The ABC’s of UI/UX w/ Dave Sroka | Ep. 93

In this podcast episode, David and Gary speak with the CTO of BEAM Diagnostics, Dave Sroka. They have a lively conversation about all things UI and UX, sock returns, shiny boxes and everything in between.

Links:

Dave's LinkedIn

BEAM LinkedIn

BEAM Website

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:05

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I am joined as usual by Gary Voight, who just got back off of a 24 hour Bender on Ticketmaster buying his seats for the Beyonce tour. Are you excited about it? Are you part of the Beyhive? Gary?

Gary: 0:25

Yeah, can we be all the way? My kids? I'm sorry about college girls, but you know, one ticket

David: 0:32

one ticket up front, do you get the VIP experience?

Gary: 0:36

I'm going to try to scalp though.

David: 0:38

I hear there's like a glittery unicorn or something that's part of the show. So that should be exciting for you. I know how you do love glitter.

Gary: 0:46

I love unicorns more than glitter. But that's a bonus.

David: 0:50

Oh, our guests is get very excited over here.

Dave: 0:53

I got dancy pantomime for days.

David: 0:57

Oh, that is lovely. So that that dulcet tone that you hear is Dave sroka. He is our guest today. He is the chief technology officer at beam diagnostics. Welcome, Dave. How you doing?

Dave: 1:10

I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for having me. This is a good time.

David: 1:13

I want to dive into some nerdy stuff with you. Because that seems like right up your alley.

Dave: 1:18

giant nerd.

David: 1:18

So first off, tell me about beam diagnostics. Just give me the 30,000 foot view and we'll dive in later. Yeah, for sure.

Dave: 1:25

So we're a digital health company at our heart. Our goal we're trying to improve patient centered healthcare with with assessments is kind of the main main thing we're trying to help out with is a lot of times, it's very difficult for providers and hospitals to identify folks with a number of mental health issues. For a lot of reasons they're stigmatized is difficult, and providers are overburdened. So our quick assessments try and give a little bit of a guidance with kind of bringing it down to numerical data by making it easy for patients and easy for providers to use. So we take they basically patients take our assessment, and it gets fed back into the EHR system, electronic health records, like epic, and some of the things that you may be familiar with, so that the providers can have that data and decide what to do with it to provide good care.

David: 2:11

So you're saying we would use your app to fill out the 8000 questions before I go visit the doctor. And then they would have that on their tablet? Or

Dave: 2:20

fortunately for us, it's actually like, it's about five questions. It takes about two to three minutes. So we're kind of part and parcel we're trying to get into that initial flow, where you fill out questions, but our parts really, really low burden, and things like that. But yeah, we'd be part of that that sort of electronic flow, you sign in, you take your things you provide your provider with what they need, and then you can provide care, trying to make basically mental health as accessible as bloodwork.

David: 2:42

Very cool. So as yours is all focused on mental health, not just health,

Dave: 2:46

yeah, mental health, specifically for us. So that's where our strategic pillar work that some of our co founders and advisors has to have done in this space, to really identify a very quick and extremely highly accurate way to assess this in a great way. So it definitely goes into our mental health, addiction, impulses kind of space and trying to target and identify some problematic areas that can be helped.

David: 3:10

So what do you think of the hubbub and the dreams and stuff of AI diving in with the doctor space, like the idea that we that every doctor will be carrying around a gizmo doodad, who listens to a patient, and can then diagnose them because they've read every medical transcript on the planet?

Dave: 3:33

I think so for us. And in terms of particular, we're kind of investigating AI as a as a tool. I mean, as for everybody, at the end of the day, AI is just another tool, for my opinion. And this is kind of where I changed my mind a long time, if you don't have someone behind it to interpret it, we are a long way away from that being able to replace anybody and especially with the medical space, it is really, really challenging to completely replace the sort of medical medical provider. And the biggest problem with preferred providers is the fact that they're overburdened with trying to make a lot of decisions for for patients and things like that. So in my opinion, what we have, we have an opportunity to help reduce that burden with a lot of current tools, AI being one of them. And if we can provide really quick ways to filter the amount of information a provider has to take in on a daily basis to be an expert, and not even just a daily basis. But as medical as medicine changes. And things like that is very difficult. So for me, where I come from is I'm really excited to see what kind of things as an industry as the medical professionals can use to help it I don't particularly think it's possible to get away from having, you know, human involved in that to interpret that because right now we have we have a billion new tools like AI, we've gotten to the point where AI is the hot buzzword for us. We've been working with data analytics, we've been working with all sorts of machine learning for a while now, this isn't really new, to help us interpret this. It's just a nice, nice little shiny marketing term for me for us. I mean, obviously there's a lot more that goes into it, but it's a really nice way to package it and make it peeling, we've been working on this for a while. And the end goal is to make it easier for everyone to do what they want to do. And that's provide the best care that they want to provide and do it quickly, easily and move on to the next one and not be exhausted the end of the day. So for me, I'm excited to see what we can do with that.

