John Corcoran: 12:07
They definitely weren’t on the.
Ashish Patel: 12:08
Search results.
John Corcoran: 12:09
Yeah, they were like all links and stuff and like they were just like they were almost antagonistic towards their users around changing the user experience. And 100%. And I think it absolutely led to these other types of opportunities coming up.
Ashish Patel: 12:22
Right. And, you know, they could have easily, easily built this, which they ended up doing, that which I can get into. But yeah, it was great because it would have found my bike, you know a couple maybe a couple months later it popped. The one that I wanted popped up and I bought it. So it worked.
And then I was like, this has got to be something that I could monetize and use somewhere else or other people want to use, and so put a front end on it, built it. I actually learned front end programming because of that project. And I didn’t even think about this. You know, I don’t know if I would have gotten into the development role that I did after that, or the development path that led to me, my current job, because I leaned on that experience even for interviews moving forward. But yeah, so I put that out there.
And then I think we had maybe a few thousand paid paying customers, but then it kind of all stopped because we got a cease and desist from Craigslist.
John Corcoran: 13:18
You get a cease and desist from Craigslist, okay. Which is funny because, I mean, they seem so laid back about everything. How did you react when you got that?
Ashish Patel: 13:27
Well, I know, kind of the initial reaction is being pissed off and like, how could they? And, you know, this is we’re providing a service. And it was clear that after some conversations that this is something they were going to introduce into their platform. And so they were.
John Corcoran: 13:44
Conversations with Craigslist.
Ashish Patel: 13:47
Yeah, I mean, we never hired a lawyer, but we had a friend who was a lawyer that kind of talked to because they hired a firm. Right. And so our lawyer talked to their firm and, and it was like that, that was the reason they were cracking down on it.
John Corcoran: 14:01
And was this your full time job at that point?
Ashish Patel: 14:04
Oh, no, no, no, this was like I was when I was working for a corporation. Okay. And I was like, corporate sucks. So I got to find something else to keep me busy. And this is what I was doing.
John Corcoran: 14:13
So you must have been a little bit upset about it, though. Yeah.
Ashish Patel: 14:17
Definitely upset and felt that they didn’t have that right to do it and so on. But I don’t know. I think I got over it pretty quick because I didn’t, you know, it wasn’t like it was making tons of money like it was. It was like going out partying with money. That’s about it.
John Corcoran: 14:35
It. So I moved to San Francisco in 2003, and I have to tell you my Craigslist story. I because I ran into Craigslist Craig Newmark, multiple times, and I don’t know if you’ve seen it, he’s kind of a short guy. He will admit that he’s a nerdy, dweeby kind of guy, and he just, like, would show up at parties and he’d say, Craig on his, hi, my name is Craig. No way.
And he’d be like Craig. And he would mumble something like, I have a website or I created, you know, Craigslist, or he’d make some self-deprecating, you know, comment or something. And I don’t think I’m exaggerating, saying he’s one of the worst conversationalists I’ve ever met in my life. Nice guy, horrible at conversation. So it’s like within seconds you’re like, Holy shit, this is Craig from Craigslist.
Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m talking to Craig from Craigslist. And a second later you’re like, I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what. What should we talk about? You know, what do you say to someone like that?
You know, so yeah, nice guy, you know? But yeah. Just awkward.
Ashish Patel: 15:30
Yeah. So when you say you run into them like at entrepreneur stuff or just on the.
John Corcoran: 15:36
Back, then it was political stuff. So I, I worked, I started my career in politics. And so it would be a different political gathering, you know, fundraisers sometimes he went to lots of fundraisers. So I would run into him at different political things mostly. Yeah, interesting rather than entrepreneurial things, but okay.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think he was I.
Ashish Patel: 15:55
Don’t even know. You know, it’s funny because like, you brought this up earlier and I don’t think I’ve mentioned the word Craigslist in years. Right. Like, yeah, I don’t know if it’s even around. I know it turned into kind of like an undercover hookup type of site.
But yeah, I don’t know what happened.
John Corcoran: 16:11
If you added up the number of sites like Yelp to Next door to you name it, that was basically like a better version of Craigslist. Thousands of them have come out of it and billions of dollars. Right. Because it was just the end all be all.
