Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Jonathan, Daila, and Caleb talk about a recent trip to Texas to start a new company helping with the issue of challenged books in Texas public school.
- (00:00) - We Went To Texas
- (01:22) - Introduction
- (02:04) - Caleb is nearly a fully formed human
- (03:39) - Jonathan went to Texas
- (09:11) - Applying lessons to other projects
- (15:54) - Outro
Creators & Guests
What is The Robot Factory?
Follow along as we attempt to build and sell a SaaS company. A build in public behind the scenes journey of a small software agency, Two Story Robot, trying something new.
Daila: I like your cup though.
Is that Disneyland cup?
Caleb: it's my Disneyland abuelo mug.
Jonathan: abuelo.
Caleb: no one can see,
Daila: what's that wello mean?
Caleb: grandpa
Daila: That's what I thought.
Yeah.
Caleb: I just liked it cuz it was green
and thought it looked cool, I got it.
Jonathan: You, you knew it.
said grandpa, right?
Caleb: yeah.
Jonathan: That's part of, that's
Caleb: That's, yeah, that's
kind of why I picked it.
I was like, one day this,
this might be relevant.
Jonathan: one day.
Well, you are, you are a year older now.
Daila: You are.
Jonathan: you turned full adult last week.
Hey,
Caleb: Yeah.
In a way.
Jonathan: in, in a way, I
Caleb: I mean, I'm really only like two
or three weeks older since the recorded
Jonathan: Uh, yeah, I've decided I'm
use that episode, it's irrelevant.
Now.
We, we talked about New Year's
stuff and it was silly, so
Caleb: Yeah, you were supposed
to release that before
Jonathan: I know.
But then we didn't record for
several weeks it felt weird to
try put that out, and then I'm
like, ah, it's now, it's February.
I'm gonna wanna release a Happy New Year
Daila: Yeah, I was thinking about
that this morning because in that
episode we talked about our, our
resolution was like to record every
Jonathan: Yeah.
Daila: So the irony
Caleb: Oh, no.
Jonathan: Oh
Daila: so probably best not to have.
Jonathan: Best not to.
So, um, , welcome back to
the Robot Factory Podcast.
It's been.
, oh, months.
I think since we've last, certainly last
recorded, uh, and maybe since anybody
last heard an episode, um, which is fine.
We needed a little bit of a break
to do Christmasy things and new
and New Year's e things and just,
you know, January is always weird.
Um, but welcome back.
We are still here.
We are still going to record, with
me as always, or as sometimes.
And whenever, uh, is
Daila: Daila Duford
Jonathan: Daila Duford.
Caleb: Yeah.
And me.
Caleb Sharp.
Jonathan: Um, so you turned something.
Actually, we were talking
about you, uh, Caleb.
Cause you, you, you, I
thought you had died maybe.
Cause you weren't, you weren't yesterday.
Well, he was, it was I was, you
know, it was a day that I'm normally
in, in the, uh, in the office.
And Caleb's also normally in
the office and he wasn't there.
And I thought, oh, okay.
And then he wasn't really
online and I thought, or he was
online and then he went offline.
And I thought, oh, he, he did.
Is he dead?
? And then he strolling in at
lunchtime saying, I slept, I slept in
Daila: I love that.
That's the first place you go.
Jonathan: Oh, my mind goes in strange
places like, oh yeah, he's probably dead.
He's for sure
Daila: in a
Jonathan: Well, he's old now.
He, you never know.
Daila: Well, you're, he's, he's an abuelo,
Jonathan: Alo.
Caleb: Heart failure.
Yeah.
Well I just thought I'd
keep you on your toes, cuz
Jonathan: But we, I was.
Caleb: you rely on me
too much now to come in
, Jonathan: I need that outlet to
talk about Factorio or whatever
thing I've been playing around with.
Um, and, but anyways, I was telling,
telling Julie about, uh, you sleeping in?
And I said, you know,
he's 21, but he's not 25.
His brain's still, his
brain's still developing.