David: 5:16

Where I see AI becoming useful. And across industries for development. And I mentioned before, almost our entire actually, I think our entire team now uses a thing called copilot, which is basically a tool that Microsoft has released through GitHub that allows that helps you create code, you can type a little comment saying I'd like to loop through the blah, blah, blah, and it'll generate a blob of code. I talked to a new developer, and they were like, should I really lean into this? I was like, Absolutely not. Because it's not very good. It is helpful. It gets rid of a lot of the monotony of typing. But I was just working on I was working late last night on a client. And it suggested the right if statement, not to get super nerdy, but what it did was, instead of are these two things equal? It said, are these two things not equal? And I just said, I looked at a curse orally, just on a glance, I said, Yeah, that looks like boom, but it was completely backwards. And if you don't know what right looks like, Boy years, you're in a real bad spot. And I'm thinking for medical, I can't imagine, in my lifetime, maybe I'm wrong, maybe there will be some massive jump, but I don't expect doctors to be replaced. But I could totally see, even like a mental health expert. If I'm a psychologist, and I'm sitting there talking to my person, I've got my notebook like I always do, I'm taking notes. But I've got this little gizmo sitting here recording the entire chat and transcribing it and all of that. And it notices it, it's let's say it's using AI to highlight key terms like trigger words, or whatever things that are scary, or very poignant, or whatever. And it says, I'm going to summarize your last hour session with Joe over here. And here are the things that I called out on it. I could totally see a psychologist look at that, go and compare that to my notes. Did I miss anything, right? That is super powerful,

Gary: 7:06

it can eliminate some of the guesswork of like doing the research prior to that's the one thing that I think AI and the health industry is going to the health industry is going to benefit from AI is doing a lot of that research work. And at least like you said, some are summarizing it to the point where they can make educated decisions, but not have to spend hours and hours and hours finding those summaries themselves.

Dave: 7:29

I mean, that's a great example with a psychiatrist psychologist is that it also add benefit will allow them to be present in that patient interview, and really be receptive for the things that maybe you might miss while you're too busy trying to write or think about it, and you can be like engaged and present in there and have that benefit too. So I mean, I think that's probably gonna end up being the sweet spot. I mean, there's there's literally no way I mean, aside from like, we've talked about the feasibility of sort of replacing doctors, it's not there that we have an entire world we haven't talked about with ethical concerns, and a lot of things like that of what we're talking about here, which is a very, very personal and very important sort of way that right now. I mean, we're not there, and it's hard to see, like getting to that level of like, validity, for sure. But I think what you said was a great example of it, you know, typically things like my, my example I was gonna give to just to kind of bring it home in terms of that is you have to have the fundamentals GitHub Kabbalat, perfect example, without the fundamentals, you can't parse the data and know where it's going wrong. And I would use a rock climbing example, I don't know how many people rock climb, but like long story short, when you're, when someone's climbing up a rope, and you've got a device to help keep them safe. There's a lot of old school ways to do it, and you hold it, there's more modern devices that are automatically break it, and you can get by without knowing how to use them. But if you don't have the fundamentals, you're not keeping their you're not keeping your climber safe. And so you need to know this fundamentals before you lean on the Grigory which I'm more automatic device, which is really safe. But without this fundamentals, you won't be making smarter decisions, and you won't have those muscle memories and the things that will keep your climber safe. So it's these are all really, really good examples of why I love it, you know, and actually, it's just tying it back to as in terms of like a sweet spot for me, I use it, I use that I lean into that as a as an idea generator, because you know, it's always easier to edit than it is to create. And so to start, I mean, like, oh, man, make the bad version first. That sounds great. That's one empowering thing that I've got fallen into, like the past couple years, it's like, free myself up. I'm gonna write the worst blog post I've ever written in my life. I gotta get started. I'm stuck. I'm gonna just write some absolute garbage. I know. It's garbage. I'm reading garbage on purpose. And then from there, I'm like, Well, that was garbage. And I move on. So AI is kind of taking that place of like, hey, go write some garbage for me. I mean, it's not garbage, because there's actually some really reasonable deal with those. Okay, and then you got a new kind of trapped in there. Really nice. Yeah. And it's a good idea to bounce off or just to get the creative engines flowing. So that is a super good example.