Ashish Patel: 16:27
The only thing.
John Corcoran: 16:27
Is everything, you know? Yeah. And so fascinating business. And they also had this tiny little house out in the Richmond district or the Sunset District of San Francisco that was like. It was like retail, retail, retail shop.
And then there was like, just like this house that said Craigslist on it. And that’s where they worked out. It was bizarre.
Ashish Patel: 16:43
Yeah. And it.
John Corcoran: 16:43
Was like massive.
Ashish Patel: 16:45
Like millions of dollars and had like 40 employees, like hundreds of millions of dollars.
John Corcoran: 16:50
Right? Yeah, exactly. It was crazy. All right. So that doesn’t work out.
And so you work kind of corporate for a few years, and then eventually it looks like 2015. You start sympathetic. So what gave you the courage then to go out on your own.
Ashish Patel: 17:05
Yeah. So that initial dabble into ownership and entrepreneurship was like, okay, this is clearly the path I want to find my way to. And you know what’s interesting, I think back to this is like, why was I not led to that earlier? I think part of being. the children of immigrants are taking all this risk so that you don’t have to take the risk, right.
And that you’re kind of ingrained in like, go we we created this opportunity for you. So take it and let’s not screw it up. Right. And so it took me a while to realize like, hey, this is not the risk free path is not the path I want to go on. I want to try starting my own thing.
So I did it in a very safe way, right? I started a professional services company, which all you need is one client that’s going to cover your, you know, if you want to start on your own, just one client that can cover your salary. And so that’s kind of what I did is I went to a consulting company and we’ll probably come back to this is he was the the owner was kind of like a mentor and really helped me, even gave me an opportunity to a launching point to start my own thing.
John Corcoran: 18:17
Right.
Ashish Patel: 18:17
Which is not common in our space. And so, yeah, I started this thing and it was just me doing the development work and figuring out how I can grow and learn, I joined. I don’t know if you ever talked about EO. It’s called ignite here, but accelerator pretty early on, which then all of a sudden I’m surrounded by other passionate entrepreneurs. And that’s the spark that I needed to say, okay, I can do this and I want more.
And so I started just seeing how I could grow it and build it. And really that’s kind of the start of the journey.
John Corcoran: 18:53
I’ve definitely talked about the accelerator program a number of times before. It’s been huge for me. Definitely. I feel like it’s the NBA that I never got and it really helped us. So you you start this and then I want to ask you about where were you ever fearful to take on projects that were too big because you had your own firm?
Because that was one thing that held me back when I started my own law firm, I was comfortable with clients of a certain size. But then things would come to me. They were too big and I was like, I didn’t have a mentor there for me. And so I was just I eventually realized, you know, I’m always going to be dabbling in these small little projects if I continue to be a lawyer.
Ashish Patel: 19:34
Yeah. It’s and especially if you, you kind of come from that entrepreneurial doer model where, you know, you know what it means, you know, what a big project means versus not. Right. If you’re coming from more like a sales background, you’re like, yeah, I can do it. And then you figure it out.
But when you know what it’s going to entail, it’s a little different. Yeah. And so yes, I was scared of those larger projects, but what I wasn’t scared of was taking on the, you know, projects that were a little bit bigger than where I was today. Right. Knowing that.
And this is just like any startup, right? Like you’re going to figure it out, you’re going to hack, hack your way through it. And as long as you feel like you’ve surrounded yourself with good people, then it’s going to lead to good things. And so yeah, we were definitely scrappy early on just like any other company. And what’s exciting is as you start growing and you start building a team it’s much easier to stretch bigger, right?
Thinking bigger or taking on bigger things because you have a team to help support you. It’s not just you taking on all that risk. So yeah, it was tough early days but it’s an out. I’ve kind of flipped over and I’m ready to take on more and more risk.
John Corcoran: 20:50
Yeah. Now around 2018 you realized that you were having scaling issues. You ended up bringing in a co-founder. Yeah. What was that analysis like, and how did you come to that realization?
Ashish Patel: 21:00
Yeah. So I was getting more work and I needed to create some way to set myself apart. And, you know, I also didn’t want to take on money. So at the time it was all us folks within our team, Contractors, and I think we had a couple hires at the time. And I know, this is also a time when Austin was booming, salaries were getting crazy for software developers, and I just knew I couldn’t scale at, you know, the demand was there, but I couldn’t scale just with people.
