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Fascinating conversations with founders, leaders, and experts about product management, artificial intelligence (AI), user experience design, technology, and how we can create the best product experiences for users and our businesses.
Kyle (00:01)
Right, welcome back to another episode of Product By Design. I am Kyle, and this week we've got another awesome guest with us, Jason Monberg. Jason, welcome to the podcast.
Jason Monberg (00:10)
Thank you. Hello. And I really appreciate you having me on the podcast.
Kyle (00:15)
Jason, well, I'm excited for you to be here and excited to chat with you. Let me do a really brief introduction for you, Jason, then you can tell us a little bit more about yourself. But Jason is the CEO of Presence and has over 25 years of experience in digital product development. He has previously served as a VP of product management, founded another company, Carbon 5, founded other companies, served in other leadership positions.
has a ton of experience in the industry and the space. So Jason, again, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to talk to you about your experience, some of your thoughts on all of these things. But before we do that, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Jason Monberg (00:56)
Yeah, sure. like I really, well, if I go way back, I grew up in Palo Alto in the heyday of like Apple and you know, the Apple II and like trading video games on floppy disks. But I didn't really like get my head around computer science until I went to college. And I did a bunch of experimental music stuff on some next computers and wrote some C++ and
When I graduated, it was 95. I came back to the Bay Area, moved to San Francisco, and it was like the internet boom was taking off. so, you know, after being rejected from a bunch of like, you know, like restaurant jobs and like just anything to make money, I was like, you know, the obvious thing is to teach myself HTML and CGI scripting. And I found some guys who had a small consulting company and I just started doing it.
And it was, it was so fun and so kind of amazing that like, felt like it really had that sense of kind of the wild west of technology where if you can just learn how to do something and demonstrate it to people like that, that has value and you can, you can find a job. So the first like 10 years was just like moving along that where I was really focused on engineering. got pulled into web applications like immediately, cause that was just what was happening.
ended up at a larger consulting company called CKS. And then from there, I think I've always been entrepreneurial and I just love building things. And a friend and I raised money from Benchmark Capital to start a company called Sparks .com, which was a gift and greeting card retailer. from there,
I learned a lot. That was a classic like up and down ride. But then I went on to start Carbon 5, which was a technical consulting company. After that, I joined some other startups that were in the enterprise data space. And that's where I made the transition to product management. And I think that was sort of like realizing that, you know, I could keep going down this engineering path or I could have broader influence.
and sort of set the direction of a product. And to me, that's still building. And I did that for about 10 years, both hands -on and executive roles. And then after that, I started Presence as the sort of a sole founder, as the CEO. And I think that the common theme is just really enjoying building things. And so finding a way to be involved, whether I'm involved in one product and really like working on the code.
or involved in at this point with presence, hundreds of products across a wide range of companies. But just that, just like absorbing that experience and working with people that have a clear goal and they're trying to get something done with a product is, it's like thrilling for me. So that's what I'm spending my time doing these days. And our presence was acquired a couple of years ago by a larger company called Working Co, which is
Kyle (03:42)
wide range of companies, but just that, just like absorbing that experience and working with people that have a clear goal and they're trying to get something done with a product is, it's like thrilling for me. So that's what I'm spending my time doing these days. And our presence was acquired a couple of years ago by a larger company called Working Co,
Jason Monberg (04:07)
very similar to us, much larger sort of design orientation.
Kyle (04:07)
which is very similar to us, much larger sort of design orientation.
Jason Monberg (04:12)
And so that's been really fun too, is being able to plug our more sort of engineering and product management team into that bigger group.
Kyle (04:21)
Awesome. Well, I think that is an awesome background and I'm excited to talk more about it. But before we do, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you like to do outside of the office?
Jason Monberg (04:34)
yes. Okay. So, all right. Well, so first of all, I have three kids. like, whether I'm liking what I'm doing at any given moment, it depends, but they take up an enormous amount of time, which I'm happy to give to them. It's super fun and like just a gift, even though it's challenging at times. Outside of that, when I do have a minute, I spend a lot of time cycling.
And, this has my, my cycling has suffered because it's like, I do a lot of road biking. it's like, you want to go out for like four hours and do a big ride, but like, I generally don't have that time anymore. But beyond like just riding, riding around on road bikes. I just love bicycles. Like they've always been a big part of my life. So I've got, I have too many bikes is really what it comes down to. I've got like old dirt bikes. I've got gravel bikes, mountain bikes. I've got electric.
cargo bikes and front loader bikes. And so like, possibly like the funnest weekends with the family are like getting on all the bikes, like, and it's always like a menagerie of bicycles and going to do something in San Francisco, just purely pedal power. So that is, that is like, spent a lot of time involved in like repairing the bikes.
making sure the tires aren't flat, things like that. And then I still love noodling around with technology. So I probably have too many little test projects that I've spent a handful of hours on just to see if I can get something working or to understand it better. But I'd say my various computers are littered with little projects like that.
Kyle (06:16)
Yeah, no, I definitely understand that as well. Do you have a favorite place like in San Francisco or in the area that you like to go cycling or do you kind of go back to frequently?
Jason Monberg (06:27)
yeah, for sure. mean, like, well, there's a group of folks that I've been cycling with for, man, like 15 or 20 years now, but generally heading north across the Golden Gate Bridge is like my happy spot for cycling. There are, there's so many places to ride up there that are all really kind of amazing. And like, it, like you, you can be in San Francisco, it can be totally foggy. can ride across the bridge.
you can climb up Mount Tam and then actually be above the fog. And it goes from like 60 degrees to 80 degrees. And you're looking out over this vast fogscape and riding on trails up there. And so you get all these different weather patterns, incredible views. Sometimes you can see out like way out into the ocean. But I just, you know, it's like one of those things where you have to remind yourself that this is the place you're living.
It's really awesome. It's beautiful. And you can get away from sort of the city pretty quickly on a bicycle. So we'll head up there and you can do 20 miles or like 120 miles. And those roads up north just keep going. You're not gonna run out in one day of riding.