David: 9:43

I want to switch gears. This is what I do. I switch gears. Gary Raines, me and when I go off on the on a tangent and I switch gears. That's what we do. You in your profile. You mentioned that you are a UI UX designer and this is a passion of yours, which, of course, is me and Gary, like, that's our Voltron power. And I wanted to nerd out about that a little bit. Because, one rarely does anybody even know what that is. So I figured it's a good time. Because every startup, every entrepreneur, every business, needs to think about UX, even if they're not in tech. And I think that this is a subject that's worth diving into a little bit and chewing on. Because it's going to whether you sell soap, or you're selling software, good user experience is key this is, and what I mean by that is, I need a good box, right? I need a box that tells my tells a story about my product, that's a your user experience. It's a physical thing, but it's still a user experience. Now software is much more clear. That's how they're using it. But tell me how you got into UX and what you do in that world.

Dave: 10:51

So that's actually a really good way of I was gonna say, it's kind of drives me crazy in general, that, I'll get to answer your question for sure. But it drives me crazy in general, if people don't want value that as a thing, but I'm like, because because the user experience is a broad term for me as well. So everything that I talk about has a user experience, it's literally for me, how does the user interact with your product? And like, what did they that is your product? I mean, it for me, and I know, it's like you can get into honestly, for me, it's your product, everything else is a way to get to that. But without that as the filter is the lens, you can't make a good product. So why did they how I got into it, in terms of that, it's just was the thing I always cared about, I always kind of drove drove into that, and to a detriment of that. So my history, my degree is not in computer science. It's in Business Information Technology at Virginia Tech, which was essentially like kind of half on that this ad tech to, or

David: 11:41

mine was management information systems. And so that is that they don't even have that major anymore, because that's how old I am. They changed

Dave: 11:47

it right? When I when I got in school, I started in management science ended up in big. So there you go. But yeah, so I mean, my I come from this different background. So I don't have the hard core fundamentals, I've had to learn those as I went through my career. So But by virtue of that, that's not my home base. So for me as I was going, like, I don't know, I don't care about that somebody else can go figure that I'm not passionate about that I'm not, you know, that's not the part that I'm chewing on. Here's the part that I'm chewing on is this part, this was the end, it kind of comes through, I'm a visual person, I'm more on the artistic musician side of things. And so that always tapped into that part of my creation brain, where it's creating, I'm creating a thing I'm putting colors and shapes and, and patterns together in a way that's pleasing, both aesthetically, and usability. And so then once I kind of fall fell into like that, I was like, I really, really, really, really like helping people. And in general, this is my my MO, I thought it didn't work, whether it's not I want to both help people and empower them. So I'm always the guy at work, who I'm going to go out of my way and take care, I'm talking about like my whole day helping you with your unit of work. And I'll come after work, you know, this was a bad parents, I had to pack practice, after work, I'll finish up my unit of work and the next day and like that's a valuable day, or I don't ever get to my stuff, which has been a challenge. But if I help somebody out, then that's great. So that leads into I want to go out of my way to make it easy. Actually, I was just telling I'm talking about co workers the other day with some some of the units of some things I was working on for from a compliance standpoint. And I'm like, if I need something from you, and it's hard, it's ever hard or complicated or unclear what you're meant to do. Full stop, don't go any farther, come talk to me, because my goal, every time I do something is I want it to be easy to dive right in, figure it out and use it without complication. So at the net end of the day, I have major interaction with whatever it is that I'm creating a net positive, you come away feeling better about it than it is. And I look for was this specific example of sort of compliance, which is can be a gross, uncomfortable thing. If I can make that fun and easy. My Oh, man, I've had a great day, right? Because that's a tough problem. But that's just kind of like my general philosophy of like, why that appeals to me is that's really what that's what UX is, is you're trying to deliver a net positive experience for your for your person. Why? Because why you making stuff if it's not great to use, but also at the end of the day, your product, is what people think about it. And so they're going to either hate it, which you never want, they're not going to tell anybody about it. They're not gonna have fun using it, they're not gonna come back if they have a choice. That's your work product. You want me to be like, This is so great. You got to use it. Tell people, you've created evangelists, they've had a great time. They keep coming back, right? So that's kind of why I love it is like it's a constant challenge to be like thinking about other people empathizing, challenging yourself to like put yourselves in other people's shoes, which can be difficult, and getting and getting the job done. And that's the job and then I feel validated. I feel good because I've gone out of my way to make something great for somebody else. That's kind of like the net of why I do it. I lost all the other questions because that's my favorite one of like, why is it so many things?

