Tanya Khakbaz with Shane Mac

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Ask Interview Series. Today we have Tanya Hockbos on the show. She's the head of growth and marketing at Accompany.com. Accompany's awesome. I use it every day. It's trying to be your chief of staff so that everyone has someone that can help them get prepared for a meeting, know everything about the people you're meeting with, as well as news about all of your contacts so that, you know, there's all these different social networks and news. Outlets all over, but I really just want to know what Tanya is up to. So tell me everything about her. One of my favorite products, I use it daily. I'm so excited to have her on the show. Welcome, Tanya. All right, happy Friday.

Happy Friday.

Are you in the city?

I am.

Thank you for coming by. Do you go down south every day?

Uh, 3 days a week, 3 to 4 days. Yeah.

And then Fridays you work wherever?

Yeah, I work at a little co-working space on, uh, Filmore.

Awesome. What is it called?

It's called Canopy.

Like it?

I love it. It's, um, it's designed by Eve Behar. It's got like Heath tiles everywhere.

Who is that person?

He's a really famous industrial designer. And, um, yeah, the space is ridiculous. The light— you just want to work there.

Yeah, yeah, lighting's everything. Are you nervous?

A little bit, yeah. Why?

First podcast?

It's funny because I've been— I, um, I was— I did improv, right? And so you'd think talking, like, you just presenting or performing, I have no problem with that. But talking about myself is, uh, is vulnerable. I don't— I'm not used to doing it.

We'll just tell some stories. You don't have to be— it's good to be vulnerable. So first off, last name. Stanford website says sound like a loogie, and it says Haakbos.

Is that right?

And then it says you like to play hawks and bossy people in improv. Is that true?

No, I think I was just trying to be funny. And no, that's not true. Bossy for sure. Bossy. Yes. Hawks, I don't know, but, but bossy.

It's on the internet. There's not a lot about you on the internet. So the things I found, I was like, hawks and bossy. This is very interesting.

Yeah, I don't put much on the internet.

That's good. But you're building a stalker tool.

Yes, exactly. Isn't that funny?

It's interesting.

That's right. Because I'm a voyeur. I like to consume consume from the internet, but I don't put much out on there. So this is like— this is one of these things that's like different.

I was actually very sad. I went to your Pinterest board and it was like books I love to read and there were none. And I was like, oh, sad day. And all you have is two Christmas trees pinned. And I was just like, what is that?

I didn't realize they were public.

That was a Pinterest growth hack back in the day. I was like, why did I just pin a tree? Well, it's still live, by the way, just FYI.

Some of my friends told me I gotta go over and move that thing. Basically, I try every social media thing. Like, I just try it. And my husband works at Twitter, and I worked one of Jack's companies, but I don't—

Square, right?

Yeah, exactly. And so I don't, I don't actively use social media, really.

It's great. It's like it just adds to this mystique. It's like, nope, blank there. There's nothing here to see. That's amazing. Where are you from?

I'm from— well, that's a complicated story. I'm from—

we have plenty of time.

We have time. So I was born in— on Stanford campus. My parents were both grad students. My dad's from Iran and my mom's from Brazil, and they met there. And, um, I lived there at Stanford Hospital. At Stanford Hospital.

I was there 2 weeks ago. That place is like a 5-star resort. There was like valet. They were like, welcome! There's like a party. I was like, I'm getting surgery today, like, what is going on?

It's— I mean, I don't think it was that fancy when I was born. I mean, Stanford was always Stanford, but like, it's just gotten out of this world in the last 10 years. I just went to the business school recently too. When I was an undergrad, it was, you know, the building was kind of, you know, more modest. Obviously not compared to other places, but for Stanford Business School, it was kind of a dump. Yeah, sorry Stanford. Um, but, but now it's like, it's stunning. It's— they've done— they spent so much money on that campus.

So anyways, parents born at Stanford, and then where?

And then I moved to Brazil when I was 3. So I lived there till I was about 6 years old.

Is Portuguese your first language?

It is, yeah. It's my first language, but it's not my most fluent language.

Got it.

So I don't speak it with an accent, but when I speak enough Portuguese, people are like, "What's—

she does not conjugate all the verbs correctly." So you come back to English, they're like, "Uh, something's wrong here." Yeah, exactly.

So it's a little bit when I'm like, "Oh no, I'm Californian." It's identity issues in us.

Interesting. And so after living there, when did you move here?

I moved back to the Bay Area when I was 6 and basically was raised here. And then I went to Stanford, stayed in the Bay Area, left for business school for a couple of years, and just came back. So I'm a Bay Area girl.

You're all in?

I'm all in. I don't know. I'm never all in. Always a traveler. Like, love to travel. But there's— yeah, this place is so— it's just becoming more— vibrant, increasingly. And there's so much going on here. I've tried to leave. I've tried to leave.

Where did you try to go?