Kyle (07:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, I want to talk a little bit more about some of your experience, some of the things you were talking about as you were kind of walking us through your background and how you got your start, but maybe walk us through a little bit about your, a little bit more about your journey and maybe particularly about your entrepreneurial journey. What made you start down that road? And I'm always interested as people
look to found companies and as they get started in that, what's the thing that really gets you started in thinking about founding a company and as you've founded several companies, what has kept you going on that journey?
Jason Monberg (08:29)
Yeah. You know, so I feel like it's one of those things where you're like, is it, is it nature or nurture? And so growing up in basically in Silicon Valley, like, I was born in 72. like seventies and eighties, like we were surrounded by people who were doing technology companies. And on a, on a certain level, it was like, well, why wouldn't
Why wouldn't I do that? You know, like these are the coolest things that are going on, computers. know, Steve Jobs lived across the street from a friend of mine. Like, and this is before, I mean, he was certainly well known in certain circles, but he hadn't achieved sort of that like iPhone level of fame, right? It was, you know, in some respects, it was sort of a, was, was a company that had a lot of ups and downs at that time, I think. But like,
I just feel like there were role models out there and it just seemed like such a fun thing to do. And so there's sort of that component of being surrounded by it. But then for me, I've always just had this joy in building things. And at first I just thought, of course everyone likes building things. And you realize pretty quickly, well, no, that's not actually true. Some people don't wanna build anything. They wanna consume lots of things, right?
but I think that for me, and I, and I mentioned this earlier that once I connected the dot of like building a product or just anything was, was also very similar to building a company. that that's where it all sort of like started to make sense for me in terms of like, like I knew that I was going to start companies and that.
You know, I might do it with other people. might do it by myself, but I really wanted to have that experience. And I also like when, when I was building things, like one of the first things I built was like in basic, as a kid, you know, we played the, texted text game adventure and you know, it wasn't too hard to figure out like,
a really simplified version of that. So, you we'd have like line numbers and like, you know, here's the description and here are the 10 commands you can make and like go to the different line and here's, here's the next part of the adventure. like, we were building those things as kids. And I think it was really, for me, it was natural just to have a vision of like, Ooh, this is what I want this thing to look like. And as a kid, I could only get, you know, like 2 % of the way there. It was like just kind of scratching the surface.
But that came through in terms of also company building where it wasn't just about the product, it was also about the culture or the kind of like even down to the location of where I wanted it. So I think there's this sense of trying to manifest something that has a certain feel or sensibility to it that could be anything. It could be a product, it could be a company.
And that's what drives me. I will say that I found out, I also found out that as soon as I got that vision manifested, if there wasn't another vision that I was like going after, like a next step, I got like really disinterested, like way too quickly. And I know people who are like incredible at like once the base foundation is set up,
they're like, I know how to turn that crank and I can do what's set up faster, more efficiently. let's, you know, they want to dig into that. And I look at that and I, like, can do that for a little bit, but then I'm like, it's still basically the same thing. And so I think there's like, you know, for me that, that constant building and especially like in a consulting company where you're seeing lots of projects, it's like, I'm always wanting to like,
build and build on something new. And when I feel like the big problems are kind of resolved, they're not necessarily solved 100%, but like the major ideas are resolved, then I'm wanting that, okay, well, what's the next big challenge? And so that's pretty clearly the thing that's like sort of feeding me and driving me is those challenges and tackling those and like getting the teams together.
I also have to say like one of the best feelings is like working with a true team and resolving those challenges. used to, when I was younger, I thought it was when I resolved it, like when I figured it out, that was the best feeling. And I was like, right, that's actually not the thing. The team, like getting it done and accomplishing something is, it's just so much more powerful. And so when, and those moments don't...
They don't, it's not like a constant stream of those. Like sometimes the team is really executing, sometimes not. But when it is, you know it and you feel it. And it's like, for me, that's an irreplaceable feeling. And I think, you know, maybe I'm seeking that, right? Like maybe that's my sort of like adrenaline is like, yeah, getting to a place where a team is accomplishing something is very powerful for me.
Kyle (13:49)
think you've really touched on something and I want to kind of dive into this a little bit because I found this with me, with a lot of the work that I've done and I think you've touched on it with other founders and other product people. I think you can kind of separate it with product managers or product people in general where you have kind of this almost bifurcation of those who are really good like you mentioned at...
building new things and creating from scratch and those who are really good at optimizing and maintaining. And I think that you can almost separate, this may be an oversimplification, but people in general who gravitate more towards like founding companies and those who are really good at helping maintain kind of that structure and optimizing and that sort of thing. And I know for me in roles where I've been
maintaining and optimizing, I have not done well at that. I've done it for short periods of time and realized this is not for me. I need to be building from the ground up new products and that is where I excel significantly better. And so whether it's in consulting type roles or coming in to new companies and building teams and building products. I guess tell us more about some of your experience.
When have you found, I guess, how early did you find out kind of that gravitation towards that? And then how do you find people who maybe have the right skill sets to be parts of those types of teams? what do you see in people who are good at building early on versus optimizing and maintaining? what do you see there?
Jason Monberg (15:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really interesting question, right? Because it really gets at the heart of what you can imagine as team chemistry, right? The orientation of different folks towards different phases of the work, really. And I think, for me personally, I think I've always, as a young sort of technical person, entrepreneurial, there's sort of the fantasy of like,
I can do, I want to be able to do everything from start to finish and I want to build this big company. And, and, you know, it definitely took time. You know, I probably wasn't in my, I was probably in my thirties by the time I really like, like was more grounded with it, where it's like, right. Like, you know, some of these people that are doing CEO jobs, even if, even if they were founders, like they're the stuff that gets them like,
going is very different than what gets me going. I think being able to sort of accept that, that like, I was going to be a CEO in some really specific types of companies, but I'm not going to go apply for a CEO role of a Fortune 100 company with thousands and thousands of people. That's at such a high level and abstract. the people that do that are...
amazing, right? But it's a different type of amazing than like the amazing I want to have or I want to be involved with. So certainly like getting to know your own strengths and weaknesses there. It's sort of like having that not very easy conversation with yourself, the honest conversation about where you think you can really thrive. And I think the older I get, the easier it is to have those conversations. And then with like, when building the teams,
It's not easy to always foresee how people are gonna work from a chemistry standpoint. And I think the bifurcation of the ground -up builders versus the maintainer, it's a great way to think about it, but it's not the end -all be -all. And the reality is that...