Gary: 14:38

No, no. And the answers were right on par with things that we've been dealing with lately too, with the with UX and dealing with clients as well. So

David: 14:50

what what I find is the number one struggle that clients have with UX is that they think gets pretty stuff. And so we have to go to this vocab lesson to say no, there's pretty stuff that's designed. And then there's UX, which is experienced, which is how they move, how they flow, how they actually touch the product. And I think a good analogy for that is, if you go and you open a product, let's say a box for headphones, and it's a cheap manufacturer, it's going to be in this hard to get into rough feeling kind of cardboard box, right. So it might have a gorgeous picture on it, maybe it's got a sunset, it's got the headphones are floating in the sky, it's just a gorgeous picture, which would be hilarious, by the way. But it's so it has a nice design, the colors are all there. But when you pick it up, it's spiky and rough on your fingers. And it's hard to get into. That's your user experience. That's a good way of explaining it in terms of non technical. So now imagine an apple pair of headphones, which because these guys have mastered this, when you open an apple pair of air pods, right? It's in a very, the design is actually relatively straightforward, right? It's just a white box, you all know is why but but it feels nice, it's got this soft touch to it, you're like you want to touch it, you want to roll your hands around on it. And then to get into it, there's always a little strip that you can just pull, and it takes all the packaging right off, you don't have to go get your scissors or use your teeth or any of that crazy stuff. And then when you get inside of it, instead of it just being the product sitting there it is there. And usually it's a little pouch of some sort little plastic bag that again is easy to open, you get to open it and it's and then you get to the software, right when it comes the hardware and the software meet. That is user experience in an in an everyday fashion. And you can see this across now that I've said that and you might click to some people now, you're gonna see that everywhere, because there are people who do it really well, Apple being a great one. And there's people who do really badly, which is a lot of the products you bought on Amazon, and even Amazon, look at this cheesy stuff, right, five years ago, every box you got into required like a hatchet and a chisel to get inside of the Amazon box. And now they have all these pull tabs. Now they have all these easy opening things, which is probably great for all the people stealing Amazon products. But it's so much easier, even though it's the same cardboard, right? They don't care about that aesthetic. But it is a better user experience. So you're like, oh, Amazon, I love that I want to buy from Amazon, as opposed to maybe target which I still need a hammer and chisel. So again, just examples where it doesn't have to be software. Everyone talks about UX as software. But it's it's everything. And there's another term I don't know, do you guys use a CX viewer of CX? Yeah, we

Dave: 17:43

kind of flipped around. Like, I've been around through so many different iterations of like what people want to call it or not in terms of CX. And now we have both of us, we have developer experience to everybody wants to get an X on the end. I like it. I like that I like separating things out buzzwords

David: 17:59

was CX I love the idea of CSC extent for customer experience. And that is not only it takes another step back. And again, if you're selling something, a physical product, whatever it is, it's important to think about this even early on. But customer experience is every touchpoint your customer has with your product that's including buying it, the actual product itself, that's the UX stuff that we've been talking about. But then the support after the fact how good is that? Then, you know, do you have a knowledge base? Do you have a bot? Do you have a real person is that person in their actual country so that that conversation can actually happen? All of those are part of CX. And there are companies we are not one of them. But there are companies that that's all they focus on. I would love to get to that point, but we're just not there. Why? Because they're like, it's now it's like almost a consulting kind of let's take a step back and look at your entire offering whatever that offering is. And it's it's a holistic approach to making sure that everyone is enjoying your product is having a good time. Whether or not they're, you know, my phone broke. I'm mad at you. Okay, let's make that a better experience. Because that support we're here we care, and we're going to make your problem better. Sorry, your phone broke by one, you know?

Dave: 19:09

No, I mean, it's it goes a long way. So I mean, like one of my favorite soccer is I'm a runner as well. One of my favorite soccer fans swiftwick I'll throw them out there. I love them. I've gotten out you know, we're not sponsored by swiftwick We should be I had a mistake. I made a mistake. This is this is not even a bad problem. The product I made a mistake. I was like, my bad I ordered the wrong size of socks. How do I let me start the return process. And they were like, You know what, we're just gonna send you another pair of don't worry about sending them back. Now obviously, it's like the shot socks are not that expensive. And the shipping was it's in their best interest. But at that point, I was like, Wow, thanks. I'm thrilled. I'll buy socks from you all the time. I love it. So it was just such a nice and that was all purely I don't think that they even have like a customer support department and through I'm sure it's a company that's really good at that but at that point that was part of my experience with the Sox I love the Sox even more they're great Sox they feel good. But now I'm a fan. I'm a big fan because I'm like have that great experience and it will take they took nothing It was it was nothing except valuing it and saying this is important and this is worthwhile. Well, it's

David: 20:04

also because they couldn't, they can't return socks.