And so I found a partner that actually had worked with in a previous company and had started an operation in Monterrey, Mexico, for that company. And, you know, he also had an entrepreneurial spirit, wanted to start his own thing. And, and he kind of spun up his kind of a software development center down there. And I was basically finding work. And we were kind of dating at the time.
And then after a year of dating, we were like, okay, let’s join forces, because clearly there’s some synergies here. This is working. And yeah, we combined and kind of that was my capacity relief there. on finding the work and being able to deliver on it. And that also gave us that unique value of like, you have to think back to 2018, the concept of Nearshoring wasn’t even really around like no one knew that word.
We were educating people on what Nearshoring meant and even liked the idea of having Mexico talent, which in Monterrey is the third best Latin America technical university. It kind of mirrored MIT.
John Corcoran: 22:39
The MIT of Mexico is in Monterrey. Yeah.
Ashish Patel: 22:42
So it just creates this kind of culture and ecosystem of talent, just kind of like how Boston does currently. So it was a great move. And it’s what we needed at the time. And it helped get us through that scaling challenge that we needed.
John Corcoran: 22:59
Was that a difficult adjustment for you or would it make it easier for you because then you could just focus on sales and not have to worry as much about the fulfillment piece?
Ashish Patel: 23:11
Yeah, it was Difficult because I was still the face, you know, we didn’t really start maturing our delivery systems till Covid when we didn’t have a choice. And you know. So yeah, I was the sales side, but I was still the face of the projects. And so I was stretched and billable to where I was still billable at the time. So that’s probably something I would have done differently is, you know, lean in on taking that risk of making some key hires in the US to offload that.
But yeah, it was challenging. But it was good. You know when you’re growing it’s like you can take the challenge there feels like you are solving things in a way that’s supporting, you know, positive momentum versus like if you’re solving things that, you know, if you’re if your sales are down or if you know your delivery is not off. So it was a fun challenge.
John Corcoran: 24:09
So how do you hire now? Do you hire like in the US for like the face of the project, like an account manager type of thing or project manager. And then the rest is from Nearshoring Latin America or other countries?
Ashish Patel: 24:23
So no, we pretty much are only in Mexico. And that’s on purpose, because most of the way we also set ourselves apart is that we have an entity in Mexico, and everyone’s hired into that entity. Most companies that are doing what we’re trying to pull off kind of just have a pool of contractors in, in Latin America. But our culture is one of the most important pieces for me. And so to build a culture, you need to have employees and somewhere that employees can come to and feel a part of.
So yeah, so we hire in Mexico and typically ideally in Monterrey if we can. Because again, now you have your 45 minute flight to San Antonio. Right. So you’re right on the border of a lot of cultural similarities. Similarities?
In fact, they watch more NFL games than I do, which is interesting. And they all speak great English, so it’s not as much of a face. But there is, there is. We do hire kind of our ideal situation. Our is a pod where we have a strong US tech lead, a client delivery manager and then a series of our Monterey developers, part of that team.
And there’s multiple reasons why that just generally works better.
John Corcoran: 25:40
Yeah. And you mentioned culture. So what did you do in order to build that culture and maintain that culture while building this to, you know, cross border team?
Ashish Patel: 25:51
Yeah, I mean, I think having my partner boots on the ground. So he moved from the US down there. That makes a huge difference. You know a lot. I know a lot of companies that try to pull this off. And it’s really challenging to do that without having someone with skin in the game on boots on the ground making sure that it’s launched.
You know, now we’re past the growing pains and all the challenges of setting up an entity. It’s, you know, it’s probably ten times harder to set all that up down there versus the US, which makes me grateful for being in the US. But, you know, going. So I go down there every two months between my CEO and myself. We make it a priority to get down there 10 to 11 times a year.
When I go down there, we keep an open calendar. You know, it’s just how can we have informal conversations? We have parties at the office. And so I think that’s important. And again, not a lot of other companies do that.
And so what we really see is one team, not two teams, not the US team and the Mexico team. And I think having that mindset also creates a cohesive culture. And we invest in it too. You know, we have people dedicated to culture as well.