So my husband and I went to São Paulo in 2012. Brazilian economy before it went down the shitter. And Brazilian economy was so hot. All of my business school classmates, the Europeans, were all starting businesses in Brazil because Europe had fallen apart. And I said, well, I'm a Brazilian. I've never worked there. Let's go. Let's go do this thing. Talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs and investors and trying to figure out what business I would build. And meanwhile, my husband took a consulting job down there. And we were there for a few months and it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel right. And my husband said, "This feels like a bubble." And he's like, "We left San Fran—" Everyone's like, "Why are you leaving San Francisco to come to São Paulo?" And so we came back and like literally the next month, What year is this? It's 2012, end of 2012. So all the corruption, all of the Petrobras scandals, all these things kind of just started unwinding. And, um, and now the Brazil— it's just so sad, the crisis that the country is in from a political standpoint, economic standpoint. And yeah, it's just such a shame. That country's been up and down so many times.

So I have a question about this part of your life, the Portuguese, living in Brazil, coming back here. You said— this is a quote that you— I don't know if you even wrote it, but a quote that I found on the internet. You said Portuguese always starts with no, even if you agree. Tell me more. Why?

Why does it do that?

I mean, why does it— because you said I struggle with being a devil's advocate.

Exactly. Because of this. Exactly. So no, no, when, when people are talking, they say no, no, it's because, no, it's because Even when they really do.

So the response to everything is no.

Is no. Like when you're so excited about something that you build on top of it by saying, "No, because blah, blah, blah." But why are— someone called me on it at Stanford, actually, a friend, Brent Shulkin, who is an entrepreneur and you might know him. And he said, "Tanya, why are you starting your agreement with a no? That's really jarring." And I was really glad he told me that. I had no awareness of that. Are you always aware of it now? Always. I hear Brazilians doing it.

Huh. Do you— what do you find anything? So here's— I've actually, the last probably 9 months, I don't know why, I felt myself saying it, but then I look around and it's one of like— it's called Baader-Meinhof syndrome, where once you see it, you can't unsee it. Like, you see it everywhere. And so mine of that was the problem with that. So whenever someone has an idea, people are talking. Yes. The first response is people go, well, the problem with that is— and I'm like, If someone says the problem— and I'm like, I'm like, well, the problem— I'm like, why am I saying the problem with that? I was like, fuck. And I get so mad. And like, now I just like, I'll call it out to like always. I'm like, why? I mean, what if we did that? And I'm—

it's, it's been really hard though, especially if you have people around you who— I, I'm a parrot. So again, because I'm a cultural mishmash, I just sort of, I start getting a fake Southern accent. I don't know if you noticed when we were talking about country music, the first time we met, I started suddenly having a Southern drawl and I was like, where the hell is this coming from? I do that. I do that. If I talk to customer support, I like suddenly can have a, like a, you know, Mexican accent. My husband's from Mexico. And so like I could just—

I feel like that's like a chameleon. You were just saying that you come back and your pronunciation is off when you were speaking Portuguese. I feel like I go to Nashville and I come back and I'm like, what's up y'all?

How y'all doing? Yeah. I was talking to you when you were in Cab in Nashville. So you had a little, you had a little thing going too. And so right, I was leaving Franklin, Tennessee, and I was like, what's up? Oh, you just, you just performed. Yeah.

And so going back this week is actually— oh cool. Yeah. So, but so next week if we talk, I'll have not—

how I'm talking now, if we talk.

So I'm already like, I'm like, if we talk next week, I'll show you. Oh my gosh. Oh God, terrible.

Um, sorry for all my Southern friends for that, um, attempt at cool. Um, but yeah, but basically because that, because of Maybe you have the same thing, is that I think we just take tics or ways that people talk around us. And so I have a woman that I'm working with and she says, "Can I just say something?" before she says something. That's it. And I've been doing that. And I'm like, why am I— why am I saying that? That's not— but so sometimes I think of culturally in a company, for example, you say the problem with that is if someone does that who has a strong voice, then suddenly becomes sort of like a meme. Oh, for sure. Um, and so it's hard to unlearn that.

And I think everything gets mimicked. Everything is— the bigger you get, the more it just stems down. Yeah. And no one even realizes it. How do you— so how do you call it out? What do you do, work or life, or, you know, with your kids or whatever?

It's actually— it's really interesting. I think this is one of the improv, um— as I asked my husband to call me— my husband's like the best, uh, mirror for me, and he calls me out on things that I do, or I ask them to tell me if I'm doing something. Or, you know, um, friends or people. I always find a peer. If I find I'm doing something that I don't like, I, I always have a buddy who I say, hey, will you tell me if I do this? Someone on my team, someone who reports to me. Like, I like to have these correcting mechanisms. But one of the things in improv too is, um, learning to play low status roles. So just— and then being able to be quite high status and just being able to play that range. So then, you know, it's always, it's just modulation. And so give yourself a challenge of take a thing you want to stop doing and just try it and have someone be your police. So always have a police. I think a police for me. Yeah, yeah. For me, I'm a social being. I do better with people, with teams, with humans. And that's why I like to play improv because it's a play together. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

I actually learned that I'm just terrible doing anything for myself. Like, if I'm not responsible for someone else, I'm probably not gonna do it. And like, once I knew that, I was like, shit. Like, there's a lot— I'm like, why am I out of shape? Well, don't have a girlfriend. Like, it's like this push-pull. So with this, you bring up improv, and you said the thing that changed your life was saying yes, and that was all because of saying yes to this improv class? Who was the person that got you to say yes to the improv class? Do you remember it? Why did you say yes to it?

