Eric Karkovack: Hey everyone.
Welcome to another edition of the WP Minute.
I'm your host, Eric Kovac, and today I have a very special guest, Jake Goldman,
the, founder and president of 10 Up, a very well-known WordPress agency.
Jake, welcome and thanks for coming.
Thank you.
that, introduction is a good lead and I guess for our conversation later, I'm
not sure I go by actually, it's what I go by these days, but, that's the news.
That's right.
We've got some big news to, to spill on that.
But, I, before we, we really dig into where you're at now, I did want to talk
to you a little bit about your origins.
you as the founder of 10 Up.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you got started with 10 Up and what
the mission was back in those days?
Jake Goldman: Sure.
So, 10 up started in back in 2011, which feels incredibly long ago now.
Very different world, than we live in 2025.
at the time I had been in agencies, professional services for the better
part of, you know, really if you go back to including part-time roles for over a
decade at that point, it spent at that 0.4
or five years in management roles and services businesses focused on making
websites focused on digital experiences.
I'd sort of long had the itch to start a business, start my own practice.
Although, as I said in many different places, I felt that it was useful
to have that experience first.
Learn from others, have mentors circa 2011.
The sort of short version is a little bit of a falling out with this company
that I was working with at the time.
Just in terms of alignment with that.
founder's vision, having been his first hire, helped having helped him build that
team up to about 18 to 20 as a sort of.
Providence and Boston based firm.
and I, was focused on open source and a new, kind of a new breed of
CMSs and solutions for our customers.
I started going to Word Camp, started getting involved in the WordPress
community, started using that platform for some customers as an economic choice,
succinctly, sort of fell in love with it, fell in love with the community.
He thought it was going, going big places, gonna do big things
as the platform was growing up.
And so.
Start a 10 up with a vision of, as a, at least as a starting point being, you
know, I think what you'd call an agency.
Businesses like the best integrator, the best implementer of WordPress,
particularly for customers looking to more enterprise level implementation,
looking for customers that are, you know, brand name, larger businesses
looking to spend, you know, at least even those early days, at least five
figures, if not six figures in some cases.
On projects, lied to myself and said I would sort of take a break for managing
people for a little while, for a year or so and just have some contractors by
the end of year one bad at saying no to good opportunities come from our network.
We had about seven or eight people and the rest was history.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I mean, you, you have had a lot of success it
seems like, in that enterprise area, and I was just kind of wondering.
How did that go in the early days?
Because WordPress, of course, started out as a blogging platform.
A lot of folks, and, you know, in the corporate world may not have
known about it as, as, you know, its potential for, for doing enterprise.
What kind of challenges did you face in doing that?
Jake Goldman: I mean, I think that I, feel fortunate in the sense that
I, it was just the right moment.
So I didn't, you know, by design, I didn't wanna start an agency that
was in a fully mature, fully baked.
Space where like if you did it seven years later, eight years later, where press
will established, whether every enterprise wants to use it or not, it's well known.
well adopted, you know, running on, you know, massive numbers of not just
like small blogs and website, but like business websites, corporate websites,
at least for part of their stack.
I think my position was, my strategy was to join a platform that I
thought already had some early hooks.
There was customers, there was buyers, there was opportunity to win business,
but was at the very early stage.
If it's growth cycle, because that's an opportunity to come in, there was
an opportunity to come in to establish yourself as sort of like a leading
early entering provider in the space.
Establish a missing foothold to be sort of like an agency of record or
one of the most trusted names in the space before it gets overcrowded.
So you're right to say that it wasn't like fully immersed in enterprise
in the way that it went over the ensuing decade, but I would also
say that was more advantage than disadvantage for the long term strategy.
It did circuit 2011, which is why I started the business, already have
some entrance in that space now.
They were mostly what I would say and we can haggle over
the definition of enterprise.
They're mostly, what I would say was sort of mid to large size businesses,
maybe not the largest corporations in the world, was with one big exception,
which is it was already starting to get quite a bit of adoption and interest
in the enterprise space for publishing.
so as a blogging sort of new centered platform, you already had, frankly
some of like the largest news publications in the world, even in 2011.
Looking at it as a great economical, at the time ahead of its.
ahead of its time, user experience for publishing articles and stories.