It needs those big bouts of sleep
to, to make more brain cells.
not, not fully, not a
fully formed human yet.
Caleb: Yep.
My prefrontal cortex is still, I don't
know, half done, three quarters done.
Jonathan: I hope it's more than half done.
Caleb: well,
Jonathan: I dunno how the brain works.
Daila: I don't either.
Caleb: I don't know.
Jonathan: So, um, what
do we want to talk about?
Daila: You had an exciting week last week,
Jonathan: I did have an exciting week.
Daila: You weren't even in in Canada,
Jonathan: I was not in can Canada.
Daila: Canada.
Jonathan: went to Texas.
I went to Texas.
I went to Austin, Texas, um, for a.
, it's the TASA Mid-winter conference,
which is, which TASA stands for?
The Texas, I think it's the
Texas Association of School
Caleb: associations.
Jonathan: No, , the Texas
Association of School Associations.
It's the Texas Association
of School Administrators.
I think that's what it stands for.
Um, and it's basically all the
Texas school superintendents
meet for a conference.
Um, it's like a day, day and a half.
Um, and so I went down for it.
Why you ask
Caleb: why did you go down for it?
Jonathan: Uh, cuz we have started a, uh,
new company with some folks from Texas.
It's called Bookmark Ed, and it's
a, um, it's an app to help with
challenged books in the school system.
There's a lot of people asking for books
to be removed from libraries, um, because
they don't like the content in them.
And funny enough, ideas are something
protected by the First Amendment.
And so, um, we would like to build
something that allows these books to
still exist, but um, still respect
some of the wishes of families who may
not want these books in coming home.
And so there's some, you know,
there's, there's a whole, whole can
of worms wrapped up in a lot of that.
Um, but yeah, what we're trying to do
is build some software to help these
districts manage just the onslaught
of, uh, challenges to these books.
Some of them are, are, are, some
of them are genuinely legitimate.
Like there's, you know, they found
some books that are like, how
did this even get in our library?
Like, this is not appropriate for
any age of student to be reading.
Um, and so some of that
stuff is, is legit.
Some of it, uh, not so much.
So we've started this
new company, in Texas.
We are the software team behind it.
Um, and it's my old good friend, uh, from
my FreshGrade days, uh, when I was the
first employee at FreshGrade building,
another ed tech thing, uh, Steve Wandler,
and then a couple of Texas, Texas boys.
We're doing it all in no code too,
which is super, I'd say most of it
in no code, which is pretty awesome.
Uh, so we spent the last, uh, two
months, uh, designing and building
the first iteration of this thing,
and we're hoping to get some
customers on board in February.
Um, I'd love to have Steve on the podcast.
We talked about it briefly, and I
think he, I think he might come on.
Um,
Daila: That'd be cool.
Jonathan: yeah.
Yeah.
But it was, yeah, it was
pretty, it was pretty wild.
Um, I narrowly avoided.
Like ice, ice mageddon down
there, like it got, it, got nasty.
My flight was canceled.
I did manage to get home, but, uh,
shortly after the just ice storm just
ripped through and I think it was like
200 or 300,000 people without power.
1700 flights were canceled that day.
Yeah it was wild And then, and then like
two days, two or three days after that a
FedEx cargo plane just about landed on top
of a Southwest plane that was taking off
They were like within a hundred
meters or a hundred, maybe even
a hundred feet of colliding.
Um,
Daila: Wow.
Jonathan: and they, they avoided it.
But , yeah, I was like Austin.
It seemed like a good place
to, to skip out of town.
Daila: That's exciting though.
It sounded exciting when
you were down there.
Lots was happening.
Jonathan: Yeah, lots was happening.
There was a lot of
interest from districts.
some, met some interesting people.
Uh, we had built a prototype in Figma,
which is basically all of the designs.
And then you can, you can click around
and it looks like the app is working,
but it doesn't, it doesn't actually work.
It's just simulated.
Um, so we built that for several,
several different aspects of.
um, of the app that parents would be able
to use and students would be able to use
when they're checking out of libraries.
