, like just every 45 days or whatever it is that I go to your website. Yeah, but then they don't know you're on the website.

You know those little, you know those little buttons that always say, hey, we're out of stock, notify me when it comes back? It's Have you ever gotten a fucking email that's like, hey, it's back in stock? I haven't. I hit that button all the time. I've never gotten an email. Is it that just it was so successful they decided to not resell it again? I don't understand. I know I'm a weird size. I'm really tall and really skinny. I just like, yeah, the basics.

I don't believe any brand aspires to not communicate with you. So great. So what is it that makes it so these brands don't do that? Is it one because they don't know you or who you are in the store? I mean, even the web, the problem with the web is it's all pixels unless you're logged in and in a session tracker, they don't actually know. And so is there a new frontier where you always have identity and therefore you have to change how you approach everything with your customer?

The thing that I have found, and this is kind of a small sample pool, but like 10 or 15 companies that I've gotten to know, pretty well that you would think would have— at least as a consumer, you would think they have all this data on me. They know what I bought. They knew whether— if it's a hotel, how long did I stay there? What did I— like, have you ever been to a hotel and then like, whether it's the minibar, you're at a resort, like, in theory they know everything you did while you were there. They know if you were at this pool or that pool. Like, they should know everything. And again, small sample size of 10 or 12 companies. I've never met one that was like, we have our data shit together.

Not one.

And so I think a lot of companies in theory have all of this stuff that they could put together and use to like make my customer experience better. But none of those like departments talk to one another. Those systems don't work together. You know, the commerce team hired some agency to build the e-commerce site that doesn't talk to what the sales team's using. And it's just a bunch of like internal and external— like, by the way, like sorting all that shit out was really difficult. And so it's certainly not easy, but I think there's so many companies walking around that's like, oh, we know we have all this data, and they don't— literally don't even know what to start or how to craft that into something that could help them sell better or more or communicate better with you. Because you're right, no one— or maybe a few companies wake up and go, they're not going to hear from me today. I mean, like That's a very weird specimen of company, but some of them exist. But I, I think a lot of people have that information and they just can't even organize it to like act on it.

Okay, take your pain. You're the CEO and have been the CEO of a global company. How do you get all the systems and people to talk to each other?

If that's a problem that we— that, that I think any company's having, I this is not— I don't know if this would work or not, but I mean, it's my instinct to literally just announce that as an issue to the entire team and say, okay, we have all this data, we have this from marketing, we have this from sales, like our operations team has this. I don't know the answer, which is why I'm talking to you all, our team. I'm wide open listening, come forth. Like we have to fix this and it is my goal for us to combine all this data by— put— draw a line in the sand, whatever you want to do, however you want to do that. But I am so passionate about trying to make all those pieces work together, but it's only going to do that if like you're all excited. So one, I'm curious, like, does that sound good to you guys or does that sound stupid or is there any reasons you think that can't happen? Or just literally let's open the floor for discussion. Because everyone's gonna have an opinion. Well, sales doesn't listen. Well, that, you know, like it's just never-ending. But if you don't throw it out there in the open, you can't tell it to your 3 like reports and go, I want this fixed. It's not gonna work because they can't be the ones doing that all the time. So I don't know, that's just, that's my kind of basic.

But I think basic things are what we need to get great things done. What are you, what are you doing here? I think this is very important from an executive level. Is it, hey, make sure that every piece of our organization knows who Daniel Houghton is. So how we do that is either his name, but it's probably too generic. We have a unique identifier now that is an ID for Daniel. And you know, something that I think Amazon did this a long time ago where Bezos said in 6 months Every department in this company has an API that can communicate the ID between each department and read and write it so that—

so we get that you all need your own unique things, but they're gonna have to work together.

Exactly. And I think it was a forcing function a year, decade ago probably. Is that what you're recommending? Like, is that what you do? You call out the problem as a leader and then you have to build some kind of system that allows all the different systems— like, there's not gonna be one system of record. It's that all the systems now are different. Departments use different software for their things, but the ID has to communicate across departments. Is that what you're recommending?

Yeah, I think that's fair, especially if you're at a company that has the resources to invest in something like that. I mean, there's a million solutions pretending to claim all these things and solve these problems, and maybe some of them do. I am probably guilty of having always let various departments at anything I've ever been responsible for use really what they think is the best software for what they're trying to do. Because I come from a creative background and I know that, like, this is really stupid, but if I got hired for a job and you said you have to work, you can't use a Mac, I can't do it. I literally— I mean, I could. I'm not doing it. I'll buy my own and I'll bring it, but I'm not doing it. Like, and I actually use PCs and I love them, and like, so much shit has changed. Don't lie. I have before and I can, and like, it's actually pretty similar. But basically the answer is I am empathetic towards different departments wanting to use the software, different things that they think is really best for their job. But then how you make all that shit work together is a very different problem. And so yeah, if you have the resources to invest in something like that, or even to invest in some other system that in theory can, can help Maybe not even all of it, but if you can get to 80% of it or fuck it, if you can get to the 20% of the most important of it, just do that.

Yeah.

And then we'll figure the rest out. Companies are going to spend the next several decades trying to make that happen, especially when you're operating at scale, just how hard that is to achieve. But you see companies doing it. It's working. All right.

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