Our B2B SaaS Journey

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin unpack a tense enterprise procurement process, share where hiring is up to across lead gen and development, and talk through the product, positioning, and SaaS agreement changes that are making SixSides feel more scalable.

Chapters
  • (00:00) - Intro
  • (01:31) - Project Rendezvous and enterprise procurement delays
  • (03:51) - Fitness updates and wedding countdown
  • (07:28) - Hiring plans across lead gen and development
  • (12:38) - Loom screening, technical hiring and what good candidates look like
  • (18:38) - Creating room for initiative and experimentation in the team
  • (23:18) - Project Hammer and expanding within existing accounts
  • (25:12) - Website, design direction and making SixSides feel premium
  • (32:33) - Product updates - dashboard fixes, AI assistant improvements and feature cleanup
  • (38:54) - SaaS agreements, positioning work and wrapping up

In this episode, we cover:
  • The procurement panel slowing down a major SixSides deal 
  • Whether to keep hiring even before a large contract is formally signed 
  • Fitness updates, discipline struggles, and wedding prep 
  • Interviewing candidates for lead generation and development roles 
  • Why responsiveness and initiative matter more than a polished CV 
  • Building a 90 day onboarding plan for new hires 
  • Delegating LinkedIn and email outreach as the team grows 
  • A new expansion opportunity with Project Hammer 
  • Moving customers from one-off events to ongoing SaaS agreements 
  • Updating the SixSides dashboard so organisers can manage more without developer help 
  • Improving the AI assistant so it can handle links, logos, profile photos, and more event setup tasks 
  • Why modern UI matters for an event platform built around connection and community 
  • Using product design to make SixSides feel more premium 
  • Planning webinars and outreach to convert past event users into future organisers 
  • Clarifying SixSides positioning as a community-first event engagement platform
Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at journey@sixsides.co

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Creators and Guests

Host
Gavin Tye
Sales and Marketing and Co-Founder of SixSides
Host
Mitchell Davis
Developer and Co-Founder of SixSides

What is Our B2B SaaS Journey?

Join the SixSides.co team as we navigate the highs and lows of building a B2B SaaS company. From finding product-market fit to scaling sales and community-driven growth, we share real insights, tough lessons, and candid conversations about what it really takes to grow a successful SaaS business. Whether you're a founder, marketer, developer, or just SaaS-curious, this is your backstage pass to the journey.

Mitchell Davis:

Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, CTO and Laravel developer.

Gavin Tye:

I'm Gavin Tye, CEO and sales and marketing. Did that muck your timing up, mate? It did. It sure did.

Mitchell Davis:

Thank you. We are into year two of running remote startup, sixsides.co, which is a community building platform focused on events. We're documenting both the business and tech of our journey as we build our SaaS. How are you, mate?

Gavin Tye:

Very well. I think you missed something very key off the front of that intro. I know you're trying to muck around with it at the moment is we're trying to do it bootstrapped. We're trying to grow it, in a very considered way. Right.

Gavin Tye:

And get the value proposition right. And good luck putting all that into the title. But, mate

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. It's a bit wordy. Bit long in the tooth, but that's okay.

Gavin Tye:

No one's listening, so it doesn't matter.

Mitchell Davis:

Not true. People and we do have listeners. Yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

That's true.

Mitchell Davis:

And we appreciate you all despite what Gavin says. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's true. We are trying to bootstrap it.

Mitchell Davis:

I know we were considering trying to go after funding earlier in the year, and look. Who knows what the future holds? Yeah. But, yeah, we are trying to bootstrap it, but alright. Maybe stay tuned for next week when I add in just maybe another word or two in there to appease you.

Gavin Tye:

Well, the the what's the alternative to bootstrapping is hopefully project rendezvous comes off. Right. We're right at the still no conclusion yet, but we're right at the eleventh hour. And, hopefully that comes through. We just need a few more of those type of deals to come through, then we won't need to raise money.

Gavin Tye:

Right?

Mitchell Davis:

Sure. That's right. Well, why don't you give us an update on that?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. So project rendezvous is going through the motion, but with any large deal, you know, north of a $100,000 or $50,000 whatever that is, there are certain procurement rules that come into play, right. To stop fraud and make sure there's fairness and there's no nepotism and all that kind of stuff. So we've buttered up against that. So project run of views going through that process where it's standard that they need to submit three quotes, which they already had that anyway.

Gavin Tye:

Just haven't, it doesn't sound like they submitted that formally. So hopefully that will get wrapped up by today. I've sent them a message this morning. Hopefully while we're on the podcast today, I'll get something back. I'm just looking at it now and they haven't read the message.

Gavin Tye:

So mate, so close. So close. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Are your stress levels high with it? Like, just want to know or no, you're all right.

Gavin Tye:

No, it's out of our control, but this is where in my experience, although you've given the verb, been given the verbal, it's a yes. That the, the formal process of navigating an enterprise buying process can be almost as long as the sales process in itself. It can add twice, if not three times a length of time into a sale. So it's. This way you've got to be aware of some of these pitfalls and I just forgot all about it.

Gavin Tye:

It seemed like it was going to go ahead fast, but you know, in hindsight it's, it's common what's what's happening. So hopefully it comes up for, it comes up soon. You know, we had a conversation this week. What if it doesn't come ahead? Do we stop our hiring?

Gavin Tye:

I don't think we do. I'm ready to start scaling the business a bit, but we might scale back the amount of people we're hiring. We might have it.

Mitchell Davis:

That's right. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Mate, what's been going on in your world? How's, how's your fitness? What's been going on with that?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. So fitness, fitness has kind of stalled. It hasn't gone backwards. I weighed in last night and I was ninety point two, which is good. Because at my lowest, you know, now probably a month ago, was eighty nine point five, I think, eighty nine point six.

