EPISODE #10: Surviving A Tough Market: Advice from Dani Grant, CEO of Jam, on Building Resilience and Speed in a Small Team

Magda: So welcome to How We Built Our Team. Today on the show we have Dani Grant. She is the CEO and founder of Jam.dev, which she started in 2020 to help product design, QA, and engineering leaders ship bug-free software. So since their inception, they've helped more than 10,000 users, which is incredible. And prior to Jam, she was a product manager at Cloudflare where she met her co-founder. And additionally, she's also been an analyst for Union Square Ventures. So she has a ton of insights into startup growth, team building, fundraising, finding product market fit and all of those wonderful things. So welcome to the show, Dani. Dani Grant: Thank you so much for having me. And now actually over 30,000 users. We're super Magda: Oh Dani Grant: psyched. Magda: my gosh. Dani Grant: It's growing Magda: Yes. Dani Grant: fast. Magda: Incredible. Yes. And I know that you've been growing your team also, which is super exciting. So we'll definitely talk more about that, but I want to hear more about the story about moving from cloud flare, meeting your co-founder there and starting jam.dev. What was that process like? What was that conversation like? When did you guys both know that you were ready to do something like that? Dani Grant: I was so lucky that right out of school... Cloudflare, this fast growing startup, 100 people, hired me as the fourth product manager there. And I got to learn from just an amazing management team, work with amazing engineers, and get to ship things that would have this big reach and that were ambitious. Cloudflare is a very audacious company. And they pushed me to think big and move fast. And I couldn't have asked for a more amazing first out of college opportunity. It was a dream. When the company grew, at some point it was like a thousand something people, they realized it was harder to take risks, but not impossible. And they needed to set themselves up in a way where they could take huge risks that could ultimately pay off, but without betting the company. And so what Cloudflare decided to do, which is very unique, I've never heard of another company that does this, is they created a product team. off to the side that could take big risks, launch big things, sunset them, launch new things, but without distracting the core company. So it was two product managers, 30 engineers off to the side. And I was one of the PMs on that team. My co-founder was the other PM. And it was there just trying to move really fast and ship new products into the world. We saw just how much that back and forth between product and engineer about bugs and fixes was slowing us down. And in the in-person world, what we would do is we'd just grab our laptop and we'd walk around the office and we'd go find the engineer. We're trying to have solve this issue. And we would just hand them the laptop and we'd say, here, it's perfect for you to debug now, on my laptop. Here, you can go fix it. But then the world went remote and there was no virtual way to do that. And we realized we can go and we can build it. And that became Jam. Magda: That's awesome. And what was the process like of meeting your co-founder? I know that you've talked a bit about that. I wanna hear from your own words what that story is like. Dani Grant: we met on such an awesome team. Our job was to launch net new businesses for Cloudflare. And so that's what we learned to do together. We've had to make tough decisions together. We've had to go through stressful times together. I am always in shock whenever I hear co-founders sort of met right before starting a company. I think that when you're starting a company together, one of the things that you're trusting as co-owners of that company is that when push comes to shove, the two of you will... crawl through glass to make things work. And actually, that's what everyone is betting on. That's why the team joins you. They trust you in hard times. You won't give up. That's why investors bet on you. They trust you. There will be near-death experiences for the company. And they're trusting that the two of you, or however many co-founders, you will figure it out. And you'll put your heads together in those moments. And so I think meeting a co-founder through work is one of the really great ways to know, like, what are they like in really stressful times, not just when things are going fine. Katy Culver: Yeah, that's definitely true. I know our founders share the same sentiment and have given that feedback to folks as well, you know, being friends before starting a company is really important. You've also mentioned before that many startups kind of start off by doing just one thing really, really well. How did you identify that initial one thing for Jam and how did you build a team around it? What were some of the qualities or skills you were looking for when, when hiring people to join your, your one thing at Jam? Dani Grant: In between Cloudflare and Starting Jam, my co-founder, Sada Cloudflare, I went off and tried being a VC for a while. And so I've seen 200 early stage startups pitch their companies, like start the process of being a founder. And something I noticed over and over and over again is that often they would look at what's successful today, like Facebook, Salesforce, and