Our world is not binary. We work with lot of binary stuff in technology, but the reality is we're working with people, we're communicating, we're imperfect on so many levels. We're perfectly imperfect. That's what you're gonna get. And so I really think it's about trying to understand, if you imagine that as this continuum, where does someone land on that spectrum? If I need to maintain something for a year,
Kyle (17:59)
you
Jason Monberg (18:22)
that's fine, but I'm not gonna be hor - if I have to do it for like five years, know, years three, four and five, I'm just gonna be like, you know, huddled up in a ball, like unable to like perform at all, because it just - and I need to know that about myself and I need other people to know that. And so like, when we're talking to people, particularly, I'd say the younger folks that maybe they just don't have as much experience. So maybe they don't know what they like, like
We'll do, like I'll ask point blank questions. And we'll, you if I'm not sure, we'll try to figure out a way to try someone out in something and see what they gravitate towards. And there's also people who are like, look, I don't care. just want to like, I just want to do this stuff. I want to be involved. And so you understand that they're, they're at a learning phase, right? And so maybe, maybe that's appropriate for what you're working on, maybe not, but if it is, then it's like, you can sort of embrace their approach differently and
you're going to learn with them what they're good at. I don't feel like there's a silver bullet. But I do think it's really, really important for everyone to at least try to understand and then communicate. What are your strengths and weaknesses? There's this story that I read. This is sort of random. But when I was a kid, I had this book by Arnold Schwarzenegger about bodybuilding.
And it was, course, all these pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger like working out in Venice Beach, but it was something that I was, I was probably a teenager. So I was just like learning about that and interested in it. But he tells this story of like how he had the weakest calves in the world. And so he decided that he would go to the gym wearing a sweatshirt and then pants where he cut them off at the knees.
So the only thing that showed up was his puny calves. And he said, you know, that that inspired him to have like the strongest calves possible. And I always love that as this like, whoa, this guy really knew himself. Like if he didn't do that, he wasn't gonna push himself into like embracing that thing. Cause he knew, he knew that that was his weakness. And for him, he had to be able.
to overcome that. And I think for us in our work lives, we don't necessarily have to overcome everything. We might look at our puny calves and be like, hey, this is great. I really don't want to invest in my calves, and that's OK. Strange analogy for digital products. But I think it all goes to knowing yourself and doing what you can to push yourself in directions that are going to make sense for your career at your moment. And you might.
You know, like more apt is like someone might not feel super comfortable with lot of the gen AI technology that's coming out right now. But if that's, if that's on your career path, you should make a decision. Like, do you really want to dive in and understand this a little bit better? Or do you maybe want to do other types of product development? And I think both of those are totally valid, right? But you have to, you have to make that decision.
Kyle (21:29)
you're spot on on so many things. And I really like that because there isn't, kind of like you said, there's not one right answer and there's not one, you know, there's not kind of the world is this or that. And we all kind of exist in a whole spectrum of possibilities. And the fact that I think it's taken me kind of like you probably a long time to figure out like, hey, this is where I'm really good.
And that often involves like lot of trial and error. It's not like, I come out of the gate knowing like, hey, I'm really, really good at these things and I'm not good at these things. It's through like, hey, I've done this and like,
I burn myself out over here because it's clearly not my strength. I can do it, like you said, for a time, but I find that I am much, much better at doing something else. And so like focusing on those areas and knowing that if I'm going to...
go for a role or if I'm going to do specific things, that I will probably be more successful in focusing on something else and knowing that the types of roles that are very specifically about, in this case, like maintaining and optimizing and that sort of thing, like those are gonna be roles that somebody else is probably going to be much, much better at and they're gonna be much stronger at. And so as you learn those types of things, like you can really start to focus in and hopefully,
build those strengths and focus on roles where you will be able to show those types of strengths. And like the CEOs, that's a CEO type thing of a Fortune 100 companies to like optimize and maintain. Like that is something that a CEO of a Fortune 100 company would do very well and not necessarily like a startup founder. You're not like maintaining and optimizing at that point. That's just not something you need to do when you're founding a company.
Jason Monberg (23:14)
Right,
right, you're like, you're in invention mode and like, let's create some magic here, right? Like, let's create something that none of us know about, you know, like it's true invention. It also, you know, it makes me think about like putting in the work too. there's all this work, like there's years of work that goes into coming to the conclusion about what you are really.
comfortable with or good at or want to pursue. And that those things can change too. But, you know, it's sort of that notion of like, you know, is there really such a thing as overnight success? No, it's, you know, all the work that goes in before that is like, it's like preparing for that moment where you have an opportunity to make a choice or to have a success. It's, it's such, you know, what we get exposed to is the tip of the iceberg, right? So I think
People should never forget that, especially if they're feeling stuck or uncertain. It's like, keep working at it, keep going. You're gonna find your way at some point in time. And hopefully you can surround yourself with great people. The other thing that we see a lot is someone who we know is really excellent at a particular role. Could be like engineering, design, project management, could be any of these roles. But for whatever reason on the team they're on,
it's not working for them. And it's usually not working for the team either. And so a really important thing for us is making sure that if we have that situation that we're shifting people around to get them into the right place. And this is where I come back to that notion of like, there's this like team chemistry. And that I find nearly impossible to like truly predict. sort of have to, you get five or six people together.
It's, you're never going to know like exactly how that team is going to work. But, it's making sure that we recognize that like someone who they might not be achieving, like their full sort of potential on a given team. It doesn't mean they don't have any potential. That's not the end of the road. It doesn't mean they can't do that job. It means that that, that organization, that team might not be the right fit for them. And like having this like open perspective,
to get people into new environments that might be better for them, I think is really powerful. And for us, it's definitely helped us with some of our full -time staff, where we've seen, we've had this long history with folks, years and years. And so we can see these moments of like, I've been working with this person for five years and I know they know how to do this, but on this team, it's not working. So I think those are important. And maybe that's to say that as an individual contributor, you wanna surround yourself with
people that are going to support you and that you have trust with because they're going to help you find the pathway too.