Mitchell Davis:

So I haven't put on weight. But, yeah, I also haven't lost any either. So, yeah, it has kinda stalled the whole 75 hard thing. I I'm still drinking the right amount of water each day. Mhmm.

Mitchell Davis:

But, yeah, I'm not exercising properly. Not consistently. It's kind of I had my burst, and then as soon as the shitty weather started, I just lost all discipline with it. So Yep. You know, I have about a month to go on the wedding, thirty six days right now.

Mitchell Davis:

So I do aim to continue to pick it up. I'd love to lose maybe another kilo or two, but yeah. I'm happy with where I've got to. Yeah. It's certainly I look much better than I did, you know, at the January.

Mitchell Davis:

But, yeah, I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of discipline that I've shown. So I will aim to try and address that. But, yeah, I mean, actions speak louder than words. So Yeah. But I

Gavin Tye:

I think we go through peaks and troughs. I've done the same for the last few weeks. I took my eye off the 75 hard and stopped walking. But then one thing I haven't done is started drinking again. Cause if I started drinking again, which I've done before, I've just got, Oh, just one beer.

Gavin Tye:

And I've been feeling it in the last couple of weeks. I just want beer. And I know what that goes to. It goes for three months of drinking on the weekend. So I didn't do that.

Gavin Tye:

So this week I got back into, I stopped going to the gym I was at, and I've gone back to CrossFit, which is around the corner. It's only two minutes away. So I've been started doing some stuff with them and it's been great. So, it feels good to go back. And so I'm back on track.

Gavin Tye:

So, yeah, that's good. But it made you got a month to start doing some stuff. So yeah. Walking at night again before it gets too cold.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Well, weather today is like getting to peak my weather down here. So it's it's top of 17 degrees today. Amazing. Like, I I was saying to my mates, like, I should live in Canada or something.

Mitchell Davis:

Like, that's my climate, I think, is where I'm I should be. But, yeah, it's great. So, it's just if it rains, I'm really, really not interested in going out if it's pouring. You know? Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Or even, to be honest, even sprinkling. Like, it doesn't take that long for your shoes to be wet and your socks are wet and you're just slogging it like I've been caught out in the rain before. It sucks. Right? So, yeah, that's the only thing that'll be my downfall.

Mitchell Davis:

But, anyway, on the drinking front, I have started drinking again strategically so that I'm not

Gavin Tye:

like Strategically.

Mitchell Davis:

There is strategy to it. Because if I went, like, sober, which I was comfortable doing, if I went sober all the way out to the wedding and then on wedding night, I'm going to have a drink or two or three. I don't wanna be passing out or, you know, unable to handle it. So Yeah. True.

Mitchell Davis:

I have been strategically reintroducing some alcohol into my life, but it's under control. Mate, that is

Gavin Tye:

very strategic and very responsible.

Mitchell Davis:

It is. I mean, I owe it to myself, right, to to have some to have a beer or or so. So yeah. Anyway, that was good. Okay.

Mitchell Davis:

Well, that's the fitness update. What about the hiring? So you've been charging forward with and going a lot quicker than me to your credit because you excel at this sort of stuff, and I drag my feet with this sort of stuff having to deal with people even though it yeah. Yes. It's your strong suit and it's not mine.

Mitchell Davis:

Right? So, yeah. So how are you going with the with your interviewing?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. I had, a good couple of fifteen minute interviews with people earlier this week. Like, one thing I've noticed is everyone's answering with AI and I was like, okay, well, let's get off it. They can't fake it, but get off email and we'll start talking. There's one, the, the gentleman, Chris in particular, I really like.

Gavin Tye:

And there's another one where we're meeting with Raya today. So I want you to, I want them to understand you and get to, you know, and then we'll make a decision decision on them probably after Easter, we'll start like a week or something, give them a chance to wind up whatever they're doing and go from there. But yeah, look, I'm, I'm hopeful. We, there's a lot of work we've got to do before they start like setting up a weekly plan. Like we looked at the SOP, EA SOP document that Dan Martell sent me a while ago, which we would try to emulate that a little bit.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. I've been working on positioning documentation, which we'll talk about that a little later. Cause we know what we want and we're internally like we're the founders. We get away with a lot more than, employees. So, I want to make sure people have an understanding of what's in our head as much as we can.

Gavin Tye:

It's not always possible, but, yeah, it's going, I'm really excited to get them started. To be honest, I've got a, I've got this idea for a ninety day plan, that I've done in another course. Like as soon as we start these people, there's a course that I've done before. Right. And he's got this, classroom, he's got this challenge called a ninety day challenge.

Gavin Tye:

And basically what it is is you, you post on LinkedIn for ninety days, you post for ninety days and you send 20 DMS to people and you start talking to them about seeing if they want to work with you. And I think we devote one person to you and one person to me, and we get them to post for ninety days under our under our profiles on LinkedIn. And then we just like prime, we just do a lot more effort than what we've been doing consistently. And then we will taper that back or continue doing that if we want. So I think that will be a really interesting exercise to do because you are getting way more responses on LinkedIn than I am.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. And neither of us are stoked about that because I have to be involved. I would much rather it. No.

Mitchell Davis:

Well, because you have to go through me then in some cases to reply or do certain things. And it's annoying for both of us because you are a go getter when it comes to this sort of stuff. And you have to prompt me, hey. Can you go you know, there was someone that I should have followed up with basically on your behalf on Monday, and it only got done this morning on Friday. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

So

Gavin Tye:

We are both responsible for flying the flag of

Mitchell Davis:

the business, Mitch. Like, I

Gavin Tye:

will lead it. Yeah. I will lead it. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Anyway, I was saying to you this morning, I cannot wait for this to be someone's actual job to be me on LinkedIn. You know? Mhmm. And then, of course, I'll get on calls and meet with people. I'm up for doing that.

Mitchell Davis:

That's great. But, yeah, god, I just this is not my my thing brings me zero joy.