they'd say, these are platform companies. They do a lot of things. They are a whole ecosystem. And so they think, okay, I need to build a platform. I need to build an ecosystem. In today's world, it's not valuable enough just to do one thing. But those companies didn't get there in one day. Those are decade plus old companies. And what they did is they started by just doing one narrow thing, but they did it well. And they earned the trust of their users to do another thing and another thing and another thing until over time, it became an ecosystem. And it's not the only way to build a startup, but I do think it de-risks things. I think with such a small team. with such high risk, but every effort you do, the more you can focus, the better. There are of course, counter examples. Like I'm a huge fan of Rippling, of Parker Conrad and the way that he's building his company. It's sort of a multi-company company. But also note that this is not his first stab at solving the problem that Rippling is solving. He actually had a whole company before that just did sort of started with one thing and then grew. And he learned from that and then was able to build Rippling so well that does so many things. So I really do think like, as you look at the arc of startups, this seems to be... the way that a lot of startups start successfully. Magda: I'm curious too to know from your time at Union Square Ventures, was there a quality that you noticed across founders or like a pattern that you saw across pitches that stood out to you as someone you knew was going to be successful? Is there like a quality that you were looking for? Dani Grant: I mean, gosh, you never know. But what really inspired me is everyone I saw there, they were people who they saw some problem in the world that was affecting them. And instead of waiting for someone else to solve it, they said, okay, I'm on it. I've got it. And I'm gonna go and try and solve it for everyone. And that's very inspiring to see. When I started in VC, I didn't see myself as someone who would start a company, but seeing that over and over, I just thought, yes, my co-founder and I, we face this problem firsthand and we can go and we can solve it for an industry. When most people realize how much software, like building software has changed in the last 30 years, it's night and day. But actually the process of logging bugs has not changed at all since the 1990s. We went from logging bugs to in a text file to a database to like a nice UI, like JIRA and then now like variants of JIRA. But really the process itself has not changed. It is. fully manual, it is up to the person who is logging the bug to figure out what information the engineer needs in order to solve it. And then get all that information and put it into a ticket manually. And then the engineer has to figure out what's going on, and there's a back and forth. It's a slow, archaic process. But in a company, that's not your main focus. Your main focus is not solving this bug reporting process that's slowing you down a bit. Your main focus is to ship for your users and just kind of push it. push through whatever bad processes there are. And so it really takes a company external that can focus on that one process and improve it for everyone. And I think seeing those founders really inspired me to work with Ertifa, my co-founder, to try and do that. I will say, from watching so many founders pitch, I do have some tips and suggestions for founders who are going out to pitch about what really stands out from the VC side. So Magda: Yeah, I'd love to hear that. Dani Grant: I'll. I should also caveat with like in this funding market, this is like, do you remember there was that really big ship in the Suez Canal Magda: Yes. Dani Grant: that couldn't pivot? And then that little digger came to rescue it. Magda: Yes! Dani Grant: So this advice is like the little digger. It's like just the polish on top, but it's not going to, you know, the market really determines most things. So one framework that founders can have when they go out to pitch is that they are in the business of delivering a good meeting. And just having that as your framework helps you make a lot of the micro decisions throughout. Like for example, should you meet on Zoom or should you meet in person? Well, if your job is to give a great meeting that makes the VC say like, wow, something special is happening there, or I want to work with that person, like sign me up for a 10, 15 year relationship to IPO, you should pick the one that you're gonna come across great with. If you decide to meet over Zoom, when the Zoom opens, Should you ask about where they're based? Or should you just jump into what you really want to talk about? Talk about a feature demo you saw this morning from your team, or a customer you just talked to, or a big win you just had. And just say, I'm flying high from that. I'd love to tell you about it. It also helps you understand, should you present the deck? Or should you do a demo? It's like, well, what's a good meeting? What's going to be high energy? And it also helps you understand how much you should be talking versus them. You want to bring them in. Create a great space where you're collaborating on the business. If the meeting goes great and you end up working together, you're going to work together for like 15 years. And so you actually do want to even