Dave: 20:09

Didn't want to back, right. I mean, they weren't there unopened socks, they could feasibly get that product back. They weren't used. There wasn't anything, but it was it's still at the end of day, right? You know, we're talking we're talking about it's very small. And in terms of economies of scale, it's nothing to them. But that's just is not this five years ago. That's not what happened. It's not like they're like, hey, just take it. They're just like, too bad. You know, that was that will be the experience. All right. Well, so are you bought the wrong socks? Good luck. I mean, yeah, man. So

David: 20:35

should go buy the right one this time? Yeah, it is, once you try it

Dave: 20:37

by anyway. Right? Good.

Gary: 20:39

I was gonna say today, you could basically buy whatever you want, whenever you want, just, you know, with your fingertips in front of your face on your phone. So it's not the product that's going to differentiate the companies, it is the experience that is going to differentiate the companies, which is why now we're seeing a lot more focus on what used to just be called branding, or from, you know, everything from the brand, to the brand story and how that brand, evolved organically and turn that into the user experience, the customer experience and everything like that's that whole experience package is becoming just as important as the product you're actually trying to sell.

Dave: 21:19

And I'll back that, I mean, I'm really happy to see us getting to the point where we valued the thing enough to give it names to give a differentiated name so that when you get it a name, then you can focus on that you can talk about it, you can have a communication layer that like makes sense. I mean, it's a good example of, you know, used to be part of all part of branding, branding was is a nebulous thing. It was nuanced. It was all it's a public thing, customer experience, user experience, are all defined pieces of that that can be broken off and focus on and reduce that sort of confusion or nebulosity. And anytime you can reduce the amount of question marks down to a limited thing. And again, this is my this is probably this is a software engineering mindset that I come from. But I'm always like, anytime you can reduce the complexity of something down to just the parts that are complicated and focus your energy on that you've made yourself better, because then you can be really great at solving that complexity. And don't make everything complex. Everything doesn't need to be complex. And that's why I like naming it does for me.

David: 22:08

Yeah, keep it simple, stupid is is a tried and true form of UX. Another way of saying it is in our world is how do we remove taps? How do we remove clicks? That's good experience? How do we anticipate what the user is doing without crossing the line and where we're no longer helpful? Like, we were just talking to a client this morning, as a matter of fact, and one of the users on their admin team was like, when I'm done typing, I want it to automatically move to the next textbox without me doing anything. We're like, No, you don't want it to do that. Because if you just pause for too long, now you're confused, because your cursor is not where you left it. At, yeah, they're mad, they're mad at you. And they think we did something wrong. But we did that. So that's, it sounds handy. But in the reality, it's not. So beam diagnostics, did you found that company or were you just added later,

Dave: 23:09

I was at unfortunately enough, I was I was allowed to to join up later. So kind of history is I used to work as the contractor from with another firm as the point of contact on that. And they reached out to me, and we decided to go full time. So I worked with them for about a year, year and a half building out the product, and then joined up full time to kind of take care of that journey was founded by Dr. Sarah Schneider, and two other two other doctors who had worked on the research, and then our CTO. We're kind of the first initial people and kind of pull people from there. So I'm the I'm the most recent addition to the team, I think, which is nice to have been there since I've been full time there and to be implemented in October. But I'm the most on the newest, the newest member of the team, so to speak.

David: 23:55

So how big is the company like people wise? Thought Where's

Dave: 23:59

five of us? Well, for there's four of us full time with one part time our one of our other other team members, it's just full time working part time. She's also a professor at Virginia Tech, as well. So splitting time, but for full time to clarify, we're working on hiring, we're kind of at the you know, the classic startup place where we're like, we need some more people, but we need some money to meet the investors and investors don't want to spend money. So I'm working on hire right now, actually, to bring in a couple more technical team members. And then we'll have a couple we got a hiring strategy for this year when some some we have a couple of funding sources coming through. So that'll be nice. But right now, let's just what is this five of us? Well, five, really, I'm very I feel very fortunate to be a part of a team where it's the tightest team that I've been a part of in terms of mindset philosophy, we really have a really good foundation. So I'm grateful every day every time I get to talk to them because it's really a cup kind of like oh wow, how did we end up being such like a unique mindset match because we have a huge insert like actually the top agent in our industry is interesting, but We have a large gap between our youngest and oldest members. And we're all kind of right there in line with business philosophy. So it's really, really, it's a great opportunity. I'm very thankful to be part of it.

David: 25:10

So are you guys, you sound like you're still on a runway, you're still you're not making revenue yet to to support itself.

Dave: 25:20

We're doing our first series first series of funding right now we're waiting for, we have a couple of like, seed funding round, like mini feeds, and then we have that that's kind of where we're at.

David: 25:31

Very cool. So that puts you if I'm correct, you guys are still in what we would call the slog, right? Where you guys are still your job is to tell everybody that you exist, and why you're better than everyone else. You don't have your own gravity where people are coming to you yet.