Gavin Tye:

So we might have to, when we do hot, when we do bring them on is give them access or the ability to send from your email. Or they can, they can draft it and put it in drafts and then you can go in and go, yeah, I'm happy with that. Send or something like that just to, because sometimes getting off LinkedIn to email is the only way to do it. And if we're relying on you, that's the only reason I'm relying on you with that one is because I don't have access to your email. And so I think we'll just circumvent, try to make it as easy as possible for you not to be involved in the process.

Gavin Tye:

But I think that's, it's probably the way forward.

Mitchell Davis:

I wonder if there's a way you can delegate email access.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah, you can. I think.

Mitchell Davis:

Email. Delegate. Email access. Let's just quickly see. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Delegate and collaborate on email. Yep. Apparently, you can. Okay. Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Alright. Well, yeah, maybe we'll look at that because I would love that. Yeah. A 100%. Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Cool. Okay. So, yeah, we are, catching up with, with your two best would you say they're your best candidates? Yeah. Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Perfect. So we're catching up with them in a couple hours, so I'm looking forward to meeting them. On my side of the fence, I've got how many people did I have? I think I had about 40 people apply.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. 40 or so applied. And then, before I shut off the job ad, and then, I went through, looked at all the profiles. I did use the ChatGPT's atlas browser to kind of give me a summary, but god, it was it was really shit in the bed when I used it the other day. I don't know what it is, but it was really struggling.

Mitchell Davis:

I had to go click on each page and then get it to read it instead of it clicking. It was a total nightmare. So that is not as far along as what it should be.

Gavin Tye:

Maybe try Claude, the Claude cowor.

Mitchell Davis:

Does Claude have a browser?

Gavin Tye:

Cowork.

Mitchell Davis:

Oh, okay. Well, there you go. We should probably consolidate some of the tools that we're using to figure out like what we're paying for. Why we bring on people.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. So I'm running GPT, paid GPT through sales market fit. We might as well not, And you're in that as well in some of it. Right. But maybe we I've got a claw.

Gavin Tye:

I paid for Claude yesterday. Maybe we use that through six sides, and go and go from there. I think I set it up as deal buddy actually, but we can set it as six sides and then we don't need to run. We can test these different things out. I don't think we should be wedded to one model.

Gavin Tye:

Right.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Anyway. Yeah. Let's talk about that.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. So I went through, got it down to like six people that I've shortlisted. And, I was talking with you about what's gonna be the best way to do this since I'm so adverse to loading up my calendar with a bunch of calls.

Gavin Tye:

Value adding tasks.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Literally finding, like, the the people that are gonna take us to the next level. I know. For whatever reason, I've just got mental roadblocks for this stuff. Anyway, so, yeah, I was talking with you, and I was like, okay.

Mitchell Davis:

I don't know whether the best thing to do is, like, okay. Do I have a fifteen minute call with these people first and try and get an understanding of who they are and are they happy with salary and all this sort of stuff before doing a technical interview? And you said, why don't you just do a Loom video? Like, them for to submit a Loom, can get to get an understanding for them, things like, you know, can we understand them and and English, but also how do they go about approaching a code base and like ask a few questions and get them to kind of walk through their process and what are they doing with AI in their workflow because that will be a big part of this role like and so, yeah, so I to make it fair, I did a Loom video myself kind of walking them through, hey. This is who I am and and this is what I'm looking to get out of your Loom if you can send one through.

Mitchell Davis:

And then, yeah, we've had I think I've had two come back so far out of the six. Yes. You helped me out going in because we're, you know, sharing the same account. You followed up with a few people this morning for me, which I appreciate. And yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

So I've gone through and watched two of like, the two people that have submitted now. One of them I'm feeling pretty strong about. Seems like a very genuine person. Sold himself pretty well. There were no red flags in there at all, which was great.

Mitchell Davis:

So I'll definitely progress that person to

Gavin Tye:

take this round. And the other one didn't follow instruction. They just sent an existing Loom video.

Mitchell Davis:

Right? An old Loom video. Yeah. Yeah. From like a month ago, and it didn't address the questions that I had at all.

Mitchell Davis:

So yeah, that is a red flag.

Gavin Tye:

And then the others just aren't being very responsive. So that in itself is a, is a tell. And I think it actually filtered, self filtered out a lot of people like, so you may have to open it back up again and send that out to another couple of people.

Mitchell Davis:

I do have, like, so you can use in this online jobs platform that you were using, you can do like five stars, four stars, etcetera. So yeah, these, I sent the Loom video to my top people that were five stars, but I'll yeah. If all we have is just one person, I might drop it down to four stars and then just send the same ask. Right? And see who comes back.

Gavin Tye:

So it's interesting. Like, what is like in sales, right? I don't know if this is the same for your role is sometimes on paper, people look really good. Right? They've looked like they've got all the right experiences.

Gavin Tye:

Some of the big call them tier one, tier two companies. Right. And, and all that kind of stuff. They're lazy. Right.

Gavin Tye:

They, they, they don't have the go getter attitude and they're not responsive. And they're like, you hire them and they're like, that's not my role. And they're very siloed in what they do. So is that the same in the dev world is although they look like they've got the great experience, attitude is Yeah. Most

Mitchell Davis:

It's lots of factors. Yes. I do want someone that is more for a team like ours, I think we need people that are more entrepreneurial, more self starter Yeah. Have the ability to take on a challenge that's outside of their skill set and go learn. Like, we we can't hire specialists right now.

Mitchell Davis:

We need to hire generalists. Yep. Because, yeah, we we don't we can't silo off and go, okay. Hey. Person a is only gonna ever touch the mobile app.

Mitchell Davis:

No. They're gonna have to touch the whole stack. Right? Yep. You're gonna need them to do some marketing or some lead gen or maybe some admin or send some emails or like, you know, we have to, because we're still just such a small team.