So my dad gave me a book from Keith Johnstone, which is, um, who is like kind of the canonical improv guy. And, um, Keith Johnstone. Keith Johnstone, yeah. And so he— I'm totally blanking on the name, which is ridiculous, but it's basically called— it's called Impro, I think, and it's about improv. And so when I was in high school high school, he gave me a copy. So he handed me a tattered set of copies of Ayn Rand books, which is not very popular to say to all your friends, but it's true. I loved my Ayn Rand books when I was 15. I mean, I think a lot of people start there and love those books. Yeah, when you're 15, right? Like, it's fine. And, but anyhow, I was—

We don't have to get into politics. That's cool. Go on.

But I was one of those people. And my dad also had this tattered Impro book, and I kind of like flipped through it, and it was really interesting to me. And I was kind of liked theater and did debate and whatever. But when I was at Stanford, there was a class on improv. And I don't remember who. I think it was just some of the different students were talking about it. And so I applied to take the class and got in the class. There was a waitlist for it. And Patricia Madsen was the teacher. And I mean, just stunning. And it's this incredibly vulnerable place where people just let themselves go.

Do you still do it today?

I don't. It's just time. I mean, because you need to have a troupe and you need— I mean, it's frankly, when it comes down to it, if you want to do anything, you can do it. It's just prioritization, like between work and my kids and my kid and a half. Congrats. Thank you.

So here's what I struggle with all the time. Your motto is say yes. So then what do you say no to? And how do you— what is the filter through which you decide to say no? 'Cause what you say no to is, you know, a lot of things. But how do you decide to say no? Like, how do you think about what you say yes to in a mindset of, I really wanna just say yes?

Yeah, totally. That's a really good question. So for me, this, maybe this isn't the, I don't know if there's a way you're supposed to do things, but the way that—

I don't think there's a way to do anything. I think we just all make it up.

We just make it up. So here's the way I've made it up, is that there's a time, like in brainstorming, for example, so I worked in design, right? I worked at Frog. Frog.

And I got it all right here.

There's a whole timeline.

McKinsey, American Express, Frog, Square, a company. There you go.

Great. Go. Um, so when I was at Frog— so basically when you do brainstorm or anything like that, you go say yes, right? Your brain— you wear a white hat. We call it white hat.

You go— you literally wear a white hat?

No, that would be weird. But like, we don't wear a white hat, but we call it white hat versus black hat thinking. Got it. Um, so white hat is expansive. It's allowing new ideas to come in. And, um, and so you say yes, so you build and that's where new, great, excellent things come. But at some point you leave the stage. Um, you need to decide what am I going to actually spend money on? Like I'm, I work in business, right? Like I, like I can't invest in everything and it's not hire everyone and say yes to everything and everyone, like you have to make choices. So I think first to get, generate the most awesome set of things that you could be doing, you say yes, you build, you create. At some point you have to filter. That's where you say no. And so you create your list of criteria by which you're trying to make a decision. And then you gotta filter and you gotta say, this is how many things we can do. And so we have to say no to some. And we just, I like to use ideally some sort of rational decision-making process. Here's a list of things we're gonna do. So my husband and I, like, but when we were debating between San Francisco and São Paulo, we literally made the list of things that we care about in life. And— or in the next 3 years of our lives, right? We said, OK, here are the things we're trying to optimize for, and in rank order. And then we gave each city a score because it helped. It helped us maybe. And did you go with the score? We're both McKinsey, Fort McKinsey. I get it. So you go with the score. You see what the score is. And if you don't agree with it, you change the things until you get the score you want. So ultimately, it's like all kind of validating some sort of an intuition.

Yeah, it's like placebo. I feel good about it.

I just— yeah, it's, um, yeah, but I think you're right. Like, I think that there are times when you say yes, and checking myself to make sure that, that I'm putting in enough time to say yes and making moments for those explorations and things like that, and then saying no when it's the time to say no.

Totally. So you did this at Stanford, you also went to Harvard. Yes. And so That's like the opposite of my college. What— I went to Western Illinois University. I dated— my ex-girlfriend was from Stanford. I used to tell her grandma I went to Stanford of the Midwest. She gets so confused. She's like, what, really?

Northwestern got really mad about that.

Yeah, exactly. Like, no. And I'm like, farm field Western. Western's great. It was a great school to hang out at. Um, but I'm always really curious now. So someone that went to the best schools in the world and you have a kid on the way and another. So 2 kids, maybe more. It's in the future. And what are they— what are you going to tell them to do when they're 18? And what are you going to set them up for now in the world we see it today? What do we teach our kids? And so I was going to say, so I've become obsessed with this lately around— there was a talk, one of my favorite Gladwell talks I've ever heard is in the last like 3 months. And I'm not even a big Gladwell fan in general, but, you know, his books are entertaining, but I never think like, oh, this is a crazy thing. He did this talk, though, about how if he wanted to save Harvard, he would embrace mediocrity. And he said that people think there's opportunity and exclusivity at the same end when they're at two different ends of a spectrum, and that people believe It's false. He argues it's false that opportunity only comes from exclusivity, and opportunity actually comes from exploring the world. Mm-hmm. And then exclusivity happens at the end of that. But then you put people that are 99 percentile, the best in the world, with the 99.9 percentile, and there's all these studies of all these math students and quitting because they're the best. Yes, with the single best. And they then feel like they're bad. Yes. And so my question is, um, one, do you feel this way going to the best schools? Do you want your kids to go to the best schools? And if they did, in what areas do you think we need to spend time focusing to set all of our children up for, like, success in the future?