Kyle (26:13)
Yeah, I think that's so powerful. And I think it's, there's so many good analogies to draw from that as well. Like when you look at just the thing that came to mind was like sports teams, like you can have incredible athletes that just don't mesh well. And you know they're incredible athletes because you've seen them play. And I'm a big fan of soccer and to see like some incredible athletes that just aren't playing well. And then you see them move to other teams, for example.
and all of a sudden they're playing at incredible levels. And maybe it the coaching staff or maybe it was just the other players. And it's never that they're not a great player. It's usually not that they're not a great player. It's just that whatever the particular circumstances are, it's not working well. so shifting the environment, shifting the team or shifting something small, maybe even just the training. Kind of like you're saying, if we can get...
Maybe the team they're working on right now isn't working and let's move them to another team, see if we can shift the dynamics a little and get things really clicking. That can work so often rather than say, hey, this is just a person who doesn't know what they're doing or they're bad. Let's shift something to get them working in a way that we know that they can work.
Jason Monberg (27:24)
Yeah.
Right, like I love, I grew up, soccer was like a very core part of my life growing up and I'm an okay fan of it. with Premier League being broadcast here, like I watch Man City and I love Pep Guardiola. And one of the things that he talks about is that if, he, mean, arguably one of the best teams in the world. And he just says straight up,
If I have a player who doesn't want to be on the team anymore, I'm not going to force them to be on the team. We're going to, we're going to support them in transferring to another team. And I feel like at the absolute highest level of that sport, and people who perform, he's really embracing that idea that like, Hey, whether it's because there's someone else in front of you, you know, like Julian Alvarez recently left and it's like, he's got
one of the best strikers ever in front of him. you like we have to, you have to find the right environment for someone. and he is not afraid to do it in, in, like a big time environment where you're like, how could you let go of that, that player? Right. But he knows, he knows it's best for, it's not only best for that player, it's best for his team. And I think being able to think about it that way is really, really powerful. You'll get better results.
Kyle (28:52)
Yeah,
Yeah, arguably there's nobody better than Pep Guardiola at coaching and soccer like he's in Man City right now. Like you said, like
awesome. I'm interested, tell us more about the
presence, your current company, what are some of the things, you mentioned it in...
as you were talking at the very beginning, what kind of led you to doing that specifically? And what are some of the things that have been very top of mind for you, especially recently, as far as maybe some of the things that you're seeing coming up frequently with clients or maybe some of the biggest areas of interest within technology right now?
Jason Monberg (29:39)
Yeah. Well, that's a bit, that's a very big question. let me, let me see, let me see if I can, if I can honor it properly. yeah. So, so presence was started because I had, you mentioned earlier, I started a company called carbon five with some, teammates from that original startup, that I did sparks .com. And that was really focused on engineering when we, when we started it and.
Kyle (29:41)
You
Jason Monberg (30:03)
Like a lot of companies, as a consulting company, moved into design. And I had left after a couple of years because I wanted, I was young, probably a little rash, but I just wanted to keep building stuff. So I was trying to start more product companies. But it was one of the moments that I looked back on where I was like, you know, I don't think I needed to leave. And part of it was realizing how much I loved the work.
So fast forward to, you know, I've got like 10 or 15 more years of experience and I'm looking around and I'm thinking about what I want to do. And I came back to that, but I came back to it with a different focus where I really believed in this idea of like design engineering and product management. Like that's, that's the core. And I didn't see a lot of consulting companies or any consulting companies that had product managers. I think now 10 years on, it's.
a lot more organizations are talking about that and doing it, but it wasn't really the case at the time. And so I knew what I wanted the teams to look like. And from that, it was really clear that I really only wanted to work on products where there was an actual business outcome that we were working towards. A lot of the organizations in that space would, you you would do...
digital marketing stuff, you would do a website, you would do landing pages, know, whatever, like anything, like if you knew how to use web technology, there's this vast space you can work in. But most of that wasn't interesting, it was products. so that's what we set out to do was let's really focus on products, let's get like real product managers, let's get product engineers, let's get product designers, like people who...
who know this space inside and out, and let's see if we can find that type of work. And so, we were able to do that, which I'm really thankful for. was little bit of a, it was unknown to me if there would be that much work in that space. Even today, it's like clear, there's much more work on the marketing side. There's a lot of stuff that's like, it's just much more repeat. But the thrill for me is on that product side.
And I think like coming into the other part of your question, part of what's so thrilling is being able to be part of these technology movements. And so like in the first few years of presence, one of the big things that was shaping up was all these front end environments for building not only web, but also mobile products. it was really, a lot of stuff was going on. And at a certain point it sort of,
stabilized into what we see as tons and tons of React
and React Native. And there's still things happening, but that was a movement and it was really enjoyable for all of us because we were doing different things on different projects, but we were also part of this people finding more standardization in there. What we're seeing today that is exciting, obviously the AI stuff is just...
It's just kind of out of control, amazing and kind of wild. I do think that we've hit this peak of our sort of like the hype around gen AI. And what I'm really curious to see is like, where do we take that as an industry? Because you're starting to hear people talk really clearly about where it's.
useful and it is exceptionally useful and it's is amazing. Like the experience of using it sometimes is mind blowing, even though it doesn't technically have intelligence or understanding, but it's like, it sure feels like it does. but I think there's a lot of really great use cases and ways that people are going to use it and they're going to keep pushing on that. But I think we've also discovered like there's a lot of ways where it just doesn't, it doesn't work as there was one person I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about, like I'm never going to like,
hell and LLM to go make a decision for me, right? Like that's not what it's great at right now. But there's going to be a lot of, you know, components that are, that are bolted onto that. but I, but I think what, so there's this aspect of like refining the use and moving forward with it. I also think it's just inserted so much energy into the AI space. And there's an opportunity for us to start seeing, well, what are the other creative
like modes of AI. I there's tons of technology that is under the umbrella of AI. And I think if you, if you look at gen AI and LLMs and you say, well, this isn't giving us, you know, artificial general intelligence. So what is, well, now there's all these people that are primed and excited and really into this technology.