So good early customer base in median publishing all so you could call the
enterprise buyer already adopting or looking at actively adopting WordPress.
Good early entrants in mid to mid to larger size businesses, but also
early enough in its lifecycle that you could grow with the platform as
it expanded and got more adoption.
In terms of like challenges with that?
I mean, you know, it had its reputation of being a bit more of a blogging
platform in some quarters and you know, I think we had early pioneers with things
like Drupal or you could even argue Linux or I don't know, that like open
source in 2011 had the same reticence.
I felt that a lot, like before I started the company in 2004, 2005, 2006, I felt
there was a lot of skepticism about what is this kooky, communist thing
where we give away our source code.
but I feel like by 2011.
That was in the, that was sort of in the background.
It was more about, you know, whether it showed up with the kind of teams
and businesses and capabilities and deeper taxonomy and content management
capabilities that a large enterprise would expect from a bigger platform.
Eric Karkovack: Okay.
Yeah, I mean, as you say that, that point.
Linux was very well spread up throughout the corporate world
and open source, you know, was definitely a thing at that point.
So not necessarily a new concept to these companies, it was just maybe one more
tool then I guess coming online for them.
Jake Goldman: Yes.
Eric Karkovack: So as part of, of 10 UPS reputation here with, within the
WordPress community, I mean, you've had some, I mean, obviously the big enterprise
clients, You know, if folks don't know, you, worked on the White house.gov
site in the, Biden administration, which I cannot think of a more high pressure
situation for any agency to deal with.
but then you also release some nice plugins that you, still maintain in the
community, like Last Press, safe, SVG, I know you've got, classified, right now.
That's, an AI focused plugin.
how, how does that balance for you giving back these, you know, free plugins
that you're, you're maintaining still for the community and kind of, you
know, building your name there as well?
at the lower level, like at the freelancer level as opposed to just the, you
know, the, the, the big wigs in the, white House and, and places like that.
Jake Goldman: I mean, there's a few things to say there.
I mean, I think, I mean, know that the, it, we generalize it or hazard,
but the, the quote unquote big wigs aren't necessarily finding classify or
certainly not safe SVG, on their own.
But I mean, there's a few things to say there.
One, the extensions that we pour most of our investment into, which is not
like safe SVG, which is a pretty.
Useful, but very specific sort of micro plugin.
But things like our, I think of our flagship plugins as things
like ElasticPress, connecting Elasticsearch to WordPress for better
search performance and perform in general querying performance and
like smarter, you know, smarter, like cross content recommendations.
Things like distributor that solve, pushing and sharing content between
multiple sites in a sort of SEO safe in a very intuitive way.
You mentioned classify certainly one of our big flagship plugs in the moment,
bringing AI technologies into WordPress.
I don't actually think those are necessarily extensions that are
designed to appeal to the freelancer.
Working on a couple small business sites, most of them are not gonna buy
Elasticsearch or that kind of integration.
Most of 'em are not thinking about multiple websites sharing content.
maybe they're gonna tinker with, ai.
but you also have to have like chat GPD pro subscriptions and all
the rest to be able to really take full advantage of that extension.
they're really extensions targeted at the kind of buyer that we're looking for.
So I don't know that we think of like.
The optimal person that we see as like the adopter of these extensions as a a
small freelancer as opposed to maybe a developer inside those large enterprises,
somebody responsible for tasked with a problem of, I've got 10 magazines, or
I've got 30 websites in my businesses that only need to share privacy policy,
and it shouldn't be so difficult to easily update across all of them.
It's the developers working in those kind of businesses.
The technical leads that are researching good solutions are being asked, how can
I use ai but then find these extensions and do have influence in that space.
At the same time, I would also say there I, I very much have a rising tide lifts
all boats kind of philosophy, which is why these extensions do primarily target.
As a, as its primary audience, you know, influencers and developers and
larger businesses, and B, authentically help us solve problems for our clients
without having to do it over and over and over again for every customer.
The third avenue here is like having a good set of AI solutions that are
open and accessible and can show people how to do it available to the
entire community from the smallest.
Freelancer to the technically savvy blogger who has one website to the largest
develop, you know, companies in the world with developers, makes all of us better.
