In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Matt Heusser, Managing Director of Exelon Development. Heusser shares a formative risk‑management story from his early career at the VC‑backed startup Socialtext, explaining how repeated quarterly performance reviews taught him to tolerate uncertainty. He emphasizes the importance of "first‑time quality" in software development, critiquing vague specifications and highlighting how tighter collaboration reduces find‑fix‑retest cycles and accelerates delivery. He offers broader business counsel about establishing personal boundaries and a clear vision to avoid being swept into others' dreams. When reflecting on advice for his younger self, Heusser juxtaposes "count the cost" of education and career moves with the value of following one’s passions, describing this synthesis as a thesis‑antithesis balance. He discusses happiness, warning against people‑pleasing and constant comparison, and advocates gratitude as a healthier alternative. He recommends seminal software‑leadership books by Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, and Gerald Weinberg, noting the key takeaway of handling unreasonable questions and recognizing unreasonable people. He shares a favorite leadership quote from the novel The Captains about trust between officers and troops. Finally, Heusser provides his contact information (XNdev.com, Twitter @mhusser, LinkedIn) for listeners to connect.
Chapters
Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Matt Hoiser with us. He's the Managing Director of Exelon Development. He helps companies to deliver software more, more quickly with less risk. So welcome to the show, Matt.
Thanks, Tyler. Good to be here.
Of course, great to have you here. We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you, Matt, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
So around 2008, I started working at a venture capital funded startup called Socialtext. We all worked from home. And the way venture capital works is that if you're making your numbers, if they can put a dollar in marketing and get a dollar fifty out, you're going to do great. And if you're not making your numbers, they want to decide early and pull the plug. So every 3 months, every quarter, We'd have a meeting and we'd find out what the numbers were and I'd find out if I had a job tomorrow. And at first that was really, really stressful, but my body learned to adapt to risk. And by the end of it, when there's— so we made it cash flow positive. It's a long story, but we made it cash flow positive. We had succeeded and our VP of sales left the company to go be the VP of a company called Badgeville, which is fine, good for him. He took all the sales guys with him, all the sales staff. And when that happened, we sold enterprise software that had a 9 to 12 month sales cycle. All of our sales reset to zero. I had to have a layoff. They pushed me out of the nest and I went independent and took Excellon full time. And by that point, I could deal with the risk of having a real company because I got used to sort of the existential angst of I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow in little doses. So I think the lesson there is risk isn't necessarily bad and get used to it by, by doing small exercises.
And what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So I would say that's the importance of first-time quality. I'm getting some reverb. Is that gonna pick up on your recorder?
No.
Nope. Okay, great. So I would say that's the importance of first-time quality. What I mean by that is traditional software development. You have someone who writes a big specification which is in English, which is vague and ambiguous. They give it to a programmer that interprets it according to their desires. They give it to a tester to maybe create some documentation about how they're going to test according to their own understanding. And then you deliver the build and none of it works. And certainly there's 3 completely different understandings about what it should even do. And you have a stupid argument. And then you do it all over again. And through collaboration, it's possible to prevent that. So you can have less find, fix, retest cycles and tighten the loop so that you can get it done faster. And that's just an incredible way to deliver better software that works for more customers sooner. Make everybody happy, save money.