Dave: 25:47

Yeah, no, that's a perfect example. Right now we're at the place of telling you why that's why this is why we can solve the problem that you have. And why do you have this problem? It's your care, essentially, and why we're great at it.

David: 25:58

So how has the slog been for you? We talked about this, this is like my, my drum, I love to hear how people because it's hard, it's always hard. It's never gonna be easy. But how are you guys dealing with it? And how are you getting through it?

Dave: 26:11

It is hard. And I've you know, fortunately for me, I've done it so many times that it's just it's kind of the usual thing. That's kind of my role. I'm a little bit of the gray beard of the team where I bring that the I can bring the experience be like, Yup, it is hard. And we'll get through it. And in terms of how we get through it with this company. It's really fortunate and nobody, nobody believes me. But I'm like, Y'all don't understand our team that I mentioned, we're so close knit that, like, literally every week everybody's bringing themselves up, somebody always steps in to kind of be like, we got this, we're going to do it and kind of rallies around it. And we have a lot of really positive people around us. So it's actually kind of the easiest of all the slugs I've had, in terms of I don't feel like I'm doing it by myself, I have done that a bunch of times where I feel like I'm pulling people along, especially with my own business, where I've just like pulling on the mantle and contractors and trying to pull things along. So for this one, it's actually really easy, really hard. It's it's a difficult industry, we have difficult problems we're trying to solve we have a lot we're trying to do. This is the most complicated movie pieces that I've had to orchestrate at the same time. But on the flip side, we've got such good balance and good team chemistry. So every week, I mean, it's really it comes down to it and you can you can make it cheesy, and it's just about positivity. But more specifically, it's about looking out for each other. And more specifically than that, because those are all just like that can mean anything. Like every day, we're looking out, have you taken vacation, you seem kind of burned out, go away. And then when people go away, don't talk to them. Like we don't but we but we make fun of people when they check in on teams when they're supposed be on vacation. They're like, what are you doing, and we don't talk to people basically, we would kind of encourage strongly encourage that we have, we have like the the unlimited PTO kind of thing, which can all be problematic, but we basically just challenged people to, to look out for themselves. So you know, we kind of work to keep that energy level going. Because you know, at the end of the day, it is hard if and if it wasn't if it wasn't hard, you wouldn't have to solve a problem because it'd be solved, right? It was easy to be solved. So you're choosing to do this ourselves a startup startup choice is to go in and do hard things. So you're committing to that slog. So if number one for me is is you committed to it. So great, that makes a little slog easier, because you made a choice. And when you've made a choice, you've you've been empowered. And for me when I find when I've been empowered, that makes it easier to kind of accept that. So you accept that the slug is the slug is the slug and you get it done. And then from from there, we pick each other up. And from there, it's just trying to be efficient with your time where you have it it to kind of keep yourself keep from piling on more weight onto the rock that you have to push up. Because I know I say it and it sounds like oh gosh, why would you but when you're putting in a start up here and essentially picking the Sisyphus pass where you're pushing the rock up, it's going to fall down on you, it's gonna roll you over a couple of times, it's gonna go all the way down to the back of the thing, you're gonna see the end of the hill, but you know, an investor is going to kick it down at you at that point, like I mean, there's, it's like, there's a million ways that it can go down. And there's, there's, at least in my experience, or by leaning I've accepted there's zero ways it's gonna be amazing. First time nailed it, there's gonna be at least one slog, probably a couple slots, right? So you just lean into that and just keep going,

Gary: 29:06

you're in a unique position with I guess, the app in the industry, to where you almost need feedback in order to make sure you're on the right path. So I'm wondering if you have maybe like doctors offices or just a small group of like, you can call them user testers or whatever, just, you know, medical health professionals that are kind of helping you along. And then how, what is your strategy to get this noticed more in that market? I'm sure it's probably just a lot of networking. But I want to hear from you.

Dave: 29:36

That's I mean, it's, you know, I know that fortunately, you kind of stated all the things it's exactly like everyone in other industries. So yes, we do have a small sort of beta test or client sort of, so to speak. So we were spawned out of it. They're kind of our early test group are also going to be considered so we're able to kind of iterate in a safe way. That's actually been a really great powerful, safe, a safe way where we get good feedback from them. We also have a team of providers. As professionals that we interview constantly to try and understand, basically understand our users. So we do user interviews constantly, we get feedback, we've we've kind of made it, we made it user user focus. So we do constant interviews with them to get their experience, especially with this, this medical space. So that's kind of the the two kind of the main ways we're able to make get momentum going. In terms of getting noticed. It's just as it's just about reaching out, we've got a bunch of pots in the fires, the the nature of the industry is it's a really long burn to get into it, because rightfully so it's very, very guarded. And there's a lot of IRB and approval process that you have to go through. So you march through it, and you get get through that. So we have a couple of other tickets in the fire, but you have to get so far ahead of it. Fortunately, it's not like other markets, and that it's a pretty known commodity, you go talk to hospitals, you're talking about people you can get in, you get connections, and networking. So we're able to leverage kind of some of these things. We're also talking about some other medical companies,

Gary: 30:57

you know, what your potential clients are? It's not Yeah, you're not trying to find them, you're just trying to convince them.