And then we built, uh, a nearly
functioning, almost ready, um, app to help
schools manage books in their inventory.
books are going through which books
have been reviewed, stuff like that.
So we're just sort of polishing
off those last little bits,
and then hopefully we'll have.
Uh, some, some users on it
in the next couple of weeks.
Um, yeah, it's pretty exciting.
Lots lots of interest.
Lots of people are interested
in It's, it's, it's pretty cool.
Caleb: can we say how many
people are interested in it?
Jonathan: Um, I would say a good number
of school districts are interested in it.
So, so, Texas is huge.
I didn't realize how big it is.
It's like the size of Canada.
Not, not physically, I mean pH
physically it's actually quite big too.
Um, But the, the population of
Texas is basically like Canada.
It's all of Canada in a single state.
Florida is like all of
Canada in a single state.
California is like all of
Canada in a single state.
It's this, the magnitude is impressive.
And so when we were down there, we had
a lot of districts that were interested
in, what we were doing, um, ranging in
size from like very small districts to,
uh, two or 3000 students up to quite
large districts of 40,000 students.
Daila: That's cool.
You know what I'm excited about?
I'm excited for now what you
learned there to like apply to
other things that we're building.
So, we'll, we'll finish up Raisonné and
you're gonna, you're gonna just go and,
uh, up with a whole bunch art galleries
and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
Jonathan: Yeah, don't know where
the art gallery conferences
are, but, I would, do they?
No,
Daila: They do.
They do.
They do.
Jonathan: Let's go to an
art gallery conference.
It was super fun.
Like I learned, so I, I've, I've known
Steve, Steve Wandler, um, he was one
of the co-founders at Fresh Grade and
then has since, uh, he's since done
some other, I think ed, ed Tech stuff.
And has made a ton of friends
in Texas, like it was wild
to see how connected he was.
And I think he's more connected in
the state of Texas than I am in my
hometown or any, any town I've like
ever lived in , like he's so connected.
Um, but anyways, he, he's built a lot of
connections there over the years and so,
uh, it was really, it was really cool to
see him just go down there and immediate.
either already be best friends with
or start making new best friends
with, with everybody that, that we
were down there with and seeing.
So that was kind of cool.
And that, um, I've never seen him do that.
Uh, so I'm excited to, uh, like
I want to, I want I want to
do . I want to be like that.
I don't wanna be like that
so much because he's, he's, I
think he's quite an extrovert.
I'm not, I'm more of an introvert.
But um, yeah, lots of
lessons to learn there.
Lots of, I think, alignment in
some of our, some of the way we do
things like we're very relationship
based at our, our team and the,
the clients that we work with.
We build these long-term relationships.
Um, so that, that feels like
there's some alignment there,
but we could probably do it.
Faster I guess, or like
just more, I don't know.
More broadly, like I think, I think I was
just, my eyes were opened up to the scale
at which we could actually do what we do.
Um, cuz we're very like, I.
Almost like the introvert approach.
Like, oh, there's somebody
I want to talk to.
I'm gonna just talk with that
person for the entire night,
for the rest of the night.
And that's the only person I'm ever
gonna talk to for the rest of life.
, that's probably my default approach,
, where maybe it needs to be a little bit
more like, I can do that, but also like
you can just have other friendships and
other relationships with other people.
Um, so yeah, it was,
uh, it was pretty neat.
Caleb: need to hire a
professional friend maker,
Jonathan: Yeah, I mean,
Caleb: who's very outgoing and
just can go talk to people,
Jonathan: feel I feel like that's Daila
like Daila is a professional friend maker.
Daila: I'm gonna get a business card made.
But you know what?
I love meeting new people.
It's my favorite thing in the world.
I do.
Jonathan: All right.
Caleb: think it's, I think you pivot.
Daila: I'm gonna pick, this is
Caleb: Your new job is got
to Askews and meet people.
Jonathan: Go to the grocery
store and just, yeah.
Find clients
Daila: love the grocery store.