I wanna see what they do over the next five years because I wouldn't be surprised if over some number of years we start to see some other forms of AI that are getting closer to this notion of true intelligence or general intelligence, but I don't think that that technology exists certainly not in a public way that we can see. So I'm pretty thrilled for that. Another thing that...
caught my attention recently was this paper by the 37 signals folks about moving off of the cloud. And the cost savings and sort of the infrastructure simplification that they found for their particular product. One of the things I liked is that they balanced it, right? There are some amazing reasons to be in the cloud if you're just starting up, if you have spikes in usage. But what I really appreciated about that was that
The way that technology moves is that it often sort of moves in these steps of abstraction, right? So you keep building layers on top of layers on top of layers. Like we see it in front end technology. I mean, we're witnessing it right now with AI. Like all the tools are being developed on top of tools. And I don't think that that's always a healthy thing because it gets you, you know, in hardware parlance, it gets you away from the metal. So certain things that you used to be able to do or have access to or had knowledge about
are actually become impossible or incredibly challenging to do at this level of abstraction. And I think there's an opportunity for us to start thinking about technology in a simpler way. there's two aspects of this. One is kind of like what the 37 signals folks were talking about, where it's like, Hey, I don't have to have this massive like cloud based infrastructure, right? Like,
I can do these like basic things and maybe even in a more manual way, but like, I know those steps and I can be closer to the solution that I need. So I wonder if that's going to take off on some level. I feel like there's a certain, you know, it's percolating, right? You're seeing people talk about that a little bit more, but to me that's exciting. And I think like web apps and mobile apps, we like most mobile and web apps actually need probably
I don't know, 30 % of the tech stack that's offered to them. There's so many pieces that you just don't need, but they come along for the ride. The other place that I see it is in businesses being more thoughtful about how they're applying technology. so in our business, we work with startups, small, medium businesses, and these big Fortune 100 enterprises. Particularly with the small, medium businesses,
These are often companies that have a great business that's not technical. And they've built sort of a mix of homegrown technology, off the shelf systems over time. And they recognize like, I can, if I can become considered a technical company, my valuation might go through the roof. But what I see is them sort of throwing technology at everything, trying to automate everything where
Typically, there's like a very small number of things that if you could use technology to optimize or enhance or automate, that's going to move the needle the furthest. And so I suspect, I don't have tons of evidence, but I just have like the inkling of it. I think we're going to see more companies that are much more considered around applying technology and they're not going to try to do it to everything.
they're going to say there's this one piece and maybe it's, maybe it's AI that can help them. Maybe it's a really simple, you know, a really basic server process API that will change the game for them. For some, it's like, if you just, if you just turn on like Shopify and sell your stuff online, it's going to make a big difference. But I really want to see people.
stop thinking about spending all the money and getting all the technology. I want to see them think about what are the top three things that you can do and really go deep on those and get those to a point. I think the value generation will be maximized if you take that approach. So that's something I'm interested in actually working with companies in that context and also just
staying up on like what people are doing. And so again, like this is stuff that I see percolating and I'm thinking about it and I'm excited by it. don't know if it's necessarily gonna take off in that direction, but I think we're entering sort of a new era in terms of how people think about technology and what they need or don't need.
Kyle (39:44)
think that's really interesting. it feels, you're right, I don't have like a ton of data at this point, but it feels almost like a pullback from this. Everything online, everything technology like is the future to more of a considered approach. Like what should be technology driven versus what shouldn't be. And it does feel like...
there's something, I don't know, in the air or something happening to where everything doesn't have to be technology driven. Everything doesn't have to be social media. Everything doesn't have to be this online approach and a much more of what should be the technology, what should be some of these things. And then what can continue to be...
more manual or what can continue to be held in the way that we were doing things before. And I think you're right. I don't know. It'll be interesting how these things play out because we continue to advance so rapidly in the technology front. But if it's much more applied to the specific areas where it's needed, as opposed to just everything, that will be a change because it feels like for at least a while now, it was just...
We need to put technology to everything. And that's not necessarily like the best approach or the most optimal approach for most businesses.
Jason Monberg (41:09)
Yeah, and I think if you extrapolate that to the consumer, a really simple example is using e -commerce or I'll just use Amazon as the placeholder. Does everything need to be ordered through Amazon? And is that, as a consumer, is that actually the best experience for me? Because there is definitely some value to walking down the street
or driving to your local grocery store and buying your groceries there and interacting with people and having an actual experience around it. And sometimes, know, if it's like, right, if it's 11 p and you're trying to go to sleep and you just remembered that thing that you need in the house, you know, by the end of the week and you don't want to like potentially forget again, like, yeah, Amazon's like amazing. And there's a lot of other
moments where it's amazing. But I think that as consumers are becoming more considerate about it, I don't always want to be looking at my phone. And so I think there's this opportunity to rethink like full stack, right? From consumer to like the providers, like how are we using it and what's really the best for us? What's healthy, right? And so.
Pick and choose your moments, right? And maybe that's the lesson for all of us.
Kyle (42:37)
Do you see similar things in larger companies or are there different problems or different approaches or different things that they're solving for than some of the small to medium businesses that you work with?
