John Corcoran: 15:29
That was a core value of what you wanted to bake into the product that you built.
Catie King: 15:33
Yeah, absolutely. I think we know, one of the exclusive values is minutes matter. And the last thing you want to be doing on either end for Flexclusive or the customer calling because you’re asking questions about a bill like nobody wants to do.
John Corcoran: 15:47
Right, right. These days, we’re used to having this kind of stuff at our fingertips. If we don’t have an app that has the information, we can look up in seconds or kind of people get annoyed, right?
Catie King: 15:55
And these are the busiest people in the world, right?
John Corcoran: 15:58
Right.
Catie King: 16:00
You know, they want to get in, get out, get on their way. That’s why they’re paying for these, you know, time machines essentially. Yeah. So you want to make sure that their experience with you in services is the same as their experience with you, you know, for the flight.
John Corcoran: 16:13
Yeah. What about on the technical side? So on the technical side you have this movement towards low code and no code. First explain to the folks who don’t know what that is, what that development is.
Catie King: 16:26
Sure. So the way I think about low and no code is that it’s a movement to make functions or capabilities that were previously relegated to folks who can write code engineers, programmers. It’s a movement to make those capabilities, which are very powerful, available to folks who can’t write code or don’t want to write as much code. So truly low code would be tools that someone like me, I cannot write code. I’m a product manager.
I have the best job in the world, which is having ideas and then leaving the smart people to go build them. So I get to speak software into being and it’s a low code. Tools are a power trip for me because instead of waiting on someone else to do something, I can actually just build it myself. Which is really cool and super novel and really powerful. And then there’s tools that are kind of in the middle, which I describe as just like a major hack.
It’s a super shortcut to fully functional and really powerful applications, whereas custom code takes a really long time. It’s super expensive. The maintenance burden is enormous. So this is a big, powerful wave of technology that’s happened over the last couple of decades.
John Corcoran: 17:39
And then in the midst of this, about two years ago now, ChatGPT came on the scene, which all of a sudden you can write code, you can, you know, put in prompts and it will create, you know, code for you or it will check code and stuff like that. How did that affect things for you?
Catie King: 17:56
Oh, that was a I mean, the boom of generative AI has been this awakening, I think, for industry. And for years a lot I’ve heard a lot of leaders say things like, I know I should be on top of this, and I just don’t really know where to start or what to do. And I think part of obviously, ChatGPT and OpenAI and all of their LLMs are very powerful. But it was also, I think, an approachable way for the general public to actually put their hands on advanced machine learning and advanced technology and see how powerful it can be, and start to dream of all the applications for their business. So, you know, that was a really big moment for us at Fly Exclusive and then which eventually led to us starting Stratia.
John Corcoran: 18:44
And you said that it was kind of a crisis for you because you’d spent your career doing, you know, B2B, SaaS, and all of a sudden there is this tool that comes so much more accessible to people, you know, in many ways similar to, you know, other tools like, you know, I think maybe cell phones is a good comparison, you know, because a lot of people, believe it or not, in this world, didn’t have access to phones, didn’t have access to data, didn’t have access to data at their fingertips, didn’t have access to the internet. And all of a sudden, you know, especially in the developing world, there are hundreds of millions, billions of people that suddenly have access to phones, have access to information, have access to knowledge, and that’s having a dramatic impact. So talk a little bit about that crisis for you.
Catie King: 19:31
Yeah for sure. I mean, it was very selfish for me. I’ve spent my whole career working with software engineers, QA engineers, designers and data scientists to build complex and ultimately very expensive technology and to be confronted with this idea that the process is increasingly irrelevant. You know, where was I ? What this means for me? What does this mean for the industry?
But ultimately the skill sets that we developed are still, you know, super crucial in the low and no-code revolution. And for product managers out there, you know, the important thing about product management is a deep understanding of space. And then being able to empathize with that and pragmatically apply technology solutions or whatever process solutions to move the needle to, to change an outcome. And that’s going to be relevant regardless of what technology is at your fingertips. It’s just, you know, what is different because you’ve helped parse a problem and implement a solution. So I’ve actually found it really empowering. And it means you can be a lot faster and leaner with how you’re, you’re doing that core process of product management.