Yeah, no, I can like that it,
I can totally relate to what
you're saying about Steve.
I love meeting new people,
which my husband is not such
a big fan of, but that's okay.
I bring them home with me all the.
Jonathan: He just sprayed
Daila: I'm like, Hey, we got new,
more people coming over for dinner.
And Sean is an introvert.
but he goes along with it.
It's very good.
That's how I met Amber.
That's on our team.
Jonathan: brought her home?
Daila: I j I met her one day at the
theater and we were chatting it up
and I was like, Hey, come over to my
house for dinner with your family.
And just remem, I remember telling Sean,
and he's like, Who are these people?
I'm like, I don't know, but they're coming
over and now look, she works with us.
She's wonderful.
Jonathan: I think we
should try this, Daila.
Like let's go to a conference
and just, I don't know.
Daila: Let's
Jonathan: seen, I've never really seen, I
mean, I have seen you in action, but it's
a different, it was a different thing.
What's a conference that we could go to
Daila: Let, let me talk
to my art gallery people.
Jonathan: All right,
Caleb: I find the
conference, can I come to?
Daila: yes.
Jonathan: well, are you a
professional friend maker, Caleb,
Caleb: I'm becoming one.
Jonathan: are you
Caleb: Yes.
Jonathan: okay?
Maybe.
you can come.
Caleb: Yes.
Jonathan: It's gotta be outcome driven
though . You gotta here's the conference.
Here's how much it's gonna cost us
to go to, and here's what I'm going
to deliver at the, at the end it.
Caleb: Whoever wins the
Jonathan: many friends How many
people, many pe Oh yeah, no friends.
Uh, how many, how many different
families will you invite over
to our we have to make for?
That's the measure of.
Daila: We're gonna find a conference.
Jonathan: let's find a conference
and we'll go, we'll go to one
because I, I actually had a pretty
good time at this conference.
I mean, mainly cuz I
didn't have to do anything.
I was just there to be pointed at and
say, this guy's building it building it
Um,
Daila: Did you pose when they'd say that?
Like just looking at you.
Jonathan: no, I just laughed along.
I didn't really, I wasn't, I didn't pose.
I should I did wear my fancy shoes though.
Daila: oh,
Jonathan: Yeah.
Wear my fancy shoes and my fancy pants.
Daila: pants.
Caleb: Fancy Pants.
Jonathan: Did I have my fancy shirt?
I had af actually, yeah,
it was my fanciest shirt.
I had a shirt that I
had custom made for me.
Um, so it was my fanciest shirt.
Caleb: Oh wow.
Jonathan: Any other
thoughts that y'all have?
Uh, check that I spoke like a Texan,
Daila: I know.
Look, you're there for
three days and you're,
Jonathan: It's a very
inclusive thing to say.
Like sometimes I feel like saying, Hey
guys, uh, is, it's like, it's just not,
it's not inclusive, but y'all is so
Daila: find, I say y'all a lot.
Jonathan: kudos to Texas for
being, I think the OG inclusive
Caleb: well.
Are we certain that Texas invented that?
This feels like a
potentially controversial
Daila: They say it the most,
they can take claim to it,
Jonathan: We built these
business cards that were, uh,
very oriented towards Texas.
They were super neat.
Uh, they, the, so bookmark
ed is about books, obviously.
And so we had these like books,
um, silhouette of books along
the bottom of the business card
looked like on a bookshelf.
But Steve, the.
Um, he modeled them after skylines
of, uh, Houston, Austin, and Dallas.
And so it's subtle, but there's like some
hints of Texas in the business cards.
Um, I don't think anyone picked
up on it cuz it's very subtle.
Um, but we knew and it was
exciting to know that, that
that was what was going on.
Yeah.
It it's cool.
Daila: I like
Caleb: You've been listening
to the Robot Factory.
I've been your host, Caleb Sharp.
Daila: I've been Daila Duford.
Jonathan: and I've been Jonathan Bowers.
We'll talk to y'all next week.
Daila: Oh, well done