Gavin Tye:

That's a really good insight that you just had then. Like, I think it's, yeah. Genius.

Mitchell Davis:

You know, you're not just saying, hey,

Gavin Tye:

it rubs off, mate. It rubs

Mitchell Davis:

off. Oh, you dick.

Gavin Tye:

So like the entrepreneurial entrepreneurial spirit, I think even with these lead gen and marketing people going, Hey, what are your interests? What do you want to pursue and give them, you know, like Google gives them 20% to, to go and test something. So giving these people, these other people like a couple of hours a week to go and explore, Hey, you want to try something in marketing? Go and do it. Like, I'm not opposed to trying things and see if it works because if you do get ahead of the market on something, that's the way you get extra, like better results.

Gavin Tye:

So that's probably really interesting insight is to foster that and encourage them because I would think, because we are hiring from The Philippines at the moment. I would assume in this type of role, which I want to ask the people today that we're interviewing, what are some of the mistakes other employees have made or where you think that they could improve? Because I don't want to go down that path. Right. I want to make sure that we're the employer of choice and they're like, I'm glad we met six sides and I'd never want to leave them.

Gavin Tye:

But I also, I think that their culture from what I would imagine from here is they're very agreeable. Right. And so what you want them to be able to have the confidence is to speak up and go, Hey, no, I really want to try this. Okay. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Go for it. If you really believe in it, I'm not going to tell you no, just don't do forty hours a week on it if it doesn't work. Cause we're trying different shit all the time. Right.

Mitchell Davis:

A 100%. Yeah. That's my approach is very exploratory towards different things. Like I'm, extremely interest driven, like we talked about over the last couple of episodes. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

So yeah, I'll find something that is really interest me and want to pursue that. It's a bit of a dog chasing a car, sometimes. Right. So sure. Yeah, this is a part of what we're looking to hire for is to help fill in the gaps.

Mitchell Davis:

But yeah, everybody, hopefully, the people that we hire should also have their own interests, things they wanna pursue. And I agree with you. Like, feels like there's enough capacity Yeah. To allow someone to, you know, spend half a day per week or something like that on something like yeah. Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Sure. For sure. Cool. Cool. So, mate, I think that's really that's where the hiring is at.

Mitchell Davis:

It is really exciting. I really look forward to getting through the next I look forward to being on the other side of having done the technical interviews and being ready to go with, one or two or three people depending on project RendoView. So, yeah, I just wanna get to that. I'm dreading going I'm dreading the next week, to be honest with you, of going through and doing all this because I've done it before hiring, and it's hard. And, yeah, it doesn't bring me any joy, but it's rewarding to be on the other side of it.

Mitchell Davis:

So Yep. You gotta eat your veggies first. Right? So

Gavin Tye:

Yeah, that's right. And I think we've got to make them feel as welcome as productive as we can and try to get them up to speed. It completely changes the dynamic. Well, you're already managing Chris. So, but I don't, I don't, I am working by myself.

Gavin Tye:

Right. Found a lead. So it definitely completely changes my dynamic to make sure that we're always giving him work to do and we're getting the right outcome. So that I'm looking forward to and it's,

Mitchell Davis:

yeah. It's gonna add a lot more structure to our lives, I think.

Gavin Tye:

It has to.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. In this business. Yeah. So I can imagine you and I would be spending an hour or two a day each on reviewing and interfacing with the hires and, yeah. And then probably on a weekly basis, especially in the early days of like go through review.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Is this all working? Like, have we made the right choices? And Yep. Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Setting longer term goals like this will allow for some of that. Yep. So, yeah, it's gonna be a big shift for us, but it's exciting.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah, is like, cause there's lots of things that I know that I should be doing. I just can't get to them. So this would be like, oh, let's get, they'll get to them. Right.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah, that's right.

Gavin Tye:

And we add more value and we let, look, so I'll learn across my, I've got to just put on another client with deal buddy yesterday for six months and I'll learn across them and then apply it to here and vice versa. So yeah, it's a really cyclical reinforcing wheel here or flywheel here to, to, to, to, to learn.

Mitchell Davis:

Awesome. Anyway. Okay. We've got in here update on project hammer. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

That's exciting. Tell me. I don't, I don't know.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. You don't know it. Right. So I had a catch up with project hammer the other day, which we can't announce yet. We're still trying to go through the process, but a different division of project hammer is coming on board potentially.

Gavin Tye:

So yeah, it's a smaller division of, so at the moment we're contracted for five. This one is just has two events. So it'd be another two. Yeah. But it's slowly just there's, I think there's four divisions or five divisions or could even six divisions in there.

Gavin Tye:

So, that's the second one.

Mitchell Davis:

And that's exciting.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. So,

Mitchell Davis:

okay. So when you say potentially, how confident are you? Give us

Gavin Tye:

a percentage. 70%.

Mitchell Davis:

Wow. Okay. That's pretty good. I thought you were gonna say much lower.

Gavin Tye:

No, no. So Jo's responsible for it. And she said, they're just confirming it. She thinks she's gonna be responsible for it and then she will make sense to bring it over.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Great.

Gavin Tye:

She says, fantastic. Stay tuned.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. At what point will we, will we ever be able to give, to reveal their name?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah, I think we can. I think we wanna move towards an ongoing SaaS agreement for them, yearly SaaS agreement, and we wanna get their permission to do it because they're, it's a sensitive organization. Not sensitive. Let's call it a responsible organization. Right.

Gavin Tye:

There's a lot of weight that goes with it. So,

Mitchell Davis:

yeah. Okay.

Gavin Tye:

And we're kind of, well, we're kind of trying to displace something as well, so we shouldn't be down flaunting.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. There's a bit of smoke and mirrors here, for the listeners, but, anyway, it's good.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. I look forward to being able to reveal the name at some point, hopefully. But if we don't ever get there, then so be it.