Yeah, this is something my husband and I talk a lot about because he's, um— we talk about what is the future of college and university in general because we have this debate and I— and we say in 18 years when our son is, you know, maybe I guess 16 years when our son's getting ready to go to college, is there gonna be this notion of college? And is it, and we debate will Stanford exist? And for the record, I think yes. It may look different. But some of the colleges may go away. And what's amazing is like the ability now with all of this technology for you to just be a self-teacher. So with YouTube, with, you know, just YouTube, period. But then you go to Udacity, Udemy, like all these other, you know, Coursera, all these education platforms. I think, um, I think what's important to teach our kids is curiosity and perseverance. Well, first of all, of course, like social skills, like be a good human, um, not being selfish, not being ungrateful. I think gratitude is so important. And one of the things I'm seeing with my son right now is, um, just patience. So now you can stream anything. So he wants to watch garbage trucks on YouTube, um, like, or whatever, you know, music thing, and he wants it right away. Or on Spotify, he can get whatever song he wants right away. When I was a kid, there was the radio, and like, whatever came on, that's what came on. And maybe there's a tape and we had to rewind it, so you had to wait at least for the thing to be rewinded or fast-forwarded, right? But, but now it's instant. And so, um, he doesn't have to wait. And we look at each other and we say, oh my God, we're— if this is something we have to fight against because we don't want our kid to be— it's just like, just can't— like, now, now, now, stimulation. So I think teaching him not to have that, and like, that is not necessarily academic, but it's just like the human values of that, of kindness, of empathy, of gratitude, and like service, basically. So I think those things are all important. Those are not necessarily in school, but ideally, that's the fabric. From an academic standpoint, I think just curiosity. So you can go deep on so much now. Like, if he wants to go into, I don't know, like medieval classical literature, like he can connect with the foremost world expert and watch like a TED Talk on it, and it could be free. That's amazing. And so I just want my children to, and I think children, I think if we can, with technology, with the fact that you don't have to be next to someone anymore and that things can basically be free-ish, like teaching people to be curious and be passionate and experiment and just like be resourceful to actually like leverage all the stuff that's out there. I have a question for you.

Please. That it's a little divergent on this, but it's related to what you just said on patience, because I love that you said he doesn't have to wait. You work in a world where your whole goal is on growth, and it looks like we're in a world where anxiety is on the rise, especially in youth. Like, my— one of our— like, my biggest mentors in life, his daughter is 18 and struggles with a little bit of depression, but a lot of anxiety, on now a little medication, and it's all around like, I can't keep up, I can't feel, like I'm always feeling like I am missing out on everything. And how do we balance teaching patience in a world that we're driven off teaching being addicted? Kind of. Consumer technology is really like— On one side is people are addicted to their phones. On the other side is I'm doing great as a tech company. Yeah, totally.

Do you struggle with it? Yes, and that's why when you were teasing me about my social media, like I actually, you know this, this, that's not me. So I actually, when I go home, I put my phone away. And in fact, my husband and I, so my husband works at Twitter and he is super into consumption of content and tweeting and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things that we decided was we did do this thing called secular Sabbath. We're not Jewish, but we, on Friday nights, especially in past times, we just turn off our phone all the way to Saturday night. And we literally, like, if we had dinner with friends, we'd be like, OK, we'll see you at the restaurant at this time. If you're late, we'll see you when you get there. Like, you know, if we're late, we'll be there soon, whatever.

I mean, I remember just having an emergency car phone. Exactly. We were fine. I never used the damn thing.

Exactly. Remember pagers? Yeah, I never got one, but I always wanted one. I think I'm back to paging.

I like send emoji strings that people can't really understand, and I'm like, it's just like a pager, you should know what that means.

Exactly. And like, that's awesome.

So you go Friday to Saturday night, you're off. It—

we, we did, we did better about it in the past, and now I'd say we're sort of inconsistent. But, um, but that's the aspiration. That is our family goal. Because sometimes if you have, um, if you have like a deal going or you have something going on. Actually, the way that we handle it, if I'm in the middle of something, I say, hey David, can you, that's my husband's name, can you look at my email and see, is there anything related to this topic in there? And he doesn't get stressed out when he opens my email. And so he'll look at it and be like, oh, nope, nothing in there. And so I didn't have to check and get caught in the, 'cause you see a random small email and then you start replying and then you get caught in a vortex of instant, trying to win the email game where you're ahead of everyone. And, and that's so dangerous. And so instead I give it to him. Is there something immediate? No? Okay, good. And I do that for him too. So we have enough kind of, um, trust and understanding of what's going on with each other that we can just kind of look and not stress ourselves out if we need to. But we try not to even have to do that.