try out working together and see like, do I like how this person thinks about my business? Do I enjoy this even? And you want them to think the same. Magda: Yeah, I love that advice because it's similar. I didn't, as many people in tech, I didn't start in tech or get a degree in tech and I started in theater. And that's something that we hear as well is like, you definitely don't want to forget about your audience. Your audience is incredibly important. And if you're there and if you're providing an experience for them, you wanna make sure that it's worth their while. So I think that's awesome advice. So where do you shine most is also like something I heard in that question. But you mentioned before, remote work has sort of shifted the way that engineering teams work together, and even that bug bashing is created as a process. So I'm curious to know how you've made Jam a really great remote team. I know that you guys are small and you're scaling right now, but what processes have you implemented to make it super collaborative and make things like fixing bugs really simple? Dani Grant: Remote has so many things that are so great and so many things that I miss about the in-office world. But one thing I've learned so much is if you're gonna do remote, you actually have to be really intentional about all your decisions because things can go to chaos so much faster. So one thing that we think a lot about is how do we leverage remote to move really fast? Because as a startup, that's the only competitive advantage we have against the giants is our ability to be nimble, to execute quickly. And so a couple of things we do. One is there's nothing that creates momentum, like excitement on the team. But in the, well, in the office world, you can turn your laptop and say like, look at what I'm doing, and the person next to you can light up. That doesn't really happen in a remote setting. And so we've created two ways to do this. One is we have a Slack channel called What's Cooking. And this is where you're supposed to share in-progress stuff. Like share stuff as it's coming together, because that's the exciting stuff that everyone wants to see. And people, when they share, they get a ton of great feedback right away, like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be awesome. Sometimes people have great ideas and suggestions. And so it not only makes things better, but it also keeps this great momentum. We also, in standup, nothing is worse than a long and boring standup where everyone is actually just multitasking. That does not create momentum on a team. So we have a rule. Everyone gets one minute to talk, because that's actually all you need to give everyone a sense of what you're working on, why, and where you're at throughout. But there's an exception. So if you share your screen and stand up, you get unlimited time. And that's because we want to encourage everyone to share. Through that, we're trying to say, hey, we want to see what you're doing. And it's so fun to get to do that. And that creates this momentum, this excitement. The ball is rolling. Now someone's seen a draft of something. Let's get it out the door. And so those are two things we do. Katy Culver: That's awesome. It seems like you've been really intentional about building a remote team in terms of how you work together. Can you maybe share a little bit more about how you filter for people to bring on the team when you're doing hiring? I don't know if the advice around bring a really great meeting also applies to interviewing. But curious if you can share any thoughts on how you've intentionally built your team. Dani Grant: I feel so lucky. I love the team we have today at Jam. I was talking to a founder about a year ago who was on his third startup. And I was like, I'm on my first startup. What advice do you have? And he said, you know, I'm on my third startup because the first two, you know, like ended at some point. And so he says, well, why do it if it's going to end? Like if it's not gonna be the outcome that you wanted, what still makes it worth it? And he said, for him, it was the opportunity to get to work with his team. And that really resonated with me and stuck with me. And it gave me this appreciation for the every single day. I mean, we hope to build an Atlassian sized company one day, but that will take 15 years. And so we have to appreciate the journey. And it's these moments getting to collaborate with the team at Jam that really that this matters and basically nothing else. So early on, Ertifa, my co-founder and I, sat together and tried to figure out like, what is it that we love about our current team that we want to keep as we hire? And the first thing we did is we just listed out all of those qualities that we just love about the current team, why we love working with them. Like our team takes work very seriously. They're very hardworking, very industrious, but they don't take themselves seriously. It's a very goofy bunch. Like the product they take seriously, the mission they take seriously themselves, it's jokes that round. And so We love that. We love that it's very we-oriented. Everyone on the team, if something's going wrong, let's say there is an issue in production. There is no blame. If someone's feeling stressed or not letting it affect their communication, it's just we win together, lose together. Let's jump in. Let's