Dave: 31:03

Yeah, so I mean, for us are essentially our users, our hospital systems, and then we have kind of sub users. But we're not trying to get patients to use our product. We're kind of b2b. So it's a little easier for us on that aspect. But for us, it's basically getting in the door, with hospitals. So leveraging the network that we have, and just making connections, as well as connecting with other other similar companies to talk about potential partnerships and ways we can leverage other stuff. So that was, that's kind of like our network and getting in front of people, our biggest challenge is actually not getting people to use it, it's getting people to put it in the places that we need, so that people can use it. So to speak, it's kind of a little bit more like that model. But we might I mean, that's that's the, that's the probably the pattern I've always used to make it more broad is number one, get something that works, works pretty well for your MVP, obviously, like find those key features to get something in front of somebody, and then find a group of trusted people. And I've leaned heavily on friends and family all the time. And just core people fortunately, brought in my network for a while where I can be like, hey, go test this out, and you get that good feedback. But you know, find the people that you're gonna get high fidelity feedback from, so we have that in a group of doctors and end users that we're gonna get direct, we know exactly where it get, and we know it's gonna be valuable. So it's really you don't have to parse through a lot of garbage. So you get this high quality, low end people who are patient with using a product and development. And then from there, going and just talking to people about it, for me, this is a lot of my strategies are all kind of, I've come to appreciate how like uniquely specific they are to be in terms of like, I'm going to go out there, here's, here's my, here's my elbow, I'm gonna break myself down, I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna be so excited about what I'm talking about. Because I am because I don't really have a lot of time for like subterfuge or whatever. So I find stuff that I'm really excited about. And I just go out and I talk about it, I use it to share with everybody and I kind of have a little bit of an infectious energy, generally, when I'm working on stuff that people were like, wow, this guy's really excited about this thing. And we'll stop talking about it. And you know, just kind of use that in all the aspects of whatever thing is most needed. So we've been able to kind of like, be okay, what do we need to do here, let's go do it, and just gonna apply that filter. But I do think there's a lot that people can take away from that. Because more often than not, I see people trying to trying to find this persona, or this actor or this thing that they need to do, whether it's like we're talking about an actual product, you're trying to, you're trying to manufacture avenues, and I think there's a way more and I haven't really kind of really figured out what that means for like UX or tackler. But I think there's like, there's a lot of power to honesty, and make instead of trying to convince somebody of something, almost like finding the truth in whatever it is that you're trying to do so that you can just put it out there and be honest about it. Because everybody responds to honestly at least I think so. Anyway, I think everybody responds to this honest passion. And they don't they actually reject dishonest passion. And so finding your pathway to that is a really kind of key thing for this this to anyway, ties get back, how do we get through the slog, I just believe I'm gonna get through the slog, and I try, I try to convince myself I'm gonna get through the song. No matter what your teammates, the people you talk to, they're gonna feel that they know if you believe in it, everybody's gonna believe it. Eventually, you got to keep believing in it. The hardest part of the slog is when you lose belief, that's what I mean, you lose belief, you're like, I'm never gonna get out as mud. As much forever, man, the swamp goes on, I'm never gonna get out of there. And then all of a sudden, you're, you're stuck in the swamp of nothing, and your horse is sinking in. And I'm going to this is the only Neverending Story reference I'll make today. But like, eventually, you get to this place that you have to get yourself out. And it's just really, it's really hard. So you have to kind of like, constantly load up that deer like, I'm gonna get this day. I'm gonna go and go do it and whatever that point because a very individual thing is you have to ask yourself, Okay, what do I need to do to get myself into that mindset where it's like, let's get it. Let's support my team members. Let's bring people up and let's go let's go tackle this thing.