That's cool. And so then your— sounds like your son is 2 years old. He's 2, yeah. And so no technology yet? Well, or like, is it— you like set an iPad up and babysitter iPad? Like, where are we at? I'm actually fascinated by like at what age now 'Cause I have a niece and I never, I think like, oh, when you're 15, and then they're like 6, like sending me, like they don't even have to learn the QWERTY keyboard anymore at school.

No, it's actually wild how smart they are with stuff. Our nephews and nieces too. I just see what they're doing and it's like, whoa, I didn't even, well, I didn't even, they figure out like shortcuts and things that were designed, like they figure out the UI. So with our kid, Our thing is we've like, we'll let him watch 10 minutes here if we're both like doing dishes or something. But he recently started becoming super addicted. He wanted more time and he's been throwing these amazing 2-year-old tantrums that are actually a little bit funny. And so like now we just said, you know, we're not doing any because this is creating a little monster. As it is, all he wants to do is listen to Justin Timberlake on repeat. And so repeat, repeat. And so he starts screaming for it. It's crazy. Now. And I said, no, it's mommy's turn to listen to a song. And you're— I'm gonna just make him wait and listen to something else because he has to learn how to wait.

Proves that like pop music is just science. Like it's, it's manufactured science. This will control the brain. It will.

Like Justin Timberlake is a genius. He has— like for so many reasons I love Justin Timberlake, but he like has cracked it. I mean, you're starting to get along. I mean, That's amazing.

So I want to finish on this because I think patience is an amazing thing to tie to education, everything. Um, and then you said something about, uh, you know, gratitude, curiosity, patience, and it reminds me of— there's an Adam Grant study recently on resilience, and it was focused mostly around loss, but I found one that was, um, around jobs. And his argument that was fascinating was If we're in a world in 10 to 20 years that the things increasing are the frequency in which you change jobs, the frequency in which you lose jobs, and the amount of jobs you have at one time, then people today— he was saying the argument today is everyone rushes to say, go learn a new skill. But what needs to happen is You have so much purpose derived from your career that if you don't say, how do I find purpose again? How do I discover a community of people to do that discovery with, to then decide to go learn a skill? And how fast you can learn that resilience engine, that if you don't train yourself to be resilient, you're actually not going to succeed in the next economy. And that was like, I was like, whoa. Like, and then I look at, you know, Every person that applies for a job, I'm like, 9 months, like 7 jobs, 9 months each. I'm like, geez. But I guess like, you know, if we come become a skills-based— I just think of this like skills-based world versus this world based on signaling theory, which is kind of the past, like job market signaling theory. You're an economist, you probably know Michael Spence and all that stuff. And I just— do you think about it in a way of like general skills and being great at a bunch of things or Do you think you are still picking a degree in 15 years to have an economy, like an economics degree?

Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, I think about it less about like going specific on it. I think it's like a gathering of different skills to maybe solve specific problems, but the problem is more about— that's so interesting. I think where we're going to learn, what we're going to learn is more how to solve problems and how to leverage different open source things that exist and piece them together to come up with solutions. So it's probably— you're right, it's not going to be, I am a major in economics. It's going to be, I'm solving a bunch of types of problems, and I may be tying, you know, biostatistics in with, like, you know, drones with, like, something else. And I'm just— I'm figuring out how to piece different disciplines together. I think you can be way more cross-disciplinary interdisciplinary. Like the notion of a single major, a major, I think you're totally right, that's, that's going to change.

Do you think economics or improv is more valuable at Stanford for you?

For me, improv. That's amazing. It's great. I mean, I, I, it's like, and you can do improv anywhere, right?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. So going on, you're at a company called A Company. First off, was the name created to trick everyone? So that you're like, oh, if we say a company that everyone who says, hey, have you heard of this company? Like everyone just ends up saying your name.

Like, how did the name start? Well, actually, originally the name was Touchbase. And then I think the notion was there were a number of— so I'm not on the— I wasn't on the founding team with Amy and Matthias and Ryan, but they went through a lot of different like versions of it and Touchbase was one of them. But I think they nailed down a company eventually because it was this notion of We're going to be your chief of staff and accompany you through all of the different things that you need in your career. And we had this little dog logo that you're wearing on your t-shirt right now.

Is it a dog or a fox? I had an argument about this last night. He's a dog.

Really? He's a Shiba Inu.

I bowed down in the argument last night that it was a fox. And I was like, fine, it's a fox. I don't even know.

My son thinks it's a cat. So. All right, go on. Sorry. But yeah, so basically that was— That's where the name came from. It is, it is, there are the challenges of it. Like at some point when someone remembers, once you teach someone that it's not a company, it's like a firm, right? Yeah. Mike, Max Lovechin's company, Max Lovechin's firm. So he, yeah, so it's eventually like people remember it, but it is, there are challenges with it.

I didn't know it was that. That's actually, that's helpful. Like I wanted to accompany you through this next thing you're going through or accompanying you along the way. I never thought about— I was like, are they morphing company with, uh, and then it's company? And so in my head I was like, oh, this is a trick, because everyone's like, have you heard of the company? And everyone's like, which company? And you're like, a company. And it's like everyone's just saying it.

Well, I'm glad people are saying it.