figure this out. Let's jump in a call. Let's see what we can do. And so we listed out all those traits. And then the next thing we did is we listed out what are questions we could ask to identify whether a candidate also matches on those traits that matter to us. And that is how we crafted our founder interview process, is just to try to find people that will continue the culture that makes Jam the company that it is. And so some of those things on this list. So I mentioned too, another one is, our team is so kind, they're all incredible in their own right, but so humble. And when someone needs help, they reach out to help. I see... constantly people pairing. If someone says they're stuck on something and stand up, someone else will reach out to help. And so we ask candidates, hey, what are some words that you've heard people use to describe you or describe working with you, like your colleagues? And you sort of get a picture there. And often people who are really helpful will say like, often my colleagues tell me that I've been helpful. You know, the question isn't everything, but it gives some sense. Another one is when you want ambition. in every corner of the team. And so one question we ask is we ask, tell me about a time you didn't get assigned anything to work on. And some people are like, well, you know, it was great. Watched a lot of YouTube. And some people are like, I knew users were having this problem, and I just wanted to solve it for them. I thought it'd be a huge opportunity. Or I knew our code base had this issue with it, and it was bothering me every day and finally got a chance to solve it myself. And so we look for the, you know, seeing the big picture, thinking about the business and finding ways to impact it. There are a couple more, but maybe that's a good. Magda: Yeah, that's awesome. I think also I know for us, we've had positive reinforcement and recognition be a part of our remote team. It sounds like you compliment or give feedback on things in progress. Do you also have like another feedback loop to make sure that you're giving that like gratitude and positive feedback to your team? Dani Grant: One of the things you're doing when you're building a startup is it's not really about any given project. It's about building this machine that knows how to execute really well together. And so one thing we do is every time we're done with a project or any time something goes wrong, we do a retro. And retros are super important because we're We're fixing the machine, we're iterating on it. And it's not like you can do like 10 retros and now you're done, like, because the team will grow over time and it will change and the demands of the business will change and the users will change and our code base will change. And so constantly we're working on like, how do we improve as working together? And as part of that, there's a moment where we talk about well, what we're grateful for. Katy Culver: Yeah, that's nice. Another question that comes up that startups often struggle with is kind of figuring out how to compensate people at the early stages of a team. Do you have any insights to share experiences regarding kind of standardizing comp at Jam? Kind of what factors you consider? How did you ensure fairness and kind of aligning with industry standards in the early stages of doing that? Dani Grant: I think we did two things early on that most companies of our stage, I don't think do that early. I think this is usually a later stage thing. One is standardize around our interview questions. But the other was standardizing how we do comp. And the reason for that is because we want to hire incredible people and we want them to be fully focused on working together as a team and achieving something great together. It's win together, lose together in startups. Like most startups fail and then there's nothing at the end. But some startups make it together and it's life-changing and career-changing for everyone involved. And so we really want everyone focused on building something lasting and not focused on their own personal, like, you know, short-term comp. Like it just seems like a really negative team to be a part of if that's what everyone has to focus on and so We decided no negotiations. So that way no one has to like we're not rewarding anyone for being better at negotiating I'm a terrible negotiator. I like I would not succeed in a situation where I'd have to negotiate for myself And that's like the salary band and so what we did is we just looked at a bunch of market data This is all kudos to my co-founder by the way. He really led this He asked all of our VCs for what market data they had access to pulled it all And then... just like we picked our percentile and we said, that's what we're paying. There are always gonna be companies that pay more. There are always gonna be companies that pay less, but that's ours and if you join, that's what you're gonna get. And we tell candidates this very early on in the process because they should know what they're gonna get and they should know if it's gonna work for them. That's on the salary side. On the equity side, we're at like the 99.999th percentile. That really matters to us. This is a shared ownership sport. This is a team sport and we want everyone to really feel like they. They own a meaningful piece of jam and that this can really impact their