Jason Monberg (42:50)
Yeah, for sure. You know, when we, when we go into the large companies, I mean, first, like these companies are huge and complex and slow moving. there's, there's just an immediate element of navigating and overhead, which is just, you, you just can't avoid it. So you have to be prepared for that and you have to have people who understand how to navigate that and that, Hey, some decisions are.
instead of like an hour or a quick conversation, they're gonna, they're actually gonna take weeks. And so we, we definitely orient our engagements around much more planning and sort of like process orientation. And, and in a lot of cases, what we're trying to do with the bigger companies is kind of clear the path so that we have room to actually do the development. The like,
The hurry up and start delivering code doesn't work in the big companies. You really have to know what you're doing and make sure that you've got your approvals. The other big thing is that those products have so many more elements that they have to deal with. From company policies to things like HIPAA compliance. Startups are definitely like, they may not be going past HIPAA, but you know,
they're not as concerned about privacy or security for sure. And big companies have a lot more to lose. so you have these like, for, know, if I think about a startup, like 50 % of the work is going directly towards the feature, you know, and a big company like 20 % is going directly towards the feature and everything else is supporting it. And then the other thing I've noticed, particularly in the last few years, is that we've gone into some really amazing organizations, but like,
In one example, they had an engineering workforce of 20 ,000 people. And we were working on an effort and we had a horrible time. It was so hard trying to get things we needed from that organization. Not because anyone was trying to like do a bad job, but just because there were so many people to sort of work through finding the right person. It was unclear who was responsible for things.
that organization had some leadership changes. And one of the first things that came about was that they cut their engineering staff in half. And that was the company that had the strength to do that. And no one wants to cut employees, right? These are real people. And so this is not an easy thing. But it was really clear from our experience, this large company, like many large companies, had
way too many people. And so like roles were over specialized. Some of the projects were like, in fact, they were overstaffed, but they were underperforming. And so you just got these environments where it was like, it was very dysfunctional. And from those experiences, like I definitely have this sense that I would prefer to have a team that has very clear goals that is slightly understaffed.
Because when you don't quite have enough resources, it's much easier to make those hard decisions about whether or not to build a certain feature or what direction to take something. The clarity of being resource constrained is so powerful. When you're a little bit overstaffed, you start to see this a little bit more of the navel gazing. And there's not quite as much pressure. I'm a...
big believer in not having people work on the weekends, not having people work late at night. We do it when we need to, but it's like, we work super hard to minimize the reality of that. so I wouldn't want to like understaff a group so much that it's like, everyone's pulling like 80 hour weeks. Like that's like, you know, the way the video game industry was talked about like several years ago, like that's not a healthy environment.
But I do think introducing constraint and sometimes introducing it artificially, I think you will get better results. And so in these big companies, we see things like this where, like all of this stuff, it's not really about the technology, it's about the people and the communication and the environment that you're in and the culture. Those things have an outsized impact, especially at the large companies.
At the startups, it's often forming and you can actually influence it in really positive directions. they're always under -resourced. the startups are just like, man, they're like, let's get stuff done. And the small medium businesses are, it's just a little bit, they're sort of in between. They're on their way. You have a chance to influence it as well there. The big companies though, you're really, you're navigating this.
this ocean of history.
Kyle (48:06)
Yeah, I absolutely understand that. I like the idea and the point that you made about the constraints because I think you're right. Every team that I've worked on, it makes it very easy when you don't have this idea of, we have so many people, we have to just fill time, for example. I have never liked that idea of like...
you know, as a product person, like we've got to make sure that there is like enough work to keep everybody busy. And so like you're introducing like a whole bunch of things because then it just becomes like, well, now it's just features and like pulling things in as opposed to like, we need to like narrow what we're doing, really focus on what is the most valuable and just deliver that as opposed to, and I think this is probably what you have seen and I know I've seen when you have
a team that is potentially overstaffed, it's like, well, the whole point becomes like we've got to potentially keep everybody busy and the scope of things just starts to balloon and then it just becomes like unmanageable because of the focus gets lost on what it is you're trying to do and the focus then becomes like staying busy as opposed to delivering something important.
Jason Monberg (49:24)
Yeah, yeah, right. yeah, like, and like, wouldn't want to, you know, it's not just because you're in a big company, that's what happens. But I think that when you, when you get into these larger teams, like you're introducing overhead, like every new person is additional overhead for communication and, just making things move forward. And so at the scale of these organizations are operating at, it's a, it's a really, really tough problem.
I don't think there's any perfect answer, but it does feel like you pretty quickly get to this point where it's not, every new person is reducing efficiency. I also had another experience where this organization had, they had people that were dedicated scrum masters, some, I've seen that work, but in this particular case, they had people who were scrum masters across like,
multiple products. And so they weren't, that role devolved into this sort of like checking a box and like just running through the process. And it was like, this isn't, this person doesn't have enough time to really understand the depth of this project. So like, I'd rather have a product manager play that role or like the idea of rotating that role and like sort of taking, taking some of these areas that have become specialized.
and pulling them back into a smaller team, I think can be really powerful. And the other thing I was thinking of when you were talking was like any day of the week, give me three really well thought out, well developed features over 10 kind of like mostly working, mostly okay features. give me just the really high quality stuff, a much smaller amount of that. Unfortunately,
The pressure that people feel driving products doesn't always align with that, right? There are real life constraints, but man, the organizations that can say no and be focused, it's like over time that product gets to a really amazing place. And the other product that's just like piling on the features, it's like becomes sort of this scrambled messy thing.
And so I feel like the longevity of that, of that focus product is going to be superior.
Kyle (51:43)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. In teams that you have found or in organizations where you've seen things working really, really well, what have been some of the common themes that you have seen? Obviously, you mentioned just the ability to say no and the ability to really focus. Have there been other things that you have seen that have stood out as this makes for a really good team or really good process or really good organizationally? These are some things that make for successful.
groups or teams or organizations.