Gavin Tye:

We'll be putting it on the website as soon as we can. So yeah, we absolutely will be doing it. Which we did speak. It's not on the list. I'm going to go left off the, off the list a little bit.

Gavin Tye:

We did talk about our marketing website again this week is the timing will be right to start looking at that soon. Right. Particularly if project rendezvous comes off and we sign a few SaaS agreements, we want to be able to put different use cases up there. Right. Cause we want to start singing our success.

Gavin Tye:

Well, our early success from the rooftops when we can.

Mitchell Davis:

That's right. Yeah. Yep. So that would be great. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

I look forward to that when we can get there. But, yeah, it's just hard. Right? There's so much to do. I keep coming back to that.

Mitchell Davis:

So this hiring will help with that. I could go Yep. Focus narrowly on marketing site, and then someone else can be working on the app. And, I was looking at a you know about Liquid Glass now? Because have you got it on your phone?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yep. I was looking at that yesterday. I I saw some videos on YouTube about some of the things you could do with it, and I'm pretty excited to be able to bring our app up to using some of the latest stuff. Sure.

Mitchell Davis:

And sorry. I lost my train of thought. And like especially as part yeah. Especially as part of project rendezvous because we would be doing significant like UI overhauls for the app Yep. To support their branding.

Mitchell Davis:

Like, that's the natural time to go and make this shift. And I just think our app is gonna look so much better in the future. Like, I'm really, really excited for it. Not to say our app looks like shit now. It doesn't.

Mitchell Davis:

I I like it, but that's the right word to use. I like it. I wouldn't say I love it. Like and Yeah. I just I really look forward to getting us there in the future.

Gavin Tye:

When you think about the problem we're trying to solve or what we're trying to tap into, it's largely emotive. It's a lot like, yes, it offers outcomes and all kinds of stuff, but there is an emotional driver behind this about helping people connect. When they look at it, it's easy. It's not like technology from five or ten years ago where it's unburdened by that. And I think that making it, I talked about this with Ash inside, inductive is if we could jump, we're talking about it with deal buddy, but it's the same with six sides.

Gavin Tye:

You can jump a lot of the current market if you can make it look like cutting edge and, and really it's a pleasure for people to be in it. And now, you know, I don't think it's hard to quantify, but I also think it's, well, one it's easy for, easy for training, but two is there is a value there for it. Right? Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. It looks matter for this sort of stuff. And I've said right from the very start, like I want our stuff to look premium And right now it it doesn't. We're not living up to that. But I really do want that.

Mitchell Davis:

So I'd anyway. Yeah. It was just something I was thinking about as as I was watching, some videos on liquid glass. Like, this could be so sick. So Well,

Gavin Tye:

I do think looks matter. That's why you're getting way better response on, on LinkedIn than what I am. And I also think you're under cooking. Yeah. Thanks.

Gavin Tye:

Whatever. I also think you're being too harsh. I think you're comparing six sides to maybe different apps in different industries, but compared to other event apps that are out there, I think we're probably ahead or we're right up there on par with some of those. So I do think,

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I yes. I take the point.

Mitchell Davis:

Like, I'm comparing our app to like how does some of how does Apple Notes look or the camera app, you know, and there's just there's things that I want to try, like, to the to the point of experimenting a bit here. I really wanna try and see, like, okay, could I give us three different options of, like, a theme that we can, like, design language that we can move down and look at that and go, okay, this is we want option d, you know? Yep. And now that that's kind of our new direction for the next two years to build out the app like that. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

But Sure. It is it's a complex app because we wanna be able to theme it for each event to have their own style. Right? But yet it still needs to look good. So I honestly think like liquid glass will help us make the app a bit easier to theme because it just adjusts to what's underneath it.

Mitchell Davis:

Sure. And a big idea of the liquid liquid glass system is to have more imagery Sure. As like your backgrounds so that the buttons that you add over the top of it, which are transparent, will adjust automatically to what's underneath it. Like, it lends itself really well to user generated content, and that is a huge part of what our app is about. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

So I think we'll be a really good candidate for it.

Gavin Tye:

Mhmm. So but that does that apply to Google products as well? It doesn't, does it?

Mitchell Davis:

So Google doesn't so Android doesn't have liquid glass, but Android has recently made some changes as far as I know. They're recent anyway, but to better support applying the person's phone's style into your apps. So an example is, like, whatever background image you've got set for your phone, like your lock screen and that sort of thing. It can extract some of the main colors that are in that photo, and it kinda uses that as an available theme that you can kind of opt into as you're building the building an app. So the example that I've seen recently is like someone had a kind of purplish background, a photo, and then now when they open up apps that use this theme, the whole theme is kind of in a purple light.

Mitchell Davis:

And so it adjusts to what the user wants. So not the same thing with the liquid glass, which is a shame because it then means, okay, we have to think about having kind of multiple versions of the app, but that's the life of an app developer. Right? And not everybody is on, the latest version of iOS as well. So even like on iPhones, there'll be people that don't have Liquid Glass, and so therefore we will still have to run now three versions of the app basically.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. So, anyway, it's, it's early days on that, but, yeah, just was watching a video and it's getting me really excited about it. Like, we can do some of this stuff now. I think it's gonna be so sick. So

Gavin Tye:

But in the next twelve months, sickle glass be more prevalent, right, as people come onto it. So it's it's a way of the future.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

Mitchell Davis:

Alright. So on while we're on dev side of things a little bit, so my turn to move us around our list of topics.

Gavin Tye:

God, I don't know if I can

Mitchell Davis:

handle this.

Gavin Tye:

The change.

Mitchell Davis:

You'll right, mate. Yeah. You'll be right. You'll be right. So this week I spent some time updating the UI of our dashboard, to be able to we created this dashboard which allows event organisers to go in and configure everything that they need for the event.

