Q&A Part 2 | Brent Bushnell

What did you play? I don't remember. So how much of your time do you dedicate to building versus finding new clients? And how does that process work? Is it mostly referral-based, or do you actively target events?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know how many of you have co-founders, but Eric and I are a really great team. leading engineering, and I basically was like, dude, you're the best engineer I've ever met. I'll do everything else. And so he leads engineering, and then I'll be out sort of interfacing with clients and whatnot. A lot of it is inbound, but then we'll also, you know, going to events, working through agencies, big agencies. You could cultivate a relationship with something like OMD, WPP, any of those, right? Their business is knowing about what brands want to do each year. And those brands will have some amount allocated to their traditional spend, and then some amount allocated to more experimental stuff. And so for us, we've taken to basically having a whole suite of one-sheets of things we know we want to build for ourselves, and then being able to then take those and say, oh, yeah, interesting. Pepsi wants to get into this space. This looks like something that would be a good fit. And then we end up with something that we wanted built anyway. And so that's been kind of a— those have both been good approaches for us. Does that answer your question, kind of? Yeah, okay.

I wanted to know, how do you guys go about generating ideas for content, so like for all the projects you do?

Yeah, so one of my favorites is getting a cross-disciplinary group together. So, you know, on the whole thread of random input, the more you can get people who think differently together as you sort of spitball ideas and think of things. So you've got your creative director, we've got a physicist, we've got a unicyclist, we've got, you know, sort of all sorts of weirdos. And then out of that, you end up with kind of, again, sort of more perspectives. You know, I'm a firm believer that creativity comes at the intersection of domains. You're like trying to solve one problem for your company, and you're wandering around the packaging convention, and some like innovation in packaging might just somehow apply to your industry, right? Like oftentimes, There's just this period of time before things are applied across the board. Being able to see it in one place and say, gosh, if I switch this just slightly, this is going to work really well. I met with a woman yesterday who is basically adapting a voting solution to a new way she wants to teach. She took software made for a completely unrelated industry, but it just happened to share characteristics with where it was that she wanted to go. Cross-disciplinary is a big one for us. Awesome, folks. Yeah? Sorry, another one.

So you said you guys create curriculums for teachers?

Yeah.

And is that available to the public?

So we are in the act of sort of formalizing it up to be able to make it public and free online, but we've not got there yet. Right now it's only done in person, as in training for for places where we're gonna bring our carnival, yeah.

How did you build your team, and how did you decide who was the right fit?

Awesome question, because I really believe this stuff is so much more about team than it is anything else. And it was a pretty organic process. And in fact, Eric and I have a pretty particular set of questions we like to ask, one of which is, what do you do on the weekends, right? And that's really revealing, because the people who are like, oh, I go to the movies, and I like, you know, hang out with my girlfriend. We're sort of like, meh. You know, because what happens is, is if you're passionate about anything, it demonstrates the capacity for passion, right? And so maybe they'll be able to bring that to your operation. And you really want to be able to sort of vet for that. We've got the world's second-ranking unicyclist. He's our electrical engineer. And people often say, like, hey, why don't you get the first-ranked unicyclist? Well, he's not a very good electrical engineer. But like, you— To have sort of side projects and things that make them interesting. Generally, interesting people are interested in life. And so we really try to filter for that. The assumption is you can do the role that we're hiring you for, social media, engineering, fabrication, whatever. But the sort of demonstration of capacity for passion is a huge filter for us. And then as far as recruiting, Talk to tons of people. And in fact, be really diligent with your Rolodex. You will, you might not need an awesome accountant right now, but like capture that person, put them in your Apple Notes or whatever, and note, you know, where you met them and why they're awesome. Because you will, at the time that you need that accountant, you'll wish that you had been sort of thought about this more concretely, more carefully. So we have an active roster of people that we keep, a huge Google Doc of fabricators in New York and fashion designers in LA and people who— we're only 25, 26 people, but we know exactly the seamstress that we'll call. We don't need a full-time seamstress, but we sort of know that they can deliver, know that they're capable. And so having sort of that active list of people to call on ends up being super powerful. I really believe part of the sort of future of work is everybody sort of is their own corporation and sort of ad hoc I mean, frankly, the way that Hollywood has operated for years, which is each movie is its own company, and there's sort of this massive network of freelancers that spin up for 6 months, 2 years, 5 years in order to do a thing, and then they all go out again and they spin up for another thing. And increasingly, that's what's happening, right? For every one of these companies, like, hey, who's that super awesome iOS guy? Great, let's get him in. And who's that really amazing CFO? Awesome. We're all gonna do it for 5 years, and then we're all gonna disperse again. And so having an active list of those, that crew ends up being super valuable.

One more.

So would you say the passion and interest is what matches them the best according to the job position?

Yeah, well, the passion, you want sort of all of your team, you know, they're all gonna wear a lot of hats, most likely, especially in the early days. And so, you know, if they are passionate and capable, you know, if they are doing a role outside of their sort of core domain, My dad used to always say there's two kinds of people: those that are like this, those that are like this.

Right?

You want to you want to filter these people out as fast as possible because they need help every step of the way. Oh my god! I got how do I do this? Oh my god! How do I do this? Right? This person you give them the task and they will go and they will come back and it'll be done. And then they ask you for the next thing. You know you want you know you you want to try to filter for that. So the other one we do is contract to hire. So a resume you learn. Maybe this much. Maybe a great referral, okay, a little more valuable. But work with them for a week, right? Come up with one project that you can figure out in order to be able to sort of vet their capacity for attention and detail and whatnot. And then in a few days, you'll know, wow, that person is totally amazing and a freaking genius and a total dickhead. We just don't want them around. They're polluting the culture. And so being able to sort of work with people in real time ends up being a really valuable way to sort of say you're good or not.

So if there's a way to match them with the passion and the passion and interest of the company, that would be perfect, right?

Hopefully, yeah, as long as they're good people also.

That's something I'm working on right now, is matching recruiting based on the passion rather than just qualification.

Yeah, neat. I mean, that would— that is great. And frankly, being able to just sort of vet like grit, you know, determination Like, are you a hard worker and ready to say when you don't know but work hard when you do? And yeah, it would be interesting to try to codify that into some sort of algorithm. Sounds neat. I'd be interested to learn more. Awesome. One more. What's your business model like? How do you determine what to charge? How do you figure that out? Super tricky. And oftentimes it's, you know, what's, you know, try to learn as much from the customer as possible and be more value-based pricing than like time and materials. You know, maybe what this is worth to them and give a price that is gonna be still compelling but not too outside the box. Have the floor be your time and materials, but then do it value-based so that you know you're bringing something to the table that they obviously don't have, and it's worth something. Try to estimate what that X amount is that it's worth to them. So we'll sort of back into it that way. Does that answer your question?

Yeah.

I'm so sorry about all this tweaking. It's super tricky and something we've not solved well. well yet. Like, I, we, as we've started to have these lists of the things that we want to build, we'll price those out and then sort of go in with an understanding of what it would cost us and then back into what it would be for them. Awesome, you guys. Oh, yeah. How much is the ticket for the car now? $25. Although you have to try pretty hard to not find a $5 off coupon. In fact, I'll give you one.

How do you get for free the event set?

Oh, I'll tell you later. Can we turn off the camera?

Thank you. Thank you guys.