You know, just to pick on that example and maybe be a little dramatic in how
I express it, if WordPress doesn't have good integrations and good solutions
for, how do I bring AI into my content editing and my content workflow
experience, that entire platform's not gonna be very compelling or very,
what's the word I'm looking for?
competitive.
in the coming years.
So I think by putting out solutions that solve hard problems that we're gonna use
anyways, we need them for our clients.
In any case.
That help us find developers, decision makers, technology, buyers
inside, mostly larger companies and more complex organizations.
And on top of that, helps the entire ecosystem solve hard problems, make
WordPress look better, and make WordPress a more compelling option, for businesses.
You know, it only, it only.
Makes all of us better.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah.
So that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, we're talking about WordPress and ai.
I mean, and we'll get to that in a little bit, but I mean, yeah, I, I
have to imagine that's going to be the expectation moving forward for so many
companies at all levels that we're gonna have to have some sort of AI integration.
So building those tools now, makes a lot of sense and hopefully that, you
know, keeps WordPress growing, keeps it as a viable option in the market.
Jake Goldman: Every person that builds WordPress sites should have
some answer when a customer says, what are you doing to integrate ai?
Or How are you using ai?
And there's obviously like the technical answer in terms of like building
the website, but also an answer for, I'm putting content in here, I'm
creating pages, I'm creating images.
How are you putting it in my CMS?
And I hope that for some of them classified gives an answer that
will, satisfy even please those buyers as opposed to them having
a moment where they might pause and say, the best you've got is.
Like a couple of like title things and Yoast or something like that
is all you can bring to the table, which might make them pause and say,
wait a minute, is WordPress even a platform that's ready for the future?
Do I need to go look at another option?
And when people make that decision and say, we're not gonna go with WordPress,
even though we do more than WordPress, to be clear again, good segue into
later, that hurts us as something that's very invested in that ecosystem.
Hurts all of us.
Lemme look down the road in two, three years.
Eric Karkovack: So I do want to get back to, one of the reasons you're here today
is, you're part of the, fueled family now.
you merged with them back in 2023, and I was wondering how did that come about and
how long did that take to come together?
Like what made you decide that this was the, the right thing to do with 10 up?
Jake Goldman: Yeah, I, I, I wrote a whole post about it.
They put in the show notes as well.
At the time, I think the, the headlines there were, I mean, there was a,
there was a few sort of factors that converged, I think when I thought
about what it meant to kept scaling 10 up as a business, hitting, you
know, having, you know, breaking through $45 million in revenue a year.
There was, part of it was as a, as the like controlling owner of the business.
What would that role look like?
What would it mean to keep scaling and keep growing the company
and providing more opportunity for everybody inside of it?
And I, again, I'm, I'm being a little bit overly simplistic to make the point
concisely, but I think that job, when you start going through upwards of $50 million
in revenue, involves a lot of work that has to do either with your own m and a.
In terms of finding businesses that you want to bring into your fold, it frankly
becomes more legalistic in terms of like risk aversion and, you know, different
kind, sometimes a different kind of talent that things they can chase after.
you as a business it becomes more, about financial instruments and vehicles to
invest in different kinds of growth, the different kinds of capacity.
Not, you know, things I could, you know, some faith in myself, things I could
muscle through, maybe things that really made me excited about being the owner
and being a very engaged, very involved owner, which is the only kind of ownership
I know how to, how to own kind of owner.
I know how to be.
Not things that got me terribly excited, not that made motivated
and, and frankly, more to the point beside my own selfishness, not as
effective as I thought potentially other buyers investors could be in
helping the team, achieve those ends.
so I think one factor was what am I good at?
What do I enjoy doing?
What am I good at?
Who's, what is the best kind of like ownership and investment
structure to help this team be able to keep growing and keep being
successful at a very different scale?
that it's at today.
I think the second factor, and maybe it's related is I, I genuinely believed
part of growing, part of creating safety for this business, was, you
know, is diversifying, I've said it forever, not being a one trick pony and
as a business in terms of the platform or technologies that you work at.
That's not a new thing that I've said.
That's, you know, again, maybe a very fitting segue here, Ted UP was not
just WordPress, but we were about 85.
Percent WordPress in terms of our projects.
And, I, I know the word carries a negative connotation.
I don't really mean it with a negative connotation, but I kind of feel like
we were typecast as being WordPress.