That's fabulous. Thank you. How did you even go and get started and get excited about this company? Yeah, even earlier, like, you're like, I don't use social media and stuff, but then you're, you're like, I think I can see that you want to be very like, uh, good with your time and being patient and putting stuff away. So if you can aggregate all this stuff and save me time, then it's great.

That's basically it. So the reason why I don't use this other stuff is because I, I don't— I find that I get caught in these horrible holes of like lost time and productivity. And there's this whole— it's like putting Bieber on. Exactly. Um, yeah, and it's just like the, the whole FOMO that's inspired, and that people are putting on these sort of fake airs sometimes on social media, like just like, you know, um, trying to show that life is one. And there's just this like constant trying to one-up each other that I don't like. And so I don't, I don't find it authentic or sincere, and I don't think mass messages to everyone— like, I don't communicate that way. I communicate in one-on-one with— I still like phone calls or texts or hanging out. And so that's just me. And it's funny, it is funny that I'm working in a space, but it's exactly for that reason. It's because there's so much noise. And so our company is trying to help people who have too much noise, who don't have enough time. Like literally, I'd have to schedule bathroom breaks when I was at Square into my calendar, not because like— Square is an inhumane place to— it's a wonderful place to work. I loved being there. But I was pregnant, and I was back to back, and I led a bunch of different teams. And so I literally had to put bathroom breaks on my calendar. And then we wouldn't schedule every half— and so there was no time. And so with this whole idea of trying to distill things down for people and make them smarter, I want to stay in touch with all of the people from my life. I want to know what they're up to. And so part of me would keep getting drawn to Twitter or Facebook or whatever, LinkedIn, to see what people were up to. But then it just was too much. And so my product's delivering it. Our product is delivering it to me.

I like that you say my and correct to our. You're like, I'm a leader here. I need to say our product. But I'm so in love with it that I say my.

Like, it's awesome. Yeah. It's— take ownership because it's something we all work on at our company. We just, we love what we're doing. Tell me about it.

Give everyone a little elevator pitch just so we have a context.

Yeah, totally. So we've been basically building a data platform for the last 3 years of people and companies. So companies. So we scour the web, billions of pages on the web, and create profiles of humans, of Shane Mac. And we make sure that—

Shane Mac, sure.

It's not my real last name, by the way. McKenzie.

No. No? What is it? McSaimov. McSaimov. Oh, wow. Maximovich is really from— oh, it's Slavic. Yeah, Slavic. Yeah. And then at Ellis Island, they dropped the MAC, put on an MC, or dropped the MAX, put on MC, dropped the ICH at the end. It became Eximov, which makes no sense. So then I had shanemaximov.com about 10 years ago, and everyone's like, I cannot spell that. I was like, well, Mac's easier. Then it just became a thing. But it's not my real name. Interesting. Sorry, go on, tell me more.

It's a good name. It's a good stage name. Um, it was actually because of music.

They were like, uh, no one knows.

Yeah, change your last name. So my husband and I joke that if I ever become a country singer, how can I do that with my last name? But maybe I'll be the first Iranian-American country singer. Yeah, you're—

what are you talking about? This is what I do. You're either Tanya Hawk or Tanya Boss. We got— this is done. This is, this is country music naming in a box. You're probably Tanya Boss.

Yeah, okay, then the boss. Yeah, maybe even Tanya. Oh, Tanya. Sorry, shit. No, I'm Tanya, but like, I would be nervous.

I was like, oh, I got it wrong.

But if I'm a country, I might be Tan— it's Tanya Tucker. Tanya. All right, come on, sorry. So many people are so offended right now. So, so, so yeah, so basically, where were we?

You bring it all together and you said Shane Mac.

I did say Shane Mac. That's when we got to talking.

Exactly.

So we started going through, through our profiles. So basically we build profiles on people and on companies where we'll have news on you, what you've been tweeting, you love to tweet. We're the opposite on social media.

I'm a whore, you're not. It's basically—

no, it's that you're like, you're good at it.

I wish I was good at it, but I try not to have FOMO, and I try to be one-to-one mostly. And if I say something, it's usually like, what's fucked, not what's cool. Yeah, we have an internal motto here called what's fucked. All of our, uh, our stand-up all-hands and the daily customer call that the team does are called what's fucked. And then my all-hands is called no for real what's fucked. That's it. And it actually changed a lot of tone. And when everyone starts out with optimistically looking at what's fucked— yes, you can't go anywhere else. It's actually been one of those incredible— like, you have 3 mantras: no they on Santa Fe, what's fucked, and love problems, not solutions. Yeah, which is another Adam Grant thing. People say, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. He studied that, like, it's the worst thing to do.

Yeah, totally.

And then everyone gets nervous and by themselves trying to solve a problem and that's scared to bring them up.

Exactly.

So, so we're totally—

we were supposed to be talking about a company. We should probably like do the company.

Give me the profile. Give me the pitch.