John Corcoran: 20:49
Yeah. And for your, you know, company strategy, you don’t have to build a team of 100 devs in order to build things anymore. Talk a little bit about why you mentioned that the company goes public, flyExclusive goes public two years ago and then 2024. We have a bit of a financial crisis. A lot of companies were struggling during that time. And then they have to do a bunch of layoffs, including you. What was that like?
Catie King: 21:16
Yeah, that was really difficult. So at that point we had built this team from scratch. So I’d mentioned the beginning of the story, which is, you know, we’re asked by the company to build a team. We handpicked every person to be a cultural and, and skills fit. And that is one of the proudest achievements of my career.
I loved that team, loved our process and our culture. Everyone was so talented. I loved being the stupidest person in the room every day and learning from them. And you know, I was actually I had to make the call to, to lay off the whole team. And it was, I’ll call it a top-five low moment of my career.
But credit to that whole team. They are all so talented. I knew they would land somewhere really fast and took a stride, and I think we were all able to appreciate what we built. But that moment was the kick in the butt I think I needed and my co-founders needed. So my two co-founders were previously the director of engineering and director of Data science at flyExclusive. And with everything we learned there, we knew that there was an opportunity for us to take those lessons and help other organizations with a lot of the same problems.
John Corcoran: 22:28
Yeah, yeah. So you kind of had this vision of low-code available to us, no code available to us. We can. We can develop solutions a lot faster. I, you know, generative AI is available to us LLMs.
And you decide to go out on your own. What was it like in the early days? Was it hard to find clients because then getting clients could be a struggle even if you have the capabilities.
Catie King: 22:51
I was so nervous about that. Not like I said. All three of us are technologists. So the idea of building a sales, doing sales at all, I mean doing and.
John Corcoran: 23:01
You were probably the person to do sales compared to the tech folks. Right?
Catie King: 23:05
Yeah. And Aaron and Sebastian are also great at speaking with people and can do it. But the big scary monster turned out to be not that bad because I don’t really have to do sales. It’s a lot of what I love about my job, which is speaking to humans about what problems they’re having and how we can make those problems go away.
John Corcoran: 23:30
So yeah. Finding alternative sales.
Catie King: 23:32
Yeah. I mean.
John Corcoran: 23:33
Yeah.
Catie King: 23:33
Finding it. Turns out there are a lot of people who are really sick of filling out the same information in ten spreadsheets.
John Corcoran: 23:39
Yeah.
Catie King: 23:39
So not a hard sales pitch to be like. You don’t have to do that anymore.
John Corcoran: 23:43
Like, yeah.
Catie King: 23:44
Back away from the Excel spreadsheet. Yeah, just put it down. So it’s really been a natural process. And we’re fortunate enough that many of our clients have been advocates for us with other clients. So. So we’ve continued to work with Flat exclusive, which is a huge blessing. So they’re they’re a customer of ours.
John Corcoran: 24:07
And that’s always nice when you can retain the company you used to work for as a client.
Catie King: 24:12
Yeah. It worked out great.
Catie King: 24:13
Because they, you know, they wanted obviously to continue to maintain and improve their software that we helped them build. But, you know, I needed to rethink the cost structure moving into, you know, public company life. So it worked out really well, I think for both of us. And. since then we’ve been able to expand to a couple more customers in the aviation industry just because we have such deep expertise there.
But we are two of the main platforms, we use a lot for clients to help get them off of the spreadsheets, onto a product that’s easier to maintain, can back up to a cloud solution, and then you can build automations and interfaces on top of that. And it helps ensure you want clean, validated data that Linda from finance can’t delete with a press of a button, essentially. Yeah. So, Linda.
Catie King: 25:04
Damn it. Linda, what are you doing?