Like I could go to conferences with the biggest agencies and
shops, and many of them, you know, would be familiar with telepathy.
The almost, you know, the blessing and the curse is the almost like reflex reaction.
Oh, the WordPress agency.
Right.
So I, I found that.
The journey of trying to authentically both from a market positioning, expand
on that in terms of how we're known, and the ability to sort of like move as
fast as I would want to, to be able to make sure that we're better diversified
as a business in our capabilities was just something that would happen much
faster through m and a than it was going to happen through trying to do
it, independently and autonomously.
You know, and I always think about the future and think about, you know,
I've been doing this for 20 years, running an agency for 13, 14 years.
I'm very mindful of like what kind of like ownership structure for the business makes
it more sound and secure going forward.
And you know, there are other ways we could have other options we could have
pursued to, Mitigate, like sort of the one person get hits by a bus situation.
but again, looking at a bunch of options at the table, to me the optimal one
would've been one that also scratched the prior two, which is, which is new
kinds of like leadership and investors that know how to use some of these tools
to accelerate growth at our size and being able to accelerate, sort of the
diversification of our services as a team.
Eric Karkovack: So Fueld, as far as I know, is really more about mobile
apps and product design, right?
So how did that fit in with your vision?
was that to the, you know, the vision to be more of a, a full service
company that, that could take a, a product from conception all the way to
the Great enterprise website to sell the product or promote the product?
Jake Goldman: Yes.
I think the, the un nuanced.
But kind of hits the nail on the head expression that I think our, you know, our
current CEO friend of mine, named Justin.
I think the way that he put it when we were talking through like later
stages of like, you know, let's make this happen, let's do this transaction,
is I think he said, I think all of our customers need your services,
which would like your services.
And I strongly suspect that a good number of the kind of customers you
work with would benefit from our services, and that's really kind of,
in some ways it's simplistic, but it's a very succinct way of expressing it,
which is yes, we all had customers and enterprises that have more than
WordPress websites or more than just apps.
We want to be able to provide grow within those businesses.
We want to be able to.
To do more, with all of those companies.
so yeah, it is effectively rounding it out so we can provide more solutions,
be more fully rounded as a business compete for the biggest engagements,
which, which let's be clear, the biggest engagements out there and like the
bigger services market are not come build a mobile app for me, are come
building WordPress website for me.
The biggest opportunities are let's complete, you know, companies that
are more, you know, not, you know, not just companies and public
sector, works all the rest that are saying like, we need to completely
rethink how we're doing digital.
We need to rethink our product strategy.
We need to think, rethink online engagement.
I don't know that for either company, but I would say more
so for 10 up historically.
That, if that was the entry point for who can we find to help us,
that we would come upon their radar.
Maybe we get lucky and somebody in that company would've worked with us before.
Maybe something that company's like, I'm really passionate about WordPress
as being part of this stack and let me find out who's good at WordPress.
'cause I want to use that platform for our web side.
but I, I, I think though the dream is to punch into that like sphere where.
it, it starts way before the conversation about a specific solution or a
specific technology, and that comes through being a more well-rounded,
a more full, service business.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense for enterprise
because you've got, you know, there's only so many vendors that they want
to work with and they don't want somebody different for their product
design, and they don't want someone different for, just for their website.
It's nice to have that team that's all informed and all on the same,
on the same page, so to speak.
And, you know, to be able to, to carry it through the entire process.
But I was wondering, you know, as a, as a founder, when you're going through
that type of, merger transaction, was there any concern on your part
about, you know, company culture changing or anything of that nature?
or maybe even the, you know, just the autonomy to, do your job your way.
Jake Goldman: I mean, for sure, I think you are, you're either very
desperate or you're, or you're, you know, poly ishly naive.
If you don't, as a founder, recognize that going through something as significant
as a integration or merger of two companies culture, it's not an, if
culture will change, culture will adjust.
I think any founder would tell you, going through the journey of being
the guy in charge to another voice in the room is, is, You know, at
best a head trip, of a process.
So I think yes, a short version is real concern by either of those.
I would say that on the culture front, you know, it's funny because I feel like
people that have not worked at a large number of companies, have not been through
mergers with different companies before, have been on the journey of finding
opportunities for, mergers or integration.