John Corcoran: 27:06
You are a big traveler. You’ve been to 50 or so countries. I’m curious. Selfishly, I love traveling as well. Kids have gotten a little bit away from that.
But we’re planning a big trip for this summer. But for you. Like, what are some tips and tricks? Like how do you manage to run a company and also travel?
Ashish Patel: 27:27
Well, you know, to be fair, right? Like all, most of my traveling happened before I started the company. So after I graduated. Grad school, actually, I lived in Australia for six months after undergrad, and then I traveled the world after grad school. So it was basically me in a backpack and 12 months on the road.
John Corcoran: 27:52
12 months? I don’t think I did for three months. Wow.
Ashish Patel: 27:55
Yeah, 12 months. And it was like 45 countries or something. You know, I probably don’t recommend that for you at your age that you are.
John Corcoran: 28:03
Yeah. Yeah.
Ashish Patel: 28:05
So I don’t know if my tips and tricks on that one would.
John Corcoran: 28:07
Backpacks and hostels? I don’t think so. Yeah, yeah.
Ashish Patel: 28:10
I got bed bugs twice.
John Corcoran: 28:11
Which.
Ashish Patel: 28:12
Is not a great experience. But, you know, I think later in life I for me traveling was very important. So I just incorporate it as a part of our, you know, that’s just what we do. Right. And we started traveling when the kids were six months old.
Both of them. We have family in the UK. So that’s just an easy button right. And in Kenya still. So it’s like there’s a reason to go out there.
So let’s go. And then that’s our home base. And then we can go check out other things.
John Corcoran: 28:41
That’s really cool. I also want to ask you about how you see that we’re recording this in the middle of 2025. Yeah I see AI and coding and, and some of this stuff affecting your business.
Ashish Patel: 28:55
And I think, you know, this probably by the time this comes out, this will probably completely change.
John Corcoran: 28:59
But of course.
Ashish Patel: 29:01
So, you know, I think coding or coding is for us. You know, a lot of people ask, oh that’s going to massively impact, negatively impact your business. And we see it as an opportunity. That means we can deliver faster and deliver more efficiently. And ultimately, you know, if we’re talking about pulling like some of our clients, we’re pulling them off mainframes.
Right. And so like if we’re talking about that type of work, like that’s not something that you’re just going to tell the some AI bot to say, all right, cool. All these apps are off the mainframe, and then we’ll go live in two months. So there’s still a lot to be, a lot of work to be done. I think the the question that I get a lot or I think the question really should be is how should we be enabling our dev teams in an efficient way to use AI and an intentional way versus it just, hey, you guys can go, go use copilot or go use cursor, which is starting to be, I think the leader in this in the tooling here.
And then just because, you know, we don’t need to hire any more. Become more efficient. And so what we’re finding is as we’re doing, you know, we’re playing around with different tools and we’re embedding it into some of our pods. Is that the real value in the VI coding. You can’t, you can’t subtract the experience and get the same efficiencies.
So our senior principal folks that use the coding tools are incredibly more efficient in being able to get through their tasks. They’re essentially like a team of junior developers, right? Like you, it’s generating the code, but you’re able to review it and give it feedback. You know, tell it, hey, you know, I like I would probably change this for loop and do this. And so you’re kind of training it.
And then over time it’s just going to become better and better. And now you can maybe add more at at more. You’re adding more junior developers. But you know, if you give that tool to junior developers and they’re just clicking like the easy button and saying accept, accept, accept. And all of a sudden they have all this code that they didn’t intentionally look at or or determine if it made sense.
You’re actually setting yourself up for failure. You’re adding more work to the person reviewing the code, because now they have to look through it and find all those errors. And then there’s probably bugs that may get introduced that you may not have caught. And so what we’ve found is that the framework is really around enabling your most experienced folks with these tool sets first, getting them the experience, and then you start mentoring, bringing other folks into adoption by mentoring them and using that. And it’s not like one because we thought about building a framework around this, but for everyone to use.
But it really depends on the culture of your development teams and how you want to use it. And so it really needs to be specific to each team or each company.
John Corcoran: 32:08
Yeah, yeah. And how do you stay up to speed on all this with everything changing so fast?
