Andy Grignon, iPhone engineer turned CEO of Siberia, designs software for hardware companies like Intel and Avis. He argues that most developer tools look terrible, and describes Intel's wearable platform as a solution searching for a problem, highlighting how companies often build tech without validating actual user demand.
Chapters
All right. So let's— first of all, let's— give us an overview of what you are doing now and where you're at. And then we'll go back to the sort of the—
The beginnings.
The beginnings of kind of—
You know, right now I'm a partner at a global engineering and design firm called Siberia. And so what we do, we're an agency. So we take on really hard problems. We don't knock out websites. We work with companies like Avis to reinvent the way they rent cars. Working with Intel to build their new wearable platform, right? These are companies that have real media engineering problems, and we've got a team that can do all of that. Design-centric, though, right? Because a lot of the things you have, even if you're just building— let's say you look at Intel as an example, right? You're just building a product. Intel's a chip company, right? So the product is for developers, right? So what developers are used to getting is really shitty-looking apps to work off of. of simulators and code tools and things like that. Well, what happens if you actually, well, first create a great platform, but then build beautiful tools that they can work with? So we're actually taking that approach.
Hey, so where were you 20 years ago when I was working at Intel and we were—
You were at Intel?
We were.
You know, you guys have support group on Thursdays. It's a whole thing.
We have a whole program of, I forget what it's called, the ISVs, Independent Software Vendors Program. And everybody laughed at it because I think we were good at making Hardware, but when it comes to the things that run on top, we're horrible at it.
Not a software company. But that's all right. That's why people like me exist, right? To make cool stuff look really good.
And speaking of not a software company, so what you do now is basically— it's still on the software side. You basically work with people on hard and difficult—
Yeah, it's software and hardware. But also what's interesting about it is— we'll talk about this, I guess, in a bit— when you actually go through spending years at a company, right? Like when we did iPhone, that was 5 years of thinking about the same fucking thing day in and day out. WebOS, same exact thing. Dashboard, 2 years. But when you kind of tack that onto all of Mac OS, it was multiple years of just thinking about the same thing. What this allows me to do, which is kind of more where I'm finding my own kind of personal interest, is solving these really hard problems but in like 6-month You know, 1-year kind of sprints, and then it's done and you get to do the next thing. Or sometimes you've got like 3 or 4 of them because, you know, now I don't have to actually type. This turned to tater tots, by the way, a long time ago, so I don't actually have any capacity to think really hard like I used to.
I don't either.
But, but what you do is you get to actually, you know, spread yourself across all these different really difficult programs and, and make an impact. What used to be like when you kind of go from engineer, at least in my case, you go from engineer to manager Senior manager, you become a director at some point, now you're responsible. The way that people are comped as you kind of move up is how much damage you can do to an organization.
That's why I'm the CEO.
You can do a lot of damage.
I'm a weapon of mass destruction.
You are. You can actually, and that's actually it, right? I mean, I was CEO of my own small company.
Thank you.
And we can tube a company instantly. But as you go up in like these big kind of bigger organizations, HP or Palm, you start to have more control. All of a sudden you have You know, $10, $20, $50 million signing authority. Well, that's all of a sudden big bad decisions you can start to make. The idea is that you kind of build your career up over time and make hopefully better decisions, although that's not always the case.
So tell us— this reminds me of a joke at Intel. When we said it was really difficult to fire people at Intel, so when people don't perform, we promote them or we move them to another department. But anyways, side note.
Actually, you know, I can tell you this. When I was at HP, so I was Vice President of Mobile. I actually saw, so you get to see across divisionally the org charts and things like that. And I actually saw a perfectly vertical reporting chain. SVP, VP, Senior Director, straight down the line. Everyone with one report.
It's a full career ladder for you to climb.
Yes, it is.
So you mentioned hard problems. Can you give us some examples of recent hard problems Siberia has solved?
Well, so again, Siberia is solving, Intel is, like I said, Intel is building this wearable platform. Wearable, if you look at this thing, and I'm not a fan. I've got an Apple. Do you guys, anybody have an Apple Watch? Anybody packing any of this? You got one. What do you think of it?
Personally?
Yeah. No, no, your company. I'm like, no. I think it's cool, but I wouldn't, I want it, I don't need it.
Fair point. Nice to have.
Yeah. And I would say the original thing that sold me on this, part of my job is trying to figure out where we're going with trends and things like that. I don't think that we actually have a solid problem that we're solving. This is a solution in search of a problem.
I love the—
Oh, yeah, sure.
You're right.
So, and that's— there is an actual problem. I want to track my data, and I need something to do that. We have Fitbits and all these other things. This thing buzzes whenever any random asshole sends me a message on Facebook or text or whatever. Sometimes I want to see them, but I don't have those kinds of controls. So, for me, this is totally a solution in search of a problem. Intel and Google are building a different kind of platform. They're going to companies like Hublot or IWC, Fossil. People that have these— they make jewelry. And they're providing a platform for them to install technology into the jewelry, which I think is a much more interesting kind of solution to a problem. You want to track your health data, step data, whatever kind of data you're looking for. Maybe you've got a clip that says your baby, and so is my baby breathing? You know, there's all sorts of other interesting data, but at your core, you're not a technology company. This is a product, I believe, built by a technology company. There's not a lot of interesting design that I personally don't resonate with, but— You know, again, IWC makes a huge range of watches. I can say nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Yes. But if they all have that little bit of technology that I wanted, that's a much more compelling argument. But that's a hard problem to solve.
On this technology looking for a solution, looking for a problem. In fact, that's one of the fastest ways I've seen investors losing money.
Absolutely.
We always get fascinated by strong technologists, mesmerized by the technology, invest, and then suddenly we realize, oh, the market is 5 years away. So let's keep funding them. So it's kind of a dangerous path to go down.