Observe our, you know, these two cultures that we've united and are
quick to point out where there are differences between those cultures.
I can tell you, having been through those processes at other businesses
before starting 10 up, I can tell you, having spoken to many interested
suitors, many interested companies and, and doing integration with
us, that, this might sound a little condescending, but they have no idea
what different culture actually is.
I actually think that the culture that we have, that 10up has and that fuels,
brought to the table that have now integrated, are actually very similar.
Like.
Cousins, maybe, right.
siblings that maybe got a little bit of a different, set
of genes passed down to them.
Fundamental beliefs about flexibility in work and, you know,
sort of a business casual ethos.
A care about quality and premium, a care about product strategy.
Like where, where I actually think we're, we have differences but we're quite
similar cultures and was very intentional in any decision I was going to make about.
Doing a transaction, integrating a business had to be, close enough
that I didn't think it would be, might be inevitably a bit bumpy,
but would not be insurmountable.
for me, I just, you know, you know, it is a journey.
I'll tell you like to this day, it is something that is an
adjustment, for me, but I, at the same time was quite confident that.
You know, that I was, that I was ready for that shift and that waiting until
I was abs, you know, well, I, I'm not sure what the alternative was, waiting
until waiting to seed control until I just couldn't even do the job anymore.
yeah.
So, well, that answers the question.
Eric Karkovack: It does.
It does.
And so you merged in in 2023 and now, it seems like you guys have had separate
brandings still in that time and.
I was wondering, you know what, and we're, we're going to merge the branding
now is basically the big announcement that came out a couple weeks ago.
everything's gonna be under the Fueled brand, but the WordPress practice within
Fueled keeps the 10 up name, right?
Jake Goldman: Yep.
Eric Karkovack: was this always the plan or did you kind of come to that
organically as you moved through, the merger process and kind of got
these two, sibling groups together?
Jake Goldman: I, I, it's a, it's a great question.
I mean, it's more, it's much more the latter, the, in fact,
that's why it, you know, took some period of time to get right.
I think I'll say that, you know, from being earnest about this, I think from
early on there was a recognition before we even had to do any research into it that.
Again, the way that I would describe it is 10, you know, again, I know some
people on my team don't love this word.
The sort of type casting of 10 Up as being a WordPress company was something
pretty, I felt pretty strongly marked upon us, that it would be, even with our own
customers, felt like it was hard to break.
I mean, I, I don't say this to pick on you, but even coming into
this meeting about this, it's, you know, it's Jake and it's 10 up.
It's the WordPress, folks.
I thought that would be a challenge.
I thought that fuel was.
Still was very known in certain spaces like mobile, but when you did research
on fuel, like you, you just type in like generic like app design kind
of buckets, which are much broader than like WordPress, as a category.
You know, fuel would pop up, come up in that research.
So I think from pretty early on there was a sense that it would be easier if
we're trying to tell a story of a much more expansive business to go with that
brand, instead of the set up brand.
But, you know, I think there was a, you know.
There was a lot that had to happen.
I think we wanted to be a little bit diligent about let's validate that theory.
Let's talk to some customers, let's stress test a few of these ideas.
I think we also very much had the notion that it would feel wrong to
simply say, you know, truly being a, this was, you know, truly being
an integration of two businesses.
Not just one company folding into the other, it would feel wrong.
It would be wrong to simply say it's just the fuel brand as it was
with kinda in a new positioning.
So I think we also felt very strongly that there had to be a brand refresh.
There had to be a, a, a brand, a new brand story, to make it clear that even
though we're building on the capital of an existing brand and that this is something
different, this is something refreshed.
This is something, you know.
I'm trying to find a different word than different, meaningfully different
together than it was as two different, two different brands or the old fuel brand.
Eric Karkovack: Any particular challenges in, in doing this kind of rebrand?
I mean, obviously it's a big step for, for these two companies to,
you know, this merged company to, to kind of, take on that new identity
and, sort of reposition yourself.
Jake Goldman: I mean, absolutely.
I mean, it took 18 months, I think.
So hard to even know where to start.
I mean, the challenges range from internal culture ones.
I think it's easy for people that came from what we call the leg, you know,
legacy 10 up the, the old standalone business of 10 up to feel if improperly
handled, improperly structured as a brand refreshed to feel like it's a
sidelining, which is not the intention.