Ashish Patel: 32:14
Yeah, I mean, so we actually have a dedicated group of folks that are interested in this technology that are spending time evaluating the different tools and reading up on it. And, you know, and I get a report every quarter on what’s going on and what the suggestions are. And so we start tweaking because we want to provide this value and this information back to our clients. Right. That they’re asking us, hey, how do we use AI to go faster?
Yeah. And so we want to have good answers for our clients. We want to be good partners. And so yeah, we’re kind of giving them. And then we also like to initiate pilot programs right.
as part of our team, and usually our team is a hybrid of our clients team and our team. And so we can start sharing that knowledge and building that practice.
John Corcoran: 33:03
Yeah, yeah. I want to get to my last question, which is my gratitude question. But before I do that, I was with my EO forum yesterday and we were talking about the topic of what is the next chapter for all of us. We’re talking about what the next chapter will be for, for all of us. And I’m actually interested because you have a friend who you share an office with.
His name is Lance Armstrong. And you’ve kind of been sitting there seeing as he figures out his next chapter. He’s got apparently a health tech fund now. And I think that’s a bit fascinating. What has that been like for you to see someone who, you know, has a prominence that he does figure out his next chapter?
Ashish Patel: 33:43
Yeah, yeah, he’s a really good friend. And it’s been fun to see him through that journey starting it and now, you know, successfully Running the first fund and starting a second fund. You know, I guess from a if you kind of think of the journey that he took, you know, he started in cycling and then going into something very, very different. Right. And being curious about it and leaning into it and.
John Corcoran: 34:11
Like LiveStrong which. Yeah. So LiveStrong became this massive website about what it is, ten, 12 years ago?
Ashish Patel: 34:17
Yeah. It was, you know, and then, you know, with the various news items that came out, it kind of started falling. And then he started this. And so I think one thing it taught me is that the core, you know, because I’m an athlete too. And like that core drive to be successful in something that some endeavor that you take on can be applied across, you know, all types of areas, including business and life and being a dad and being a husband.
And so, you know, and I think I’ve done that across different areas, different parts of my life. And I think what I really want to do is think about what I am passionate about, and then find something in that space that I can apply this drive to and try to, you know, create something new in the future, right? Like this. Right. Right now I’m having fun building some tech and yeah, let’s let’s keep going on that route.
John Corcoran: 35:18
Last question. I’m a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to those who helped you and your journey along the way. Are there any particular peers, contemporaries, mentors that you’d want to acknowledge?
Ashish Patel: 35:28
So I’ll go back to, you know, when I was at my consulting firm, before I started tech, I knew I wanted to start this. I wanted a jumping off point. I had one, and the owner of that company, Dustin Wells, was actually also the president for Austin, which is how I got introduced to EO, supported me in my interest and curiosity in being an entrepreneur. And in most scenarios, owners don’t support that. They really see you as a billable employee.
They see revenue, right? Dollars. And so they don’t want you to leave. They don’t want you to go work with a former client. And so in this scenario, we were able to work something out where he would support it.
And I could always lean on, give him a call throughout my journey to ask him questions. And because he had kind of built the firm that I wanted to build, and I used that as a template in a lot of ways. And it’s different now, right? The times have changed, but I can still give him a call. You know, he’s ended up exiting and selling to Accenture, but he’s always available.
John Corcoran: 36:42
Yeah. It’s funny, I had a friend. His name is Riley Hurd, who’s an attorney here locally. And when I started my legal firm, he basically gave me some work that kept me busy for a period of time that allowed me to kind of transition to having my own book of business, and forever grateful to him for doing that. And, you know, those relationships are so magical.
And it really is just.
Ashish Patel: 37:04
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 37:05
Critical for people starting a new company. And you always get them. So actually this is me. Great. Where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you and reach out if they have any questions?
Ashish Patel: 37:16
Yeah, I think LinkedIn is probably the place where I am on the most. So find me on LinkedIn. Ashish-Patel-Simpat is my handle there.
John Corcoran: 37:25
Awesome. Ashish, thanks so much.
Ashish Patel: 37:27
Sure thing. Thanks, John. Bye.
Outro: 37:31
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.