So here's the pitch. We, um, we've built this data platform, um, on with and built hundreds of millions of people profiles and tens of millions of company profiles. And basically what we're doing is allowing you to search for any company or person and get all the details on their news, their bio, um, what they've been tweeting, all in one place. Past email history with them, any notes you made so that you're briefed, um, for any meeting that you have. So we actually deliver that you're gonna have for the day. With new people, we have a newsfeed that's curated for your contacts. So, not just like random people who are sending, putting stuff out there, but the people that we actually think matter to you, that you're either meeting with soon, or that we detect are super important, and we're serving you content. So, kind of the serendipitous excuses to reach out. Yeah. And then, so if you're a salesperson, you love it, 'cause you get to see if there's been a reorg and you should kind of reach out to these companies. If you're just a person wanting to stay in touch and, in tune with your network and your social graph, you can do that.

Give me your 2 favorite stories that you personally have loved that because of your company made it possible. One personal, one business. One that changed something in your personal life where you ended up actually following up at the right time that led to something amazing. And then maybe one story that probably changed your business, led to new business or something else.

Yeah, so I mean, this is interesting. Like one of the main things for me is, and it's actually not a specific moment, it's happened multiple times. So there are people that I totally forgot existed in the world. Like just not because—

I agree. It's the like honest truth.

It's the honest truth. And I'm not gonna name any names here, but because of our product, like some news has come up on a couple of people. Someone just moved to a new country and actually started a business and got a bunch of fundraising. And I didn't even— I didn't know they moved into like an entrepreneurial role. I didn't know they moved countries. And I reached out and like since then we've had so many really wonderful conversations and it just totally opened a whole— like I forgot I love this person, but I love this person. And it's happened with a couple of their colleagues who've actually massively changed positions. I've reached out and actually we might be able to do a deal. So it's just, it's made me so much more like, instead of that impending guilt of like, oh my God, what am I missing in the world and of my people? Like multiple times, I basically feel like I could just count on my product to save my ass and basically tell me what the heck is happening with these people. So that's me personally. From kind of more of a business standpoint, It's actually awesome when you're about to meet with, uh, like during the political kind of, um, stuff that was going on. I mean, stuff's still going on every day, um, but during all of the stuff that was happening—

Go on, just go on. Wait, this— that's a different— that's a different show. That's the hard question.

It's a different show. It's a different show.

We can go there if you want.

I mean, tell me how you felt in Paris.

And the climate ruling as well. Disgusted.

Disgusted. Like, that I'm happy to put on every social media outlet out there. Just like, it's—

This is your Twitter. This is your resurrection.

Exactly. Yeah, it's just— it's absolutely horrifying. But the point is, during the election, it was so divisive, including within my family and people I know. And so it was really helpful to know the context of being able to see someone's tweets super quickly within their profile before a meeting, like within one tap from my calendar. I don't have time between meetings. Within my calendar, open up the thing, see who they are, see what they're saying about the election, because then— not that I'm gonna lie about my beliefs, but I just didn't put my foot in my mouth.

Yeah, it's like learning not to talk about politics or religion when you live in Bartlett, Illinois, if you're not part of those politics or religion. I'm from a tiny town that it's all employed by Caterpillar. So most of my town is a voter for Trump, and I'm friends with them, and I love talking to them about it. It's interesting. Yeah, totally. Like, I didn't— do you guys—

I mean, we like country, we like country music. Guess who? Like, like, that's, that's how it is. Yeah.

So do you tell me if it's Democrat or Republican in my profile? I don't, I don't.

But, but, um, we could. I mean, I suppose we could if we had that, that data source. We could tell you. And if people have a public, um, you know, we scrape public campaigns, for example, or something like that, ingest those public sources. We ingest all the sources. This comes more from social media and the fact that, um, or your Twitter profile is embedded there.

Cool. Because if you could, you could look at Facebook Twitter graph if I follow people, and then you have those classified, and you could just— you wouldn't have to assume and make a, like, a preemptive thought, but you could say Shane follows Barack. Yeah. Or someone else follows a Republican senator from, you know, Minnesota, right?

Some of the things we, we can definitely use from Twitter. Facebook's API requires, um, you know, connections and certain types of things. Like, both, both have their own nuances, but yeah, that, that is the type of stuff that's— we're just basically trying to distill all of the insight that you need for any meeting with a company or a person into, like, just, just making it so easy for you that it's just at your fingertips. In one click, everything you need is there. So That's hard. We're not there yet. Like you want to do— I mean, we've talked about sentiment analysis and like seeing how people email and so you can get their tone. You can understand their mood when you're going into a meeting. Like, how are they feeling about you? You can— I mean, we could do so many things. Um, we're not, we're not doing those things yet right now. It's very much like kind of the news. And even there though, it's amazing. Our profiles for the top kind of C-suite executives and, um, and board of directors, those, those people aren't on LinkedIn. They're not creating their own. Polished profiles. And so like our coverage for those folks is phenomenal. So especially for the executives right now, it's our product, like basically because we're building these, these profiles on our own. Right. And I think, yeah, so that's basically what we're doing.

And so for you, you're in charge of growth. Yes. What does growth mean to you when, like, in through your lens of growing?

Yes. So right now, because we're still really young, I'm in charge of growth and product marketing. And so I actually say like— sorry, I didn't mean to discredit you. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, but it's good, but it's good because I actually think at this stage of a company when you're that early, the two go hand in hand.

This stage of a company?