Mitchell Davis:

And this has been in place since mid Feb when we were at AIM, I think, but it had a bunch of holes in it because I generated it using cursor and I wasn't paying strict attention to absolutely everything. It was kind of a rush to just let's get this out there. We had a bunch of events that all needed to be set up and I was the bottleneck for it. Right? So got this first version out as quickly as we could.

Mitchell Davis:

Went through and over time you've identified a bunch of holes in it. And then I had also as well, there were a bunch of like save buttons that weren't working properly and you couldn't add links to sponsors and couldn't add photos to attendees and all this sort of stuff. And it was just a bit of a nightmare. So I spent time this week going through and kind of doing an audit of all of that. And I believe I've now got it to the point where you can configure everything using the UI in the dashboard.

Mitchell Davis:

So you can add photos and you can add sponsors and logos and speakers and you can add all of it now. Alright? So so that's good. We've consolidated some of the settings that we had as well to make it a bit easier to understand. We settled on.

Mitchell Davis:

I haven't implemented it this week, but we settled on just for now just hiding the emoji reaction stuff inside of the app. You can like do a live it was just an experiment that I wanted to run and I thought it was pretty cool, but seemingly nobody's using it. It's not a big selling point. It just kinda gets in the way. So we have these, like, floating buttons that sit above a talk when you're looking at it inside of the app.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. So, we looked at that feature this week, and we're like, it's probably time to sunset that one. So, I will get rid of that.

Gavin Tye:

I do think there's that I think it's use it'll be useful in the future. We just need to tie a few things around it, like being able to record the talk. And then so we know where those emojis went and then we we're not tracking them. Right? So you don't even know.

Gavin Tye:

They could be used, but we have no idea. Right? So

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. But nobody talks about it. Nobody we've had zero feedback on it. It kind of just sits there and it's like, yeah. What

Gavin Tye:

is this? We've never asked. That's the thing. We don't ask the end user.

Mitchell Davis:

So Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, kind of looking at the whole dashboard, this week and getting it up to speed. So I'm pretty confident in it now. And then what I went through and did is updated our AI assistant to also be able to handle all of those same features. I've almost got that done.

Mitchell Davis:

So we identified that it's missing the it was missing the ability to add links. I've gone through and now added the ability for the AI to add links to sponsors, speakers, attendees, to the event itself, like all of those areas it can now do. So that's that'll just automatically pick that up. Whenever we create new events in the system, it'll just work. Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

So the last thing that I have to figure out, and I don't yet know how to do it is handling file uploads because it would be great to be able to just paste in like a set of speaker photos or something like that and have the AI go assign them. The file uploads is tricky. So I don't have that yet. I've gotta think that through. It might take me another week to get that ready.

Mitchell Davis:

But I mean, now it's pretty trivial to go in and add photos after the speakers are created, so it's it's not a big deal. But Yeah. Yeah. So a pretty good week on the tech side of things, which is good.

Gavin Tye:

So I just had a thought halfway through that is I think at last count, how many users are in assist in in SixSides now? There's probably, Oh,

Mitchell Davis:

it was about a thousand or something.

Gavin Tye:

Think. Yeah. But we've had a couple of events in the last week Right. As So probably 1,200, I think it was.

Mitchell Davis:

I'll find out for you right now. Users.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. Go on. My thought was is we've that is amazing UI, and we've always had this theory that,

Mitchell Davis:

for every 100.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Wow. That's jumped up like 400 in the last two weeks.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

So my I've always had this hypothesis and I think it's true. We just don't have visibility on it is there are event organizers who go to conferences and they will run events throughout the year. I think we should be scheduling a webinar or something to, and put it out to everyone and to say, Hey, look, we're now making it easy to set up your own event and we'll run, and we're going to do a webinar to run through the dashboard and how that may look. Right. And so we can go back to everyone.

Gavin Tye:

Even to some people on LinkedIn that we've connected with and get people to log in. And if they're interested, hopefully that can be a lead generator. We can do that every three months of new functionality we've released.

Mitchell Davis:

Sure. Yeah. And sound like a perfect task for someone doing lead gen.

Gavin Tye:

Mate, I can't get you to write an email to someone. I'd never ask you to do this.

Mitchell Davis:

No. No. But for the person that we're hiring. Like Yeah. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Absolutely. Okay.

Gavin Tye:

Just set it up. Because, you know, we've had so many people that we've had conversations with and it's just may not be the right time. And if we continually try to pick them up every three months, we do need some way to capture, oh, we got HubSpot. Right. So we do, we, HubSpot's a good one to go out to them.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Okay. I'll do that. That'll be a task for me to set up by next week.

Mitchell Davis:

That's it. Okay. Yep. Perfect. Love it.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Yeah. So back to our list, I've covered all of my stuff. So you've got in here moving towards ongoing SaaS agreement. So who's that with?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. So I'm I'm talking to the civil contractors federation about an ongoing agreement for the year. Right? Because they we've done a trial with two, two trial two pilot trial with them. They really loved it.

Gavin Tye:

They started setting it up for another couple as well. I think they might even have an event tonight, or last night. And we're starting to go to an ongoing agreement with them and, and we, we wanna make it a win win. That's really interesting. We're figuring out what that is.

Gavin Tye:

I've floated indicative pricing and she said, that's okay. We're investigating a different commercial model with them as well, which we won't talk about yet. Well, we could talk about it. It's basically getting a sponsor to support their community for the year. And it gives them visibility across who's in the community, plugs them in, and then it helps grow the community over time.