Catie King: 25:06
Yeah. I mean, or you don’t want to, you know, spend ten minutes waiting for the Excel file to open up, you know?
John Corcoran: 25:12
Right. Yeah.
Catie King: 25:12
Yeah.
Catie King: 25:14
A lot of those stories. So we use Retool and Airtable most often. So on sort of the low and no-code spectrum. Airtable is truly no-code capable. So I consider myself an Airtable expert.
That is what we use a lot at Fly Exclusive. They are a wonderful partner to us, and that product you can be really dangerous and build very, very powerful, powerful applications with absolutely no code. It gets even more dangerous if you do know how to write code, which we are full-stack capable. So we use that product a lot, and they’ve been amazing at helping us to, you know, find customers who might be a good fit for our services and then retool. Same deal.
They are more on the low-code rather than no-code side. So you still do have to be an engineer to use their platform, but it’s a major shortcut and allows for a lot more flexibility in terms of the user interface and what the look and feel of the product is, and also in the storage in the back end. So it’s a little bit more complex, but you get a lot more power.
John Corcoran: 26:19
It’s almost funny because I’m imagining a conversation with a new client coming to you like a private aviation company, and people have certain expectations of what the development shop is going to do for them. And then you turn around and you say, yeah, so we’re going to build it on Airtable. I mean, do you ever have them? They’re just like, what? Like, what are you talking about? Like, we can’t have that, you know?
Catie King: 26:41
I think what’s interesting is that most of the people who come to us. When we first started the company, I had no idea who to sell it to. Right. We didn’t have any understanding of who our target persona was. And now you could put them in a lineup. It’s been so consistent, and it’s almost always a woman in an operations adjacent role who just got fed up with all of the, like the hit a hit a wall of all the inefficiency, and watching her teams be ineffective, not able to work together, not able to meet outcomes, not able to track how they’re doing.
Telling a poor story to the executive team. So almost all of the folks we meet are, you know, women who have just put it on their backs and they’ve tried on their own, and often they landed in Airtable or in retool.
John Corcoran: 27:38
But they’ve taken it as far as they can.
Catie King: 27:40
And they’ve taken it as far as they can.
Catie King: 27:42
So the conversation of what do you mean, you’re going to build this? Airtable often doesn’t happen because they have, on their own, tried to put it on their back and climb up the mountain, and they’ve seen the promised land, if you will forgive us, you know, forgive the pun, but they’ve seen that and they’ve gone. I need a little help. But I know this is possible. So most often, actually, it’s a fun conversation because they’re like, I think it is possible.
And we get to tell them A is possible, and then B through Z is possible too. There’s so much more you can do in this product. And so it’s most often like the art of the possible is when we start to get into.
John Corcoran: 28:18
And of course that requires you to be up to speed on all the new tools that are coming out, which is impossible these days. How do you keep track of all the different tools that are, you know, flying out and capabilities? I mean, even ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude or any of those are adding new capabilities almost on a daily basis. It seems like.
Catie King: 28:39
It is overwhelming. I mean, my honest answer is that I don’t. I don’t think anyone can stay on top of it. You know, the good part is I get to sort of stay on top of my slice of it, and then Sebastian and Aaron are always on top of their pieces. So between the three of us, we kind of have zone coverage. But ultimately, I think it’s about knowing that if you have a problem, there is probably someone out there who’s also had the same problem and probably some platforms who have attempted to solve it. So, just being open-minded, it’s not necessarily about the technology, it’s about what if you were to wave? I asked my clients this all the time. If you were to wave a.
John Corcoran: 29:17
Magic wand, what would you want? Yeah.
Catie King: 29:19
And describe what you would want. Right. What is the solution? And then pairing the right product with the people and the process. And they have to bring that part.
But by pairing the right product with the people in the process, you can do some really amazing things. So, you know, sometimes you just gotta Google it.