lives. Magda: I know that during the recent market downturn, a lot of startups had questions around how to standardize comp in a world that a lot of the salaries that tech was seeing in the years past were pretty inflated. So how did you and your team think about that? I know that you've recently started hiring again and you've mentioned the percentile. Is there anything else that you talked about with your VCs or your team around shifting that mindset or shifting those practices around the market? Dani Grant: We're very lucky to be in a situation where we've never had to stop hiring, that our plans as a startup don't change based on the economic environment around us. But in order to be in that position, it's really up to us as founders to keep a very level head and to say, yes, there is an opportunity to make a million dollars by joining Google today, but Google is not a jam. Your joining Goldman Sachs today does not. created the career defining moment for you. You don't get to build a company. You don't get to solve a problem for the software industry from scratch. You don't get to be, you don't get the experience of creating something with a group that may go on to be much bigger than all of us combined. And so, so we've always tried to just sort of stick to a principled approach, keep a level head. And what that means is that we're in a fortunate situation where we're not having to now in a downturn adjust anyone's salary expectations on the team. We don't have to change how we're doing hiring. We can just sort of keep going. Magda: Yeah, that's really interesting. Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by you've never been in a position where you've had to stop or pause hiring? Does that mean that you're always kind of always recruiting or always keeping a pipeline? What does that look like at Jam? Dani Grant: We believe that for a startup, a small team can actually do way more than a big team. Like, you know, a startup, you're building the Beatles. Like every single person is going to be awesome, but together they're going to come together and have this like creative, special energy of creating things. And so it's much harder to create a 20 person Beatles than it is to create a four person Beatles. Right. And so we're trying to keep the team as small. lean, senior as possible so that we can move even faster, so that communication within the team is even tighter, so the trust is there. Right now the team is 10. I told our investors that Instagram was 13 people when they were bought for a billion dollars and that that's my goal. They all laughed, they thought I was joking, but I really do think that small teams can do a lot. You know, my co-founder and I, we come from Cloudflare. One of the things that we saw over and over again at Cloudflare is that when a project was important, they actually put fewer people on it, not more. And that allowed them to be more thoughtful, take more ownership and move faster. And so we really believe in that. Magda: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's great. I know that also something that's happening and shifting in the engineering space and also in the tech space in general is just the use of AI as an assistant or a tool that helps you do your job a lot better. I'm curious how, as you've been growing, how you assess for somebody who has that skill set, who knows how to utilize AI in a way that makes them better at their job. Do you assess for that at this point in time? Are you thinking about how to assess for that? in the future. Dani Grant: It's very interesting. What we've found by using these tools ourselves is that it's very, very good as an assistant at very discrete problems, like for example, Copilot is really good for writing a function within a file. But Copilot does not step back and look at the code base as a whole with all of the repos and all of the services running across a whole infrastructure and think thoughtfully about how to design a new feature. And same for on the copywriting side. So, you know, a marketer can get like a pretty good newsletter. from chat GPT, but it doesn't have the context of who we are as a brand and how we speak to our users and the consistency that our users expect from us and the feeling that there is a person behind this that has worked hard there continuing the conversation with. It just kind of sounds a little different. And so what we find is that by hiring actually more senior, we're hiring people who are able to take the building blocks given to them by these AI assistants and then thoughtfully craft it into whatever doing. I think that actually in today's environment, it's much more challenging to be a junior engineer or a junior marketer or a junior PM with access to these tools where you can very quickly get to something working and then forget that actually part of your job is to thoughtfully craft it in. As a more senior engineer, you tend to think that way because that's how you coach the junior folks on your team. And so that's definitely something we talk about as a team is like, how do we take those benefits but also craft them in? I do think this will change what it means to be in any of these roles where you can use AI assistance. For example, if you're an engineer that really just loves the syntax, loves the programming element of it, that part is really much faster for AI to sort of catch