Gavin Tye:

So I'm navigating that. Trying to help them with that as well, to see what that might look like. That's really interesting. If that works, that unlocks a lot, especially for not for profits. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

And so we'll know more about that. I've got a meeting with the safety conference after our, after this podcast today to talk about what an ongoing engagement might look like. So, yeah, we're starting to move towards ongoing conversations now, which is really good. We've got

Mitchell Davis:

four active

Gavin Tye:

ones that are that are that are in in in motion right now.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. And that's the first time that we've been in this spot. Right. Cause everything up till now has all just been single events basically, or thinking about things as just events

Gavin Tye:

in some Well, that functionality didn't support it. Like now the conversation supports the functionality. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah, So it's, it's great. This is like, that's very exciting because that'll be so reassuring for us. So like confidence boosting in terms of our runway, if we can sign some agreements with some of these leads.

Gavin Tye:

Right? Yeah. So I've been thinking now, like, oh, we hire someone. Okay. We could, we could fund that funds a person.

Gavin Tye:

Right. I'm thinking about that. Like, but do we need it? Maybe we don't need it. Right.

Gavin Tye:

Maybe that funds an agent to build a build or something or funds us building the website next iteration of the website. Right.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Like, I, I mean, I would love to, hire a just on a contract. I mean, hire a designer to actually come up with our website, our marketing website. Like, yes, I, I will be able to move it forward with Cursor and just my own sense of design, but I am not a designer. And I've I've taken note of a bunch of websites that I really like the look of and how modern they feel lately.

Mitchell Davis:

Sure. And I haven't shown any of that to you, but I will if maybe, you know, especially if we start working again on the marketing website. Yep. I'll show you some things. I don't know how to build them, but I really like the look of certain websites lately.

Mitchell Davis:

There's like this style that's emerging. So I'll show you some of that because I would love to replicate that for us.

Gavin Tye:

Sure. Why couldn't you put that in? Is it splash that we mucked around with last week?

Mitchell Davis:

Google splash? I don't think it's splash stash. What was it? Google. Stitch.

Gavin Tye:

Stitch. Google Stitch.

Mitchell Davis:

Yep.

Gavin Tye:

Why couldn't you put some of those in as inspiration and go, hey, use that as inspiration and see, give us 10 designs and just as proof of thought? Because it did come up with some interesting looking themes where, you know, I'm no means talented in using those systems, but it was something that a couple of them are okay to start drilling down in on. So.

Mitchell Davis:

Yes, I can, and I likely will, but there's something within me that would take a certain amount of pride if we actually hired a designer to use their sense and their style and give us like, hey, this is your branding. Would like to do that. Not saying we we can't right now. Right. We can't afford it because it will be more than what we can afford.

Mitchell Davis:

But if, you know, like you're talking about, if we get a few bigger, you know, 5 figure, SaaS agreements, maybe there's some money there to just put someone's actual brain onto it and go, okay. Hey. Give us a really solid, like, branding, and web website design. I would really like to do that. Not saying we have to do that.

Mitchell Davis:

It's not gonna be the end of the world, but, yeah, I can have a crack at it with with Google splash. Wonder if they do have a product called Google splash. That might now.

Gavin Tye:

Because I'd be listening. Yeah. Look, I, I do agree like paying a designer to build our website is fantastic, but when do we do that? Right? Like we'll have cash strapped and all that kind of stuff, unless we get

Mitchell Davis:

someone That's from what I'm saying. If, if we're if you not you, sorry. If we are able to get three or four lots of, you know, 5 figure deals, maybe there's some money there Mhmm. That we could put towards it. So Maybe.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Maybe. Anyway, mate, we're we're probably putting the cart before the horse. Alright. So then final thing you've got here, you did some work on positioning.

Mitchell Davis:

So I did. What's this about?

Gavin Tye:

Well, I wanna make sure we position six sides, how we see six sides and also deal buddy is we're positioning at the right way because if we don't have a shared view of what you and I, of what our positioning is, then it's going to be almost impossible for it. It's going to be impossible for anyone that we hire, to understand how to position it. So I think what I've done is created a positioning doc as our north star to go, that is everything that we want to, that that is six sides. Right? So every, everything that you do has to fall within this positioning doc.

Gavin Tye:

And it did spit out. I've been following April Dunford's obviously awesome 10 step process for positioning. And I went through it this week and it really come up with, a really interesting positioning statement. Right. And it was, and I do like the first part of it is six sides is a community first event engagement platform.

Gavin Tye:

Like, I think that in itself, we haven't said it in that way. Right? That sounds pretty good. And then extending from that is that helps organizers create strong connection, clearer stakeholder value and ongoing community engagement before, during, after an event. So I think that is really, that is really good.

Gavin Tye:

Right. So, and it does, and then the secondary sentences here, it does it without adding enterprise level complexity, heavy setup burden, or unnecessary friction for organizers or attendees. And I think that's a really good positioning statement.

Mitchell Davis:

Me too.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. So once I have that, so whenever we're doing outreach or some type of, webinar, which is what we'll do about the dashboard, We use that as the frame. Right. It's always a consistent north star. Right.

Gavin Tye:

And you're, you're developing to that positioning statement as well. Right. There is no complexity. We're removing the setup burden. Like we set up project, hammer.

Gavin Tye:

The first event we set up manually probably took maybe two hours for you to do maybe a bit longer. Next one took an hour and a half, an hour. The one we set up the other day took five minutes.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Right?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. That's amazing. Right? We're killing it. We're killing it.

Mitchell Davis:

Look out the competitors of the world. We are killing it.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. We're coming for you. Insert competitor here. Won't name you on the show. No, because we don't want to put a target on our back.

Gavin Tye:

Don't listen to us, but we're coming for you. Yeah. No, no. Too big for our boots. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Anyway. That is hilarious.

Gavin Tye:

So what does that feel like? Does that does that

Mitchell Davis:

It feels right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

No. I I completely agree. I think it's really good. It makes sense why now is the time to write this because we've had two years, you know, of getting a feel for who we are. I don't think we've deviated at all from the original vision.