Jason Monberg (52:14)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's tons of elements that go into this. Far and away for me, the number one thing is communication. When I see a team that knows how to communicate in a healthy way, you can almost always predict that they're going to be delivering healthy product. And there's tons of aspects of that. But the ability for team members to truly collaborate
like engineers, designers, product managers as peers and like respecting each other and low ego. Like those are kind of hallmarks that you look for. Like we, for every person that comes onto a presence project, I do an orientation and it's like 20 minutes and I just, kind of run through these bullets that are important to us. But one of them that really stands out
and I think has really stood the test of time is this idea that you don't want to be blaming people for anything. And so when we look at teams or organizations where, you know, at the first time of trouble, at the first sign of trouble, you're blaming the engineers or the designers or whatever. Like to me, that's, that's the, that's a sign of like something toxic, something dysfunctional. And I also think of it as like,
it's sort of human instinct, right? Like something goes wrong, you wanna know like whose fault it is. But it comes back to that what we were talking about earlier about like, this is before we started the podcast, but the being fair, right? And the kids like, well, that's not fair. This is one of those things, it's like you have, if you can like suppress that human instinct and just start from a baseline that like everyone's trying their best. Like we're all going towards the same goal, like no one wants to mess things up and just treat.
these moments as like, there's a problem that happened, we need to fix it. Generally, everybody knows whose fault it is. It's usually not a mystery. But you don't need to like amplify that. You can just get on with it. And I think that that also builds trust. So if I make a mistake and my team, broadly speaking, has my back and supports me, I'll tell you what, the next time someone else makes a mistake,
I am not gonna point a finger at them. I'm going to jump in front of the bullet and defend them and I'm gonna try to lift them up too, right? And so you can see teams that are spiraling up or they're spiraling down. sometimes they're neutral, they're in a really good pattern that just works for them, that's fine too. But I think anytime you see the spiral down, you wanna find those...
those moments where you can sort of readjust and reorient. But yeah, I mean, those are the things. That's like that whole aspect of communication, like every dimension of it is the stuff that I really see. Another big thing is just clarity around goals. think it's easier said than done.
it's so often that we see like the goals get set and then they get changed the next week and like, know, hey, Agile is designed to a certain extent to absorb that, but you know, a human can only handle so much like changing the focus on a week to week basis when you're doing something that's gonna take months. You wanna have that direction and I think a lot of people who build want, they wanna know that they're solving the right problem and that this is gonna get to production. So there's a...
There's a long list of things, but I think those are the big ones that are like top of mind for me at all times.
Kyle (55:45)
Yeah, I think those are some really, really good points that you've made. If somebody was interested in either founding a company or building a consultancy like you have done, what would be some of the advice that you would give to them from some of the things that you've experienced or you've learned so far?
Jason Monberg (56:02)
Yeah, so certainly I think this applies to any company, but having a narrow focus, like having an area where you can deliver value, where you have an unfair advantage. Like for me, had spent a decade in engineering, a decade in product management, and I had worked with designers that entire time.
It was definitely an unfair advantage, especially early on walking into a room and being like, Hey, give us your business case. Let's talk about your brand. How are your designers thinking? Like, not even talking about the tech stack. People, even to this day, people are like, geez, know, you guys do a lot of engineering, but you're not, you're asking us about the big picture. Right. So like, I think like understanding where your strengths are and then like, and then doubling down on that going deeper. And there's, you know, people talk about this a lot. So this isn't.
It's certainly not anything I invented, but the idea that if you work in services, if you work with a client and do well delivering, they're going to ask you to do other stuff that's outside of your expertise. And it's a great way to build your organization if you're going into this line of business where you just do excellent at that one thing and you will be invited in by your clients to do other things.
when you get those opportunities, it doesn't mean you should necessarily say yes, but think about it. Is it adjacent enough? Does it make sense in your offering? And once you have a couple clients that have invited you to do these new sort of tasks, if you will, then you put that on your website and you have case studies, right? The hardest thing is to go in and say, hey, I'm an expert at this, but I have no case studies, right? So I think that's super important.
when you're going out there and trying to build something. For anyone that's specifically doing services, I think one of the number one things is that you either have to, if you want to generate business doing a consulting service, you either have to have a Rolodex of people. You can call and say, hey, I'm doing this, I'm looking for work, or you have to be part of an ecosystem.
Salesforce, Shopify, these are platforms that have ecosystems that you can plug into and there's a market right there. For something like what we're doing, there's no marketplace, right? It's all word of mouth and it doesn't matter how many podcasts we do, it doesn't matter how many articles we write, it doesn't matter how many speaking gigs we have. Ultimately, this is one -on -one conversations.
building trust with people over a long period of time to create a network. if you have a few projects and you're doing well, word will get around, but it's very hard to amplify and accelerate the development of the business side. So I think people should be, if you're jumping into this business, be ready for a long slow build as opposed to like in three years.
You know, a product can get really big in three years. Consulting companies, it's rare for that to happen. So understand your business that you're going into.
Kyle (59:21)
Yeah, it will be an overnight success, but it will probably take like seven or eight years for that to happen, right? Yeah. Well, Jason, this has been an amazingly good conversation. It's been so much fun. from even before we started recording, it's been a ton of fun and all the way through. I do have a couple of questions to wrap things up, but before we do that, where can people find out more about you?
Jason Monberg (59:28)
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle (59:47)
about presence, about anything else that you're working on.
Jason Monberg (59:51)
Yeah, sure. So I'm on LinkedIn and my name is Jason Monberg, -O -N -B -E -R -G. I think I'm the only Jason Monberg on LinkedIn, so it should be pretty easy to find. And then presence is presencepg .com and you can find all kinds of information about the products we've helped develop, all the case studies, and you can contact us directly through that website as well.
Kyle (1:00:18)
Okay, awesome. We'll put the links in the show notes as well, so you can click on those and find Jason, find Presence, and find more about all of those. We always like to wrap up with a couple of questions, and these don't have to be product or business or UX specific related, but they certainly can be. But have you read or watched or listened to anything recently that you found interesting or would like to share?
Jason Monberg (1:00:43)
Yeah, these are very product -centric, but one book that I always come back to is this book called The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses. And I believe the author's name is Jesse Schell. And it's meant to be about developing games, like desktop games, video games. But I find that the... And it's basically a ton of different frameworks for thinking about what it is you're building.
not all of them, but a lot of them really apply to just how you might think about product. And I feel like if you're kind of, if you're working on a product and you might even be stuck for like, well, where should it go? This just like flipping through this book and looking at the different lenses that you can think about a product through is so powerful. So it's like, it's like one of my favorite books. bought like 10 copies and had them all throughout the office in the early days.