up on because it's language. But if you're an architect-oriented engineer or a product-oriented engineer, and you sort of want to take the programming, but bring it in to create something larger and think thoughtfully about a large scope of an infrastructure or product and how to really bring it to life using what's now available, like just kudos to you. And I think that as AI evolves, engineers will more and more and more be these sort of architects, creative. product focus. So it will change, I think, the role and who we and every company hires for it. Magda: Yeah, that's super interesting. I think that's totally something that, I mean, you can't really get somebody to have that sort of nuance and context unless there's a human in the loop. I'm curious how you assess for that in the interview process. How do you look for somebody who has big picture thinking and can sort of step back and have the creative problem solving needed to, you know, solve those big feature issues or create the next big feature? Dani Grant: We always do a project as part of the interview, like for engineering, we give a prompt the day before, like, hey, we're going to architect this type of system. Imagine we work at this well-known company and we want to add this feature. And they come in, they meet the whole team and they talk together about how they're going to do it. So the whole team can learn, like, how do they think about it? Does it align with how we think about it? But I think there's one more thing, which is that to find people that won't stop at it's done, that will be like, OK, I have something, but I want to bring it in and make it better. You want to see how they act throughout the interview process. What we found is that people who are in the role that go above and beyond, they also went above and beyond in the interview process. They took an extra step somewhere. We saw that extra effort. So for example, one of our recent engineering hires in the interview process showed up to the system design interview and not only had a like architecture diagrams, but also thought about what the UI will look like for the end user based on the architecture and had done all these mockups. Like it's above and beyond. We just made a marketing hire as part of the interview process. They went above and beyond to show up at the first interview with a list of thoughts and ideas and strategies that they would want to try, given all the research they had done about Jam. And so I think that by looking for people who are in the interview process going above and beyond, you find the people that won't stop at like, Chad's UBT generated this, so now I'm done. Katy Culver: Yes. Magda: Yeah, Katy Culver: I Magda: that makes a lot of sense. Sorry, go ahead, Kitty. Katy Culver: was going to say on that same vein, you only recently started scaling growth and marketing teams. Obviously your core first early hires were engineers, which is also helpful since you're building a product for engineers. But when did you know you were ready to build up that arm of, of jam, the kind of growth marketing, more business oriented side. Dani Grant: When you're early in the company, the first job is just to figure out product market fit. Like, when you're building a product solution to a problem that's never had a product solution to it, you have to do some inventing. And most likely you don't get it right on the first try. So it just takes a lot of tries. And I know you've reached product market fit. Like until you see users retaining, telling other users, those users coming in and retaining, The only focus is just, it's really like team and product. Like you really don't lift your head too much. But suddenly you find yourself in this place where it's like, oh, it's working, it's retaining, it's growing and the new people who are coming in are retaining too and they're telling other people. And there's sort of virality to it, at least for a product led growth company like ours. And so then it's like. Okay, now it's time to grow out this from a product org to a real company that has other functions. And how can we accelerate what's already happening and help even more teams with what we're building? And so the first function that we've built out is a marketing team. We now have two people on it. They are awesome. And they've and it's changed how our company works together. The conversations are no longer just like product and engine design. this the product end design org is doing all this cool stuff. How do we help connect with our users and show them what work we're doing for them and why? And so that's just, it's been really, really cool to see. It's all very recent, like last few months. We grew, you know, in the early days, I would like read these blog posts, how Notion got its first thousand users, how Figma got its first thousand users. And I try to figure out like, what's the channel? What's the marketing hack? But what I didn't quite internalize then is that For product-led growth companies, there is no marketing hack. The product is the marketing. The product grows itself. And so just by focusing on product and making sure it's so good that people tell other people, it's so good that people use it and other people see them using it, that will actually grow the company. And so before we brought on any marketers, we had reached 20,000 users and now it just crossed 