They can feel like that to the team.
So there are cultural implications of making this kind of announcement
when you choose to go through a whole, you know, brand refresh.
I think you.
When you have two very story, dare I say, at least in their respective
spaces, iconic brands, there's a lot of risk to getting it wrong, to feel
like you regressed, as a business.
So I think, at least from my point of view, I.
you know, I wouldn't say, the goal should ever be perfectionism, but a
certain seriousness about like, let's make sure that we do this right.
Let's make sure that, you know, one from my point of view, one chance to really
tell a story about who we are together and what that brand expression is
together and what we look like together.
And even launching a new website from the leaders in the word, you
know, in the WordPress space is a, is a project you take seriously.
so everything from like marketing to literally just the, the.
The grit of going through and making sure everything, you know, you don't
even realize how many old, like internal tools with your brand name
and your icon, you have slapped on it until you go through that process.
so yeah, everything from down in the weeds.
Tooling to culture, investment in buy-in to taking seriously
the work of making it public.
so it reflects well and, and everybody gets it and it connects.
All of it's challenging.
Eric Karkovack: Does, does this rebrand kind of change your focus at all, or
are you kind of still in the same space you were in terms of the, you know,
your daily duties and you know, where you want to, to help the, the merger?
Jake Goldman: The merger has certainly changed.
what I do compared to before the, the brand change specifically, not
particularly, other than to the extent that I put a good amount of my time and
work into helping, the rebrand effort.
Today I carry the title of, which I probably should have
told you before the intro today.
I carry the title of, partner, at the business fueled, which I suppose is a, way
to sort of nebulously make it clear that I have a major shareholder in the business.
I carry a lot of, still carry a lot of like, influence, in the company.
and involved in like, it can be sort of get applied to get involved
in specific projects that are good uses of my, energy and experience.
But I'm, I'm not the, you know, the CEO of the business.
I'm not in the corner office.
I actively consult with the, what we call the platform executive
team, the most senior leaders, I mean, some of their channels still.
but I, you know, I don't even go to those weekly exec meetings.
Right.
Right now I'm, I have, sort of reset myself to give myself some
space to make this adjustment.
I do, I would say if you exclude some of this like brand refresh
work over the last couple of months, that would took a big toll.
I'm probably, you know, I'm working about a, somewhere around a 30 hour a
week schedule, which I'm coming down for maybe 50 hours when you're the guy
plus when you're the guy in charge.
And I help a few, I help some select deals and, sale opportunities or, and,
strategic accounts where I can be helpful.
I.
but most of my time today is actually focused on storytelling and marketing
and, at least a public side of marketing.
So I was very involved in this website refresh, very involved in like our
blog posts, case study publication, social media, and, yeah, I gotta say
I'm having a, having a blast doing it.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I imagine the, the.
Dip in your schedule there, the, the work hours.
Do, do you know what to do with yourself with those other 20 hours?
Jake Goldman: I can imagine sometimes I don't, sometimes I find
myself slipping back into work.
I I don't really, you know, punch the clock.
So I find myself wondering if I'm actually doing 30 hours at the end of the week.
I, I mean, yes and no.
Yeah, I mean, for sure sometimes there are weeks where it's just, it's just, it's
not, it's not that I dislike it, but it's certainly a bit of a, it's certainly an
adjustment sometimes when you're used to.
Not quite adrenaline, but sort of the like, go, go, go, pace that you adjust
to learn to live with, where you do sort of find yourself sitting back
and saying, I, you know, what am I gonna do with myself and is what I'm
gonna do with myself anywhere near as meaningful, as productive as what I used
to do with myself, to occupy my time.
But, you know, on par, you know, I don't think so.
I think, you know, I, I feel more like, what's the word?
Not recovery, but a bit of like re-energizing myself happening in this
time definitely was, you know, a grind for me in terms of how I showed up
as an owner across that many years.
So there's decompression, I think is the word that I'm looking for.
and I, you know, I, you know, I don't talk much about my personal life.
Like I have a daughter, she's nine years old.
That's a precious moment.
And you know, we sort of, we used to have like, you know, her in afterschool
programs and everything else.
Now I gotta.
