S4 Bonus: Justin Mitchell, Yac

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO

Tech News, News, Business, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.6 • 216 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Justin Mitchell started off wanting to be an actor, dreaming of going off to work for Disney or doing movies. He loved being on the stage, playing sports, and overall, being the center of attention. He loves video games, reading, and generally - he loves making things. He is married with 2 foster boys, and is expecting a new addition soon. And, a lot of the stuff he is building on the side centers around his family. For example, he's creating a solution to incentivize his kids to be human beings - put on deodorant, clean their room, etc - by rewarding them with redeemable tokens, allowing them to cash them in for toys, screen time, or other things. To top it off, the solution he is building is such that it's designed to be a kit - for parents and kids to build the system as a bonding exercise. As a Dad - I think this is absolutely brilliant. He noticed over the years of working remote that the accepted culture of getting stuff done was to have meetings all day. He and his team started thinking about how to increase the amount of communication that happened during the day, without increasing the number of meetings. This is the creation story of Yac. Our Sponsors: * Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com * Check out Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com * Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	We didn't even have a database.
0:02.0	All the friend connections on Yak was a JSON file stored on a server.
0:08.0	One of the kind of golden rules that I live by is that the more features that you give a customer,
0:15.0	the more opportunity they have to have issues with those features.
0:20.0	Either bugs or really just opinions, right?
0:23.7	It's hard to have an opinion about a feature that doesn't exist. It's very easy to have an
0:28.0	opinion about a feature that does exist and feel like it doesn't work well or doesn't satisfy
0:32.9	some requirement of yours. But if you just don't have the feature altogether, there's less
0:37.1	to complain about. This is Justin Mitchell. I'm the CEO and founder of Yak.
0:47.7	This is Code Story, a podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share in the critical moments of what it takes to change in industry
0:57.3	and build and lead a team that has your back.
1:02.4	I'm your host, Noel Lab Park,
1:04.6	and today how Justin Mitchell built a way for remote workers
1:08.5	to have high bandwidth comms without all the meetings.
1:12.6	All this and more on Code Story.
1:20.6	Justin Mitchell started off wanting to be an actor, dreaming of going off to work for Disney or doing movies.
1:26.6	He loved being on the stage, playing sports, and overall being the center of attention.
1:31.3	He loves video games, reading, and generally he loves to make things.
1:37.3	He's married with two foster boys and is expecting a new addition soon.
1:41.3	And a lot of the stuff he is building on the side centers around his
1:45.0	family. For example, he's creating a solution to incentivize his kids to be human beings,
1:49.9	put on deodorant, clean their room, etc. By rewarding them with redeemable tokens, allowing
	...

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