Uh, the stage of a company's company. I saw what you did there. Um, so basically, basically, like, I think a lot of it is actually working super closely with product and figuring out what is the magic of the product that we're building that we want to eventually grow and scale. So part of what growth means, of course, is like, you know, um, there, there are all the AR frameworks and, you know, acquisition and activation and retention and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, doing stuff, getting the metrics, understanding all those things in place. But at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is build a product that people love, people use, people want to pay for. And, um, we're still in that, in that earlier phase where we have the product basically there and we're kind of We're kind of figuring out what is the, what are all the perfect pieces so that when we are ready to scale and go into GA, we're still in beta. That's where I think a lot more of the traditional growth stuff will be happening. But I'm like plugging Sign Up Flows, you know, doing that kind of stuff. Totally.

Do you find today, I'm not sure, I'm actually curious, people, when you aggregate all of these profiles together about people, and I was joking earlier about it being a stalker tool, which I— that's like, that's what the internet has become. Like, you just can find anyone and putting it all in one place, it's like, here's everything about Tanya. Um, do you find that people's sentiment now is like, this, this isn't scary at all, having all this data in one place, bringing all these sources together? Um, and even, I'm cool with that for myself, or you find kind of people are still like, I need this. Is it have everything? A little scared, a little hesitant? What's the sentiment today in 2017 around how people see you online?

See a company specifically or see— No, themselves. See themselves. I think people are often surprised when they see their profiles and they're like, "Where did all this data come from?" It's like exactly what you're doing right now. I mean, I don't even put much out there. And you're like, "Where did all of that come from?" It's all public. We're literally taking public sources. And so I think when people see it all in one place, for some people it's jarring. Some people are very intentional about how they're kind of curating and creating their own presence. So I think that they're very aware of what's happening. And in fact, they'll say, oh, I changed that bio. You need to whatever, whatever. So there are both persons. I changed LinkedIn. Weekly. Yeah, please.

I found a random Twitter bio generator yesterday and I loved it. Oh, that's good. It's like, I'll change my bio. Like, it just randomly put like adjectives and phrases together. It's like, love dogs. Like, it was amazing. Yeah, that's perfect.

You totally do it to my account, I wouldn't even notice. Um, I just— so basically, so basically, I think that, that— I think especially when you go culturally too, I think in Europe there's much more data privacy and people are really concerned about, you know, right to know and having themselves removed. So you see that in Europe for sure and within the United States as well. So I don't— I think 2017 is a moment of tension and I don't think we— I think there— we're kind of— we're getting over the humps and things. And I think we're— I mean, with all these kind of, you know, phishing scams and all the stuff that's happening with cybersecurity, like, did— like, all that information, it's, um, it's scary what can happen to it. And so I think people are right to be concerned about privacy and data, but also about, you know, infosec. Um, and so that is another area that I think we're all just trying to wrap our heads around. And you see very valid concerns out there. You're so popular. I know. I have to go in 2 minutes.

No, no, it's good. Oh yeah, 2:10. So closing, so last thing then, take me out 5 years. If you had a dream for what this product's doing in 5 years for you, what would it be? And you were like, this is the best damn product I've ever used. I can't believe this exists in the world in 2022.

Yeah, it's, um, it's doing things that I didn't tell it to do. So it's basically, it's so smart, it's truly accompanying me and it's making me a better human. So I have I have all these people in my life, family, my husband, my children now, whatever, like friends, professional contacts from different parts. And I just, all I do is feel bad about how I'm balancing all my time. And if this tool is telling me intelligently how, like where I should be spending time, what I should be doing, who I should be seeing, how I should be reaching out, not in a creepy way, but it's so intelligent and it's, it's truly a chief of staff or an assistant to me that is just so thoughtful. And that, that would be awesome. And being able to help— we talked about education and all of that, like the reality is of opportunity and exclusivity and all that kind of stuff that we're talking about. Like a lot of deals and a lot of things happen with the same groups of people because it's like you go to the school and you network with people and then the deals happen and all that kind of stuff. We can teach people to be better at cultivating relationships and being professionals and following up on things and, you know, kind of just being better about that kind of stuff. Like, a lot of people may be able to move forward in their own careers if we're coaching them. That's amazing.

I mean, I'm a huge fan. I'm rooting for you from the sidelines. Thanks, Shane. I think so much about what you're doing is what you just said there. Like, making people better, it's almost like you have to teach people to be givers, not takers. And that alone is— people I'll send, I'll be like, look, there's news about this person, you should say, you know, rock on. I wish— like, Logan is an investor from Lyft, and I'm going to see him at 3:30 today. You know why I followed up with him? Because on Friday, on a company, there was an article that said Logan should be CEO of GM, like GM should buy Lyft. And he's— and I quoted it to him, I was like, you should be CEO. And he's like, how funny. And he's like, let's catch up when we're catching up. And like, that is all because of your product. That's awesome. And people are like, well, why would I follow up for no reason? I'm like, that's the whole point. Yeah. And people just don't. But I think you can make everyone givers, not takers, and like change the world with what you're doing.

That's such a nice way of saying it.

So thank you very much for coming on. Thanks, Shane. Thank you.

Bye.