And then recently a couple podcasts on Gen .ai that I just was, I was like, thank you people for having these. So the first one is Martin Casado from A16Z on where Gen .ai is headed. Like really good clarity about pros and cons and what's working, what's working, like low on hype, especially given that it's coming from someone who like, they want hype, you know, they're building, they're
investing these companies, they need them to be built. And then I might be getting his name wrong, but Francois Chollet, also talking about AI and gen AI, more from a technical perspective. He's at Google and he also had this really, just really great perspective on it that I feel like is balanced. I am just like, man, all the gen AI stuff, just like anything that comes at it from a balanced perspective, I'm like,
thank you, thank you, thank you. And it's very refreshing. And I think, and I think sets the tone for both of these help set the tone for the next five years. And so if that's an area that people are interested in, like by all means, like look at these.
Kyle (1:02:44)
Yeah, no, that's great. We'll put the links for those as well. I'll have to take a listen. I love that hopefully coming down off of the hype cycle a little bit into more of a what will set the stage for actually implementing a lot of the technology and making use of it and not so much just this crescendo of hype that I think we've been in. I think we need more of that. Like where does this actually go and where is it useful? Where is it not?
Jason Monberg (1:03:06)
Yeah.
Kyle (1:03:13)
hopefully where some of the guardrails that we'll start to really think more seriously about that we can put in place. awesome. All right, final question. Any products that you have been using and enjoying or not enjoying as a product person? And those can be obviously physical products or digital products.
Jason Monberg (1:03:17)
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So like my favorite product right now is my uni pizza oven. And I was at a friend of mine's birthday, his 50th birthday party, he's a chef, he's all these chef friends. And one of his chef friends was just like knocking out these, these like perfect, like Neapolitan pizzas from this oven. And like all the kids were around there, like making the crazy pizzas and they were, but they were all coming out beautifully. I
was watching and I was like, whoa, that's a great looking, really effective oven. It's like holding the temperature, but it was this tiny little thing. And so I just asked her about it and got the name. And so I got online when I got home and I found out that they have a ton of different versions, but I got the electric one. And it doesn't get quite as hot, but it's like perfect for home use. And it's simple. It works.
It does something your regular oven can't do and it's super, super fun. And so like, I think we're on a cycle of like every like four to six weeks, we get out that pizza oven. make a whole bunch of dough. Sometimes it's better than other times. But the thing just works. It does its job and it's simple and it's like really easy. Like other people are using it.
And I've just had a blast with it. I just think they're really well designed. And I love that they offer an array of fuels that you can use from like, you know, they've got their wood burning one all the way to this plug in electric one. massive shout out to them. They've got like a supporting mobile app with recipes and like, of course they're selling every sort of like extra little thing. you know, the scales, the, the actual thing to slide the pieces in and out. but they're doing a really good job.
with that product and I think with the company. So I swear by my uni pizza oven these days. nice.
Kyle (1:05:20)
Yeah, no, that's a great one. I have the wood pellet one as well. I,
yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. We love, so we had, we probably had a similar experience. had in a while ago in our backyard, we had neighbors who built like a brick pizza oven. And so like a massive one. And I was super jealous. I still am super jealous because like theirs was legit, very, very cool. I was like, all right, I'm.
Jason Monberg (1:05:40)
Yeah.
Hahaha
Kyle (1:05:49)
I probably am not going to do that. Maybe one day we'll get to that. And so we got the uni pizza oven, the wood pellet one, and very, very fun. I agree completely with you. Maybe we'll have to swap like pizza dough recipes, because we're always like experimenting a little bit. But yeah, being able to do the like fast -fired pizza and just get outside and cook, tons of fun. Love it.
Jason Monberg (1:06:06)
Nice.
Kyle (1:06:16)
Sounds like the electric version of it is really great as well. yeah. Yep.
Jason Monberg (1:06:22)
It's
good. It lets us use it indoors on those foggy, commonly foggy San Francisco days.
Kyle (1:06:30)
Yep. Yeah. You're not using the wood pellet one inside. So that would be one of the trade -offs. you can definitely use the electric one inside. We're not using the wood pellet one. So it's more of a spring, summer, fall type activity. So in the winter in Utah, we're not making wood fire pizzas.
Jason Monberg (1:06:50)
What is your favorite topping selection for your pizzas?
Kyle (1:06:54)
So I like the meat. So like some pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, and then maybe some like olives as well. So that's like, that's kind of what we gravitate to. Yep, how about you?
Jason Monberg (1:07:06)
Yeah, nice,
Well, we do a lot of the kids just like they just keep coming back to the margarita pizzas. I love an anchovy, mushrooms, maybe some basil combo, like a sort of like salty tangy thing. And then well, my wife, she goes in for the pepperoni and the prosciutto and all that.
One of my favorite moments was my son, he's our middle kid. He was making his and he grabbed some string cheese and you know, those like long sort of longer strips and he rolled over the crust and he did it all around the pizza. So he made a cheese crust and the first time he did it, I was like, that's so great. Like, and we threw it in there and the crust.
and it didn't stay sealed. So it opened up like a garage door and he had this amazing, I mean, was the most amazing cheesy pizza anchored with cheese in the crust. He later figured out how to really get the dough tight and now he loves making his string cheese crust pizza, which is always, it's always a little unclear how it's gonna turn out, but it's always fun.
Kyle (1:08:18)
Okay, that is, we have not tried making a stuffed crust pizza. So now you've just put it on my, and we love getting stuffed crust pizzas. Like that's a, love it. So now I'm gonna have to try making a stuffed crust pizza at home. It's genius. Okay. Well, Jason, this has been a great conversation. That's a great way to end it as well with stuffed crust pizza, but appreciate all of your insight and the conversation. This is again,
Jason Monberg (1:08:23)
You
Nice, nice.
Yeah.
Kyle (1:08:45)
been a fantastic conversation talking about so many different topics. So appreciate you, appreciate the work that you're doing and all the insights that you shared with us.
Jason Monberg (1:08:55)
Yeah, thank you. It was a great time for me being on your podcast. yeah, I appreciate the time and the effort that's going into this. So thank you.
Kyle (1:09:03)
All right.
Yeah, well, thank you and thank you everyone for listening.