John Corcoran: 29:39
And, it seems like a lot of it is educating the clients on what is possible, because they might have come to you with half a solution. Just saying. Like, it annoys me that it takes ten minutes for an Excel table to open. Or we have this very convoluted process where, you know, Joe from accounting puts the record into this spreadsheet. Then I have to take that information and put it into this spreadsheet and, you know, whatever. And you’re explaining, well, actually, this is, you know, here’s a flow that would work, that would save a bunch of time.
Catie King: 30:06
That’s what I spend a lot of my time doing. And we talk a lot about sort of the data pyramid, which I’ve discovered new layers underneath. So I’ll redefine the bottom. But, you know, customers who aren’t necessarily ready for the US are the people that may not understand their people in their process. So if you’re having like, what would you say?
You do hear conversations with one another every day. You probably need to figure that out first. But then the next layer up would be what I call, like, here’s a bunch of data. Good luck. So those are the customers who have fallen victim to tool proliferation and are using maybe ten, 15, 20 different third-party and in-house tools. So you’ve got, you know, finance has their spreadsheet, and they’re also using Intacct or QuickBooks. And then you’ve got sales on. Salesforce.
Catie King: 31:00
You’ve got marketing on HubSpot and Marketo. And you know they’ve got everybody’s got their tool.
Catie King: 31:06
Inevitably there’s the in-between where they’re all attempting to share data. Yeah, probably with poor results. Yeah. And so here’s a bunch of data. Good luck is bad for several reasons.
One, you’re wasting everyone’s time. You inevitably end up with bad data. And three, if you do report on that bad data, you’re making bad decisions. So a lot of my conversations with clients are, hey, let’s do the unsexy work of arriving at one clean, consolidated database, which no one gets excited about, like nobody’s going to be. Yes, a clean, consolidated database.
John Corcoran: 31:44
We.
Catie King: 31:45
Full of validated. You know, that’s nobody’s going to throw a parade for that. But that is the key that unlocks all of the cool stuff you can then do with it, which is automation, reporting, you know, modeling, machine learning, things like that, where you can then drive revenue through that clean consolidated data being put to work. So the beginning stages typically are talking about the really boring stuff that then makes the art of the possible fun part.
John Corcoran: 32:15
Yeah, yeah. Catie, this has been great. I want to wrap up with my last question. From my gratitude question, I’m a big fan of practicing gratitude, and I’m also a fan of giving my guests a little bit of space at the end here to, you know, shout out any peers, contemporaries, mentors who’ve been meaningful for you. I know we mentioned David up at the top of this episode. Anyone in particular you’d want to shout out and thank?
Catie King: 32:39
I’ll double down on David. He has been a consistent mentor and friend since I met him over a decade ago, and he’s always believed that I need to start my own business and stop working for other people, to the point where when I was at TransLink, you mentioned the transit tech company. He sent me biweekly text messages. They were owned by Ford. And he, you know, he was making fun of me for working for the man instead of going and starting my own company. And he sent me texts every other week with an eye roll emoji. And then they built Ford. Tough. logo, basically saying, what are you doing? Get out of corporate enterprise and go start your own thing. And so he’s trying.
John Corcoran: 33:26
To beat you down into submission until you do it.
Catie King: 33:29
Turns out shame works on me. Yeah, but he’s.
Catie King: 33:31
He’s always been there for me. And I’m so appreciative of him. And I’m appreciative of him for introducing me to you, John.
John Corcoran: 33:36
Yeah, yeah. All right. Catie, this has been a great StradiaPartners.com is the website. Where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you?
Catie King: 33:43
Definitely head over to our website, drop me a line, and we would love to talk to you about how we can help you back away from the spreadsheet.
John Corcoran: 33:51
Awesome. And build that beautiful database for everyone.
Catie King: 33:55
Can see consolidated data.
John Corcoran: 33:57
Exactly and throw a parade for it.
John Corcoran: 33:58
Awesome. Thanks, Catie.
Catie King: 34:01
Thank you.
Outro: 34:04
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.