Three outta five days of the week, I gotta sign off at two o'clock to go pick her up
and make sure she gets something to eat and bring her to after school activities.
So, it keeps me, it keeps me occupied and distracted.
Eric Karkovack: Well, that, that's a great thing.
That's healthy for you, healthy for her.
And, and, you know, that's, it's nice to be able to take that step back,
I imagine after so many years, as you said, grinding, you know, as,
as that, in that founder mentality.
one kind of last thing I want to ask you about a little bit is the tech stack
for this new, fueled website because, I saw you turned it around in about eight
weeks, which I mean, for something that size has got to be, quite the achievement.
So congratulations on that.
And I also noticed that it's using, full site editing, which is still kind of.
Yeah.
A lot of people like myself are still on the fence about using it for production
environments, so I I was just wondering if you could delve into that a little bit,
why you decided on, on full site editing and maybe what kind of tooling you have
to make sure that it, it matches the need of, of, what your company's doing.
Jake Goldman: Great questions and there's so much to delve into there.
and first, I guess I'll plug, if you go to the Fueled website and go
to the blog, there's a story about how we built it in eight weeks.
It gets a little bit more into the weeds and, it's not, you know,
part of that's full site editing.
Part of that is, eating our own dog food here, using tools, generative
AI tools, like cursor, like chat, more rapidly prototype, to be
clear, not finished, but to rapidly get to v ones of new components.
which we think is, you know.
I don't even think it's right to call it the future anymore.
It's the present.
it's rapidly becoming the standard, I guess I would say, for customers.
So there's a lot of things in the mix that let us do it quickly, but certainly
one of those ingredients, is a set of tools and components that we've invested
in that built that let us more rapidly, scaffold more rapidly, build the bones,
and then handle in the editor, not just in code, laying out, certain pages.
on the site.
and there, and there's a couple, I think there's a few things to say about that.
Let me just, we can get a bit of the tactical of like, what are those tools?
How do we build them?
How does it work with full sight editing?
But there's also a strategic point that I think is like over maybe needs
to be said first, which is overarching here, which is, we think that the
main shift that is actively happening in website development will continue
to happen over the next few years.
Is that, Let's say the first like 80, 90% of what it takes to get a sub, to get
routines, not like full web applications or something, but sort of like routine
marketing sites or relatively routine marketing sites or informational sites
stood up, should not involve going in and having to write a lot of code.
To get it there.
that's for a lot of reasons, and again, apropo of the story range from how AI
assist us to increasingly powerful, not just, not just inside WordPress,
but if we look outside of our WordPress bubble to things like Webflow, framer,
other tools that are coming online, I, I, I just, I don't know that I see a
website being competitive again for like marketing sites, informational sites.
If the strategy is, we start with like a basic theme framework
and then we write lots of code.
To build your marketing site.
the time we don't necessarily think budgets will go down, but there's
going to be a higher expectation of what you can do that's custom
and unique, that's specific to your brand with that budget and a higher
expectation that more time is spent.
I think frankly, on creativity, on design, on thinking about, on
testing, on, on measurement and analytics, on personalization,
and not on just like basic site construction to that hypothesis.
Part of that hypothesis to make that hypothesis true for us, if we're gonna
keep using WordPress as one of our major platforms, which we'd like to
do, is to make sure that we have a really strong toolkit so that we can.
at least by our standards, really keep costs under control for the basic
engineering of getting a site stood up and getting very quickly into the browser.
So we're not talking in theory on boards, but we can experiment with layout and see
how it actually feels when you're looking at different devices and different screen
sizes with animation and all the rest.
So.
it's a bit of a, a rambling strategic prelude to say that we have a
internal toolkit that we've built, which is our flavor of a theme
and a set of tools and blocks and components for full site editing.
so it's what you get with WordPress and then there's a good amount of
like, customization on top of that, features that we've added to the editor.
trying to think how to explain it in plain terms, like, Customizations that have to
do with like the panels that are in the dashboard, what we hope, what we show,
what we expose, what we hide in there, and a decent number of custom block components
that we see at which continues to grow, that we see as solving very common, very
repeating needs, things like accordions in the sites to alternative variations
on like what nav, would look like.
so it's not just like vanilla.
WordPress, full sighted thing open.