30,000 and are super excited to keep going. Magda: That's awesome. And I know that product-led growth is just something that a lot of companies are adopting right now. What kind of marketer were you looking for a PLG? Or what kind of marketer should you look for a PLG company? Dani Grant: This is such an interesting question. We had a couple of hypotheses and I'll tell you where we landed, but time will tell. So one hypothesis, and this is really like very much crafted by the woman we just brought in to lead growth marketing, is that in a traditional sales led company, founder led sales happens over relationships, over emails, over intros, but in a product led growth business, the founder led sales is happening kind of elsewhere. You're helping people see the product come together. And through the product experience, you're sort of telling a story about what you aim to do for the user and what they should expect, like what they should trust that you're going to try and achieve for them. And so you want someone that thinks in this way. And it's not so much like, add campaign, sponsor this. But it's like, how do we connect with our users and try to deliver them? not only impact in their jobs, but also to show them through showcasing the work happening inside the company that we're working hard on it and that we hear what they're telling us and that we want to deliver even more value. One thing that we've started doing a lot more of is just posting online, which, you know, a month ago I would have said I'm so uncomfortable with that. But two things we've realized. One is, we as founders have benefited so much from all these other founders that have posted online what they're learning. And so it feels like, okay, now we've got to give back too. But another thing is happening, which is, we don't really want to build a boring company where there's a sort of wall between the users and the company. We actually want the users to feel like they're brought in to see how we are trying to help them, to be able to comment on it, to give us feedback. And so that was happening a ton over Slack channels we had set up with a couple of users, emails to users, but how to do it at a scale where you have 30,000 users, where you sort of have to broadcast and invite them to comment. And so as we've been doing that more and more since bringing in marketers who've encouraged us to speak more online, we've started having all these conversations with our users who are giving us feedback about how we're building the company, who are just in the conversation with us. And I think that that's really special and very different. And I think very different than building like a sales led company. Magda: Yeah, and to your point, I mean, I know that we discovered you because of the posts that you've been doing recently on LinkedIn that talked a lot about, you know, how you met your co-founder and other things that are really exciting about Jam and new developments and new features that you guys are working on. So kudos to your team and kudos to building a personal brand, which I know is sort of like the hot topic right now, but it really does make a difference, I think, when it comes to what you're saying is product-led growth is... the product is selling the company, but founders still have a part of that. It's just not the sort of function that they've necessarily held in founder-led sales. We've sort of reached the end of our conversation, which is unfortunate because I feel like this has been such an awesome conversation. But we just have a few final questions to close out with for you, Danny. But my last question before we launch into our sort of rapid fire round is... Any final tips for startups that are hiring in this market or who are thinking of starting their own company right now with sort of the market being in like a weird, maybe less stable place than it was a few years ago? Dani Grant: It's a really, really tough market. Extremely so. I think that this creates tough founders. In every company's journey, there are times when things are really good and there are times when things are rock bottom. And there's no company I've ever heard of that has not had a rock bottom moment. But if you start in one and through having to pitch 100 VCs to raise any money and being turned down and having to, you know, like through having to suffer through this tough time in the economy. you see day to day is the impact that we are aiming to make as a startup. Is it meaningful enough for me to keep going? Because at some point in the company, one way or another, you will have to ask yourself that question. And so it's actually a good thing that founders are asking themselves that on day one in this market. One tip I, I give two tips to every, every person I know who's about to start a company. The first is take lots of photos and screenshots. This is something Michelle Zatlin, one of the co-founders of Plug Player, told the company and it stuck with me and I'm so happy we have photos from the early days and we wouldn't have because you never stop to think let's take a screenshot of this moment in our Slack. But yes, early stage founders take lots of photos, screenshots, you will want them later. And then the second is, you know, in a best case scenario, you're going to be working on your company for like a decade. Like in a best case scenario, Jam is my 