And what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
Excuse me. Best piece of Overall business advice, probably something along the lines of you have to know who you are and what you stand for and what you'll tolerate. So you don't, you need to know where the line is. When someone else crosses the line and then you need to know what you're going to do about that. So that's what boundaries are. Right? And if you don't have boundaries, if you don't have a compelling vision for where you want to go, you'll probably get caught up in someone else's dream and end up wherever they want to go.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
I was thinking about this. There's two competing pieces of advice I would give that my younger self would have to synthesize. Right? So one is you got to count the cost, man. So I went to grad school at night and I got a master's degree because I loved learning, but I didn't really have a defined objective. I was already qualified as a programmer. What job was that master's degree supposed to get for me? What was it gonna do? I mean, what if I had spent the first year and learned how to run a business and the second year done freelancing at night in the third and fourth year, you know, I would have come out of that, I did the math on that, maybe somewhere like $100,000 ahead if I had done something. Or even what if I just looked at my young family and said, I'm not gonna do that, focus on them. What do I wanna get, what does that get me and count the cost? And the competing advice I would give to the same person would be, if you do what you like, it's probably gonna be okay. So I love learning, and I loved reading books, and I loved talking about software development, and I love talking about the business side of it. And that's what I went and did at grad school, and it turned out fine. It launched my career. So you've got to figure out between those two pieces of advice what you're going to do, which is, um, Hagel called it the synthesis of thesis and antithesis. Which is a really fancy way of saying two things can be true at the same time, and then you have to figure out what you're going to do about them. It's your call. Mm, I like that.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
So I can tell you the keys to being unhappy, right? One, try to please everyone, because you can't. You'll drive yourself crazy. And the other one is compare yourself to other people. I don't have this, I don't have that, I'm not thin like that person, I'm not tall like that person, I'm not rich like that person. Those are great keys to unhappiness. So I don't really have an opposite of that, but close is appreciation and gratitude. If you can appreciate what you have and have gratitude for it, that'll get you pretty far.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
So I'm going to recommend a bit. It's hard to compress that down to one. For what I do right now, I recommend the work of two guys named DeMarco and Lister, Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister. Peopleware is their best book about teamwork. They wrote a book about project management called The Deadline. They wrote a great book about risk management called Waltzing with Bears, which is just, just fantastic. DeMarco wrote a book called Slack, which is about the importance of having the ability to think and breathe, especially in the management layers, for innovation. DeMarco wrote a book called Why Does Software Cost So Much, which is about this sort of dealing with impossible questions asked by people. And they may be a little bit You may read some of those books and say that they're a little bit dated, but I would argue that if you want to be a software leader in the 21st century, you got to do the spadework. You got to go back and learn what we already know as an industry, or else all the talks and all the conference speaking and all the new articles that come out, they're pretty much just going to be relearning what we already should know. Another guy, if you don't like DeMarco and Lister, I'd say go read Gerald Weinberg, whose style is a little less folksy, charming, and a little more sort of symbolic logic oriented. They're all really good. What's the one biggest takeaway from all that stuff? The biggest takeaway for me is learning how to deal with completely unreasonable questions. And then once you've done that, sometimes you will learn that it's not an unreasonable question, it's an unreasonable person, right? So you answer it in the right way at the right time with the right pacing. And you demonstrate that it's not just words, but you actually have actions behind them. And the person just flips around and asks some other ridiculous thing. And eventually you can recognize, oh, this is like not a safe person. This is not a safe environment. I'm not safe. Like, nothing I do will make this person satisfied. It is us versus them. They're not thinking win-win. They don't want to think win-win. They might even want me to lose. Then I have to learn how to get out. And that literature can help you with those decisions.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
So there's a book called The Captains by a guy named W.E.B. Griffin. It's, uh, historical fiction, historically inspired fiction. There's a character in it called Easy Black in the Korean conflict. I believe he's modeled after Matthew Ridgway. And what he says is, when I was a cadet at West Point, I was told, and I believed, and my experience has proven true, that leadership comes down to this: men must have faith in their officers. Officers build and establish that trust in a number of different ways. They never lie to their troops. They never give an order they themselves are unwilling or unable to obey. And they never enjoy a creature comfort until the last private in the rear rank has that same creature comfort. If you can keep that in mind, gentlemen, I'm sure we'll get along just fine. That is awesome, man.
Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
Well, my name is really hard to pronounce and spell, so I will say, and my company's website is hard to remember, but let's start with the company. It's Exelon Development. That is the letter X, the letter N, the letters D-E-V dot com. XNdev.com. Exelon Development. I am @mhusser on Twitter. M-H-E-U-S-S-E-R. Or you can look me up, Matt Heuser, Excel on Development, on the LinkedIn. And I'm happy to chat. I'm on the socials.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for coming on. We really appreciate it.
My pleasure. Thank you, Tyler Wagner.
The podcast you just heard was published with Anchor. Got something you want to say to the creator of this show? Send them a voice message using the Anchor app, free for iOS and Android.