Mitchell Davis:

I think maybe you have added in there like the ease of setup. Right. That probably wasn't something that we talked about in the early early days. It was more about community, but community is still in there.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yeah. Cause we just didn't envision AI at that time. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

So yeah. So it makes sense to be doing this now, especially on the precipice of hiring people to go out and do lead gen on our behalf. They need to know what it is that they're selling basically. And I think it does help on the development side. You're right.

Mitchell Davis:

You use the term north star to go, okay. This is what we're trying to achieve. It's it's a mission statement as well in a way. Right? So or a mission statement could be pretty easily come up with.

Mitchell Davis:

We did an episode forever ago now about like these are our, it doesn't matter, but this is our, what we believe in. Oh, our company values episode 25. Yep. And I reckon if we listened to that, it would still hold true today. But you've probably codified it a bit here to go, okay, hey, this is what we're doing.

Mitchell Davis:

So I think it's good. I'm really impressed with it because it's not something that I would have done, on my own. It's not in my wheelhouse. Right?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Well, I wouldn't have written the app on my own. So where there you go.

Mitchell Davis:

Right? No. Know. I know.

Gavin Tye:

So, but I do think this is a probably a good checkbox whenever a feature gets released here. Is it, is it complex to set up? Right. Is it, is it a heavy setup burden to do? Is there unnecessary friction in the, in the flow?

Gavin Tye:

Or if there is, are we got a plan to optimize that over time? Right. And is it, and who does it suit? What part of the, what part of the side of the community does it, does it suit? So is it relevant for?

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. I dunno if we, did we come up with an actual doc? Yeah, we would have. If we just talk about it.

Gavin Tye:

I found it.

Mitchell Davis:

Do you want to review it now?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. So our vision is help associations and event organizers create events that spark meaningful connection, strengthen communities, and deliver lasting impact. Perfect. And our mission is equipped organizers with tools, insights, and processes to connect every side of their event community before, during, after event, ensuring measurable value for all. Perfect.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. So like in our values, our maximise engagement, deliver proven ROI, grow community beyond the event, streamline your workflow, tell your story. So yeah, streamline your workflow. I think we're still aligning to that for sure.

Mitchell Davis:

That's perfectly aligned. So yeah. And that's only six months ago. Right? So, yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

By note, like this positioning that you've done has just solidified that, okay, that's where we are and pro and explains it a bit more. Yeah. Yeah. On how to literally how to position that when approaching other people. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

So

Gavin Tye:

Okay.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, good one. Why don't we wrap it up there then?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Let's wrap it up.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Since you've asked, where can people find you online? Mate, they can find

Gavin Tye:

me online on LinkedIn. Gavin .tye, t ye.

Mitchell Davis:

Oh. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, under the handle Mitch Dev and a few other places that I don't really use all that much. It's mainly LinkedIn. You're up with a lot. But I don't use it.

Mitchell Davis:

I just I'm not a social media guy. I don't care enough to put much thought out into the world. I kind of just live in my own bubble. So Mhmm. I'm coming to accept that about myself.

Mitchell Davis:

I'll like, I don't even go on those apps to see what other people are doing now I think about it. I'm in Slack. You can find me in Slack or on That's about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Well, no. No. You can't find me there. No. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

No. Anyway, it doesn't matter. All right. Well, hopefully.

Gavin Tye:

A face of six sides, mate. So you're gonna have to find a way to be comfortable to a certain degree. Right.

Mitchell Davis:

Steve

Gavin Tye:

Wozniak made himself visible to a degree, right. With apple. So you could be our little bored Steve

Mitchell Davis:

Wozniak. Our what? Our little

Gavin Tye:

Bald Steve Wozniak. Why am I gonna be little? Well, I

Mitchell Davis:

You could just say our bald Steve Wozniak. Okay. That's come on mate. You're only like a centimeter taller than me. All right.

Mitchell Davis:

Let's not, you know,

Gavin Tye:

no, no. Cause I've met Steve Wozniak and he's a big fella.

Mitchell Davis:

Have you? Yeah. You go. When'd you meet him?

Gavin Tye:

At a Gartner conference. When I say met him, I was in the crowd.

Mitchell Davis:

That's a very loose definition of met.

Gavin Tye:

I've met him. I was in the same room as him.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Was like, hey, Steve. I don't know if he's met you, but that's okay.

Gavin Tye:

That doesn't matter. I didn't say that. I said

Mitchell Davis:

I met you. That's true. Yeah. Yep. Alright.

Mitchell Davis:

Cool. Yes. It's something to work on, for me to get it out there a bit more, I guess, but it just really doesn't come naturally to me. So maybe we could talk about that in a in a future episode.

Gavin Tye:

You get such a good response,

Mitchell Davis:

Your Larabelle talk. As much as no. It's fine. We'll talk another two minutes on this. It's crushing to post on a social media of some kind and then not get any reaction.

Mitchell Davis:

And I find that that happens a lot, in the circles that I've tried to be in the Laravel community on Twitter or on Blue Sky. Like, it's very American focused, very European focused. There's not a ton of people in Australia on there that I've been able to connect with. And so it's like just it's always felt a bit impostery, a bit like a closed circle, you know, that you're trying to get into. And I it's just it doesn't inspire me to want to do more of that.

Mitchell Davis:

So I don't know. It's I mean, I still have ambitions of posting videos to YouTube and things like that. Like, I I really do want to, but it's just it's never been a priority. So Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Burning the candle at seven ends, mate. That's why. So

Mitchell Davis:

I know. That's yeah. That's right. So, yeah, it's I am strapped for time.

Gavin Tye:

But Yeah. Hopefully hopefully that will change soon, mate.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Hopefully. Yes. Anyway okay. Alright.

Mitchell Davis:

Well, stay tuned for next week. We will get you up to date on where we're at with the hiring, and, yeah, we'll catch you all next week.

Gavin Tye:

Cool, mate.