30s, which is awesome. I'm super excited about that. But on day one, it's really hard to remember that this might be a really long journey. And so you have to pick not only a problem space that you will be interested in talking about in every conversation you have. Even when you go to a party, you meet strangers, they're gonna ask you what you're working on. They're gonna have lots of follow-up questions. When you talk to your family, they're gonna ask you about your company. Just every conversation you have is gonna be about this problem space, so you better just love it. But the second is you really choose your tribe. The people you are going to spend time with for the next 10 years, your investors, your team. your customers. They are the people that you choose when you choose what to work on. And just make sure it's a group people that you love. We got so lucky with Jam. Our people, they're all builders, they're all trying to make some impact in the world. And it's so fun to get to talk to our users because they are so motivated and product driven and they're builders and we love them. And so, you know, find a group like that, that you just you just want to spend more time. Katy Culver: Those are really good tips. I can feel the energy through the screen from you on talking about this problem space, so clearly you've picked the right one. Do you have any, oh, I'm sorry, we already asked any final tips. As a wrap up, we like to ask a series of rapid fire questions, so don't think too hard. But the first question is, what is your favorite interview question to ask candidates? Dani Grant: Oh, we've talked about so many interview questions. I think beyond interview questions, I think that one thing you just wanna suss out is like, does this, do I want to keep working here? And so the more that you can create, go from questions to just start working and solutioning together and see like, do we collaborate well? I think the better. Magda: Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of you bringing in an engineer, side note, bringing in an engineer to meet with your entire team and sort of collaborate with them on a problem. That's really unique and awesome. Second question is, what's an all-time favorite book that you'd recommend? Can be professional or fun, doesn't matter. Dani Grant: I love books about ambitious people going to and trying to do something very, very difficult out in the world. Like, I just love that. There is one book that once you start, okay, you need to get past chapter two, but then you will not put it down until you're done. It is Red Notice by Bill Browder. This is someone who tried to do something very, very big, very, very difficult and went up against one of the toughest governments in the world and tried to fight for something he believed was right. And oh my gosh, this, it's so good. Enjoy. Katy Culver: Okay, once we get to chapter three, we'll be hooked. Dani Grant: Yeah, skip the first two chapters, just start on three. Katy Culver: That's good advice. I feel like a lot of people put them down in the first few pages. Where do you physically go in the world to spark inspiration? Dani Grant: I haven't- extroverted thinker, like I need to think out loud through conversation. And actually one of the toughest parts of being in a remote team is that the people are not there to have the conversations with at that time that you need to think through something. And so I have a hack for it, which is I step outside, I put on a podcast that's sort of roughly about the topic that I'm interested in thinking through. And I just start to put it on. And at some point I'll turn off the podcast, but it's just gotten sort of my brain thinking. And that's when I can have the like. sort of clearest thoughts. That's when I start to take notes. It's outside, it's walking, and it's listening to someone's smart speak first, so then it sparks all the new ways of thinking. Magda: Yeah, I love that. I recently heard that in the Korean language, the term for walking means to figure something out. It's like a verb that means figuring out a mental state. So that makes complete sense, that walking. We all feel that way when we walk, we like to figure stuff out, so that's Dani Grant: It's Magda: great. Dani Grant: awesome. Magda: Our last question is, what's one thing that you're looking forward to right now? Dani Grant: Oh, I'm going to meet my team next week. So right now I'm in Tel Aviv here to judge a QA competition, which like is so cool that this exists. I just love hackathons and like technology focused events that celebrate builders. And this is no different. And from here, I'm going to hop over to Belgrade and meet four people on the team. And I can't wait to see them. Magda: That's awesome. That's so exciting. Well, Dani, it's been really, really great chatting with you. It feels like this flew by and it was just jam, truly jam packed, Katy Culver: I'm sorry. Magda: not to use the word jam, but jam packed with a ton of insights and strategies from your early days. And it sounds like you're building a really incredible team and company at Jam. And I really wish you all the best. And I know that you will have tons of success. Dani Grant: Thank Magda: So Dani Grant: you Magda: thanks Dani Grant: so Magda: for Dani Grant: much. Magda: coming on the show. Dani Grant: Too kind, thank you, and thanks for having me.