That is the foundation.
We have a strong toolkit instead of block components and resources on top of that.
I think it's also important to say, maybe this is obvious, but it is
not, especially for a site like that.
It is not that we are doing all the construction in the editor.
we, there is still a decent amount of like building some
custom blocks and components.
There were still CSS that's being edited in the background, so it's, it's,
it's maybe a little bit more hybrid.
That I'm making it sound like you could for my, again, by our Stand by Fueled
or teop practice standards, we can do relatively leanly sites that just use
that toolkit and use a set of like pattern, like, you know, theme json for
those view it your, your listeners that know that like color typography, right.
Instead of customizations on it, we could do actually a pretty decent site,
but the typical site is not no code, I would say it's just much lower code.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a nice opportunity it sounds like, to kind
of refocus your energies, like you said, on creativity and find different things
that you can focus on and, and you're not just stuck writing code all day.
And why isn't this PHP working the way it should?
Yeah.
Everything is just kind of, you know, comes together a little bit.
Nice.
Yeah.
Nicer in that.
Jake Goldman: And there's, if, if you can get the tools right,
and this is what, like web flow and others stuff, figure it out.
There is a real power in like the designers and the creatives and the
content makers being able to work in the actual canvas right there.
It is just, to me, it is palpably different to be able to go into
WordPress or another sort of full page editing experience.
And even if you can't get it a hundred percent of the way there
to get 85, 90% of the way there.
This feels right, this looks good when I kind of resize my browser.
Like to actually play inside the tools, both for efficiencies.
You're not coming up with things that look good in a static mockup
that are just infeasible, right.
On a website.
And also for the creative process.
I maybe a whole other podcast, but I have a whole, I have a whole thing about
the way that like, for a while, website development is getting so complex.
It's becoming impossible for more design creative folks to actually work in the
tools, of making a website that I, I think we've lost something in that.
So I think there's something I like about getting back to.
You know, putting designers, again, putting, kind, being able
to work in laying out pages.
And then again, to be clear for us, it's usually like you get 90% of the way there
and then a good friend of developer's like, oh, I see what you're trying to do.
Let me override in the CSS sheet behind it, or let me add a new
property to that component, or change the block in this way.
so it's a, it's a collaboration.
Eric Karkovack: Yeah, it's definitely, I'm sure change from the, early days of 10 up
and how the approach is and everything.
But, I, I, I want to just, ask one more question here.
I know your time's Precious.
where do you see this combined brand being in a year?
What, what, what are your hopes?
Jake Goldman: I mean, my hope is that we've, I mean many hopes, certainly
like on the business side, that we'll have more customers, we'll have one
more business that did not classically fit either independence company, narrow
definition of the services that we could provide, what we were good at.
More full service projects, more custom web applications where, you
know, it's WordPress great, but We just found you 'cause we think you're
good at solving a bigger problem.
I think from like, you know, certainly from the marketing side, I hope
that within one year that you know everybody that's familiar with the
10 Up brand from the ecosystems where you're playing historically, like the
WordPress ecosystem is familiar with and immediately identifies with the
fueled brand that we are inside of now.
And, that nobody is confused or doesn't know.
Who Fueled is when they mention 10 Up.
So.
I guess I could list 50 more, but maybe those are the, the
two that will resonate here.
Eric Karkovack: Well, I I really appreciate your time today, Jake.
And, where, where can folks find you online?
tell us all about that, that fancy new website and, That people can check out.
Jake Goldman: I mean, certainly go to fueled.com,
and check out the new website.
There's some great blog posts on there about maybe more, about sort of what
the, brand refresh decision frame, you know, what that idea, what that strategy,
behind the brand refresh was, as well as a bit things that are a bit more, a bit
more technical about like how we built the new site and, and leverage new tools.
and then for me personally, I think the best place to connect with me, although
I'm actually quite behind, I have to update my profile after this, after
this recording, is to go to LinkedIn.
and just look for me, Jake Goldman, search for Fueled, or, Jake Goldman
antenna up and I'll, I'll pop up there.
Eric Karkovack: okay.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much for being a part of this.
appreciate you, filling this in on, on your history and, and where the
future lies for Fueled, and, good luck with the, with the future.
Jake Goldman: Thank you.
Great talking to you.