Gary: 34:50

Yeah, go find a tree you and Falkor if you didn't catch that, I

Dave: 34:54

don't know. Oh, man. So

Gary: 34:58

the one question we had Just every single one of our guests, and you were talking about earlier, when you were saying you had experience doing this before. So in your experience, what would your top three pieces of advice, be for any entrepreneur, no business or startup coming into the market,

Dave: 35:15

I kind of touched on them already. But the number one year, my number one piece of advice, stay focused, stay flexible. So that another way that I've kind of started working with other with other team members in the past is having strong beliefs loosely held, get in there, find what it is that you're gonna be doing find, I can always come back to the power of three is find your three things, the three focuses for your week, your next sprint or your whatever methodology that works for you, and stay on it. But then be ready to pivot that that's your greatest power of the startup is that flexibility, and then the no one can reply, no one can take, take that away from you. So that's my number one, stay focused with flexible and have strong beliefs loosely held whichever one of those like key mantras kind of sticks in there. Believe really strong into it, but be ready to change. Number two, don't get discouraged. And I said it earlier, if this was easy, you wouldn't need to solve the problem. You wouldn't need to make this startup, you wouldn't need to do this, it's going to be hard. So rid of that it's going to be hard is gonna be discouraging, you're going to have this law. Lean into that. And surround yourself with with whatever you need to do to to make it through those kinds of challenges, because it's going to be hard. If you get discouraged, it's even harder. So just stay up on top. Commit to being a hard, hard job, and you can do hard things, and you'll get it. The third number things that if that I was always like, don't be afraid to wait for your perfect team members. Because at the Carta, that's at the heart of it, whether that's three people, whether that's five people, what makes or breaks this early startup is having the right people around you who are going to do all those other things, all these things that I've talked about in the last like five or 10 minutes, you need to surround yourself people that are going to to live and breathe and respond to that you can't do it by yourself. It's impossible. I've tried, it doesn't work, it's it didn't work, I'll take that back. It works. It's really really hard and a wires wears you out. So don't be afraid to wait, those people will come. If you put out if you had if you stay focused and know what you're looking for, you will find the people that respond to that, and be bold and driven and know and just be patient to wait. There'll be this is the flip side of that. So you patient, you'll surround yourself with the right people, you might have to kind of do it yourself and find that focus. But when you're focused, they'll respond. If you build it, they will come whatever, you know, if you want to want to get to that level, but the flip side of it is don't be discouraged when you lose them someone valuable. So once you get through that what's going to happen is someone's gonna move on, it can be really discouraging, you're like, Ah, man, I finally found all the people and this person for whatever reason needed to move on. Great. Every time that happens, it's an opportunity to find somebody even better because you have an even clearer focus and understanding of your job. So don't get discouraged. Again, if you find a person, but they leave, you'll find more people. So being patient that you'll find people it's can be it's another thing that again, there's a lot of a lot of discouragement. It can be feel like you're never going to find the right people, it just doesn't mind you'll kind of start losing faith in with your product or whatever drove you be patient and it'll happen.

Gary: 37:58

Patience is a good one. That's one we don't usually hear often. Well, we hear similar ideologies, just not usually that focused on the word patients. But yeah, patients is definitely important. So Dave, if anybody wants to learn more about you, or more about beam, where can they go to find out more?

Dave: 38:17

Best place to learn more about beam, our website is beam diagnostics inc.com, you can kind of check, check us out at our website. And we're kind of active on LinkedIn, if you find us where people want to find more about me, again, LinkedIn, you can message me anytime I love. If people have questions to kind of hit me up there. That's a really great way to do that. Used to be in the past, I was a little more active on Twitter and things like that. But I really don't do much of that. Because some of the best way is just a little outreach on LinkedIn if you want to mention it. But if you ever have any questions, I always put this out to everywhere. Everybody, I talked to you with startups, if you ever have a startup question, please talk to me, even if it's just to be like, I don't know if it has any good, I don't know, whatever, just reach out. And I'll do my best to kind of try to help. Like I said, I'd like to help people out. So

Gary: 39:01

we'll include those links in the show notes as well. Thank you so that anybody who does want to learn more can reach out, just click that link any place that they can find us. And speaking of finding us if you want to leave a comment, question or learn more about us, you can email us at Hello at the big pixel that net, you can leave comments or questions underneath this video or you can reach out to us on any one of our social media platforms. And we're on all even David's favorite Tik Tok.

David: 39:31

He loves it. No, nope. No, hey, JIRA, Montana just banned it. So yeah. Sweet. Sweet. Yeah, that'll will very, very well.

Gary: 39:42

I'm sure all the teenagers in Montana. Definitely gonna listen to that role.

David: 39:45

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you very much, Dave, for joining us. It's been a lot of fun.

Dave: 39:51

Appreciate it. Yeah. It's been a pleasure. I had a great time talking to you.

Gary: 39:55

Your passion for the company definitely comes through your excitement is definitely He like you said you lead with your excitement and people are going to pay attention.

David: 40:03

Well thank you everybody for joining us today except Gary. I'm really excited that he was here. We look forward to talking to you all.

Gary: 40:11

Next Leanna go find this unicorn ticket. Sparkle unicorn