00;01;46;12 - 00;02;21;16
Unknown
All right, let's jump in. Nick, thanks for joining us on the Pear program. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So this is another big bonus episode of a mini series that we call How We Hatched. And so today we have the former chief software officer for the US Air Force and Space Force, and the founder and CEO behind Ask Sage, a generative AI platform, that enables, both government and commercial teams, to enable secure access to gen AI models.
00;02;21;18 - 00;02;41;23
Unknown
So, Nick, your journey from tech entrepreneur to the government innovator, you know, has has really kind of reshaped how technology is integrated in national defense. So we're pumped to have you join us on the pod today. Thank you. Excited to be here. Awesome. All right, now, before we dive in, we'd like to start with a pretty deep question off the break.
00;02;41;25 - 00;03;08;14
Unknown
What did Nick have for breakfast this morning? Oh, fruit. A bunch of fruit. That was yummy. Nice. Is that the go to. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Good. Yeah. Healthy start. I dig it. Healthy. Yeah. Try. Perfect. All right. Yeah. Now, let's, let's jump in to, to the heart of the conversation now. You know, we and true kind of how we hatch form.
00;03;08;14 - 00;03;26;06
Unknown
We like to get into the journey of the entrepreneur before we dive into some of the innovative tech behind sage. So. Right. And doing my initial research, you know, I read that, you know, you founded your first company at the age of 15, which is kind of crazy. What sparked your interest in entrepreneurship at such a young age?
00;03;26;06 - 00;03;46;01
Unknown
And and how did this kind of first venture shape your career path? Yeah, I started coding at seven, and then I, you know, at 12, I created my first game, I made 50 grand. And I use that 50 grand, you know, to create my company at 15. Back in France, I mean, it's unusual, particularly in France, you know, at the time, not a lot of entrepreneurs.
00;03;46;08 - 00;04;04;12
Unknown
So young. I was the youngest, French entrepreneur at the time. That was all fun. I don't know, I guess I always wanted to build stuff and create stuff and, you know, kind of like, getting things done, and I guess that leads you to being an entrepreneur, I guess, in this world. So. Yeah. Was this something in the family?
00;04;04;12 - 00;04;25;00
Unknown
Did your parents, were they entrepreneurs or you know, what kind of stemmed that for you? Yeah. Now, my dad is a journalist and my mom is a nurse. So, Yeah, no entrepreneurs in the family, I guess. Gotcha. So. So you grew up in France? You started this first business. What? You know what? What was your next step from here?
00;04;25;02 - 00;04;46;21
Unknown
You know, was this a progression of continuing down the path of starting your own new businesses, or did you go into a corporate environment and get some of that exposure? Yeah. No, I, I created, overall 12, companies back in France. And then I moved here. So I did a whole bunch of companies, sold them, in a way, you know, built 187 products, I think, now.
00;04;46;24 - 00;05;07;17
Unknown
Wow. Yeah. No, no, I mean, other than a few, engagements with the buyers of the companies that bought us, we I never spent time in in the corporate, world, I guess. What was that first company that you built and what was, you know, what was the the problem that it was solving? Yeah.
00;05;07;17 - 00;05;26;23
Unknown
So I was part of the team that, helped create PHP, you know, the programing language. And so we, we had a, first company to build a, e-commerce website at the time that was pretty innovative, like in France. So we brought the SSL payments, back then to, Europe. And we were the first one to partner with banks to do it securely.
00;05;26;23 - 00;05;53;12
Unknown
And, then we started selling, you know, kind of CRM and CMS, you know, management system websites to be able to help, companies to, you know, business on the internet back then. So, pretty fun. Yeah. That's, that's just it's it's shocking to me at age 15. It's, That's wild. I love, love that kind of, like, early entrepreneur spirit.
00;05;53;14 - 00;06;17;00
Unknown
You know, this obviously led down a few different paths. And, you know, you know, one of the big things that we always, you know, hone into here is I'm being in the DC area, you know, like govtech defense, tech innovation. Talk to me about this kind of transition from entrepreneur to government service. You know, what kind of motivated your transition from being a tech entrepreneur to taking on this, you know, a significant role as the chief software officer in the the US Air Force?
00;06;17;02 - 00;06;37;05
Unknown
Yeah. So for us, I guess I moved here about 15 years ago now, became a citizen. I think it's about, you know, ten years now. I'm not sure. But the next month, after I became a citizen, I was at DHS as the chief architect. That was, pretty crazy. You know, I wanted to give back and make a difference.
00;06;37;05 - 00;07;08;06
Unknown
And that was the time during the ISIS attacks, and, people, you know, getting, targeted and attacked and so wanted to make a difference. And so I started DHS as a chief architect, built a lot of the zero trust and kind of cyber stuff there. And then, spent about 18 months appointed, DHS and I moved to, to DoD, first as, the special advisor for DevSecOps, to the OSD, Alliance Acquisition and Sustainment team.
00;07;08;08 - 00;07;49;17
Unknown
And then we moved to create this chief self to office, in the Air Force and Space Force, really partnering with the CIO, to bring, DevSecOps and continuous delivery of capabilities, to production, to scale, across the department. So that was a lot of engagements across DoD and build a pretty significant, you know, set of engagements with Cloud One, platform one, that we created, you know, at the Air Force and Space Force to, you know, be able to do the first over-the-air update of software, on jets and bomb barrels and space systems and a lot of fun stuff.
00;07;49;20 - 00;08;13;20
Unknown
Yeah, I want to expand on that. But but before we dive deep into some of those initiatives, some of those, like the DevSecOps initiatives, you know, coming from an entrepreneurial background, you know, obviously working in smaller startup companies, a lot, many of which were your own. Yeah. You know what? You know, what were those different major kind of like cultural differences that were, you know, you're you're experiencing in these government positions.
00;08;13;20 - 00;08;43;07
Unknown
And then how would you say, like, your entrepreneurial background influenced some of your approach to, to building and trying to innovate in those government roles? I mean, I guess you can't make it more different between the, military side that I knew nothing about and, kind of, you know, completely changed the culture. And then, of course, you know, mission that also important to the nation, with people that are putting their lives on the line, you know, can't compare that to, to a stupid mobile app or whatever.
00;08;43;07 - 00;09;14;06
Unknown
Right. So, I think it's been completely, mind boggling in the first few months for me to get used to kind of the culture and the mission and also, you know, the way the system works, which honestly doesn't really work well. Right. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, issues with the department the way we by the way we sustain with the way we build, the way we reinvent the wheel, the way we fail to collaborate across teams.
00;09;14;08 - 00;09;37;20
Unknown
So there was a lot of issues and also the pace and the lack of, you know, velocity and, was really mind boggling to me. I remember one of the first few engagements we started to get, we started to understand kind of the, the key parties to, to to focus on. And we were starting to look at cost and how to get it done.
00;09;37;20 - 00;10;15;23
Unknown
And, I remember, you know, thinking, oh, that's, you know, that's easy. That's 100 grand, you know, to do this and then, you know, getting quotes at the meeting, plus, you know, range, across DoD and, you know, we say to see, wow, you know, there's, there's a duty cut tax. I guess you're doing business, you know, in the department, the way we, we have these, companies helping us, often, you know, with this kind of DoD bubble that is the defense industrial base with clearances and all the things that prevent startups and innovative companies to participate.
00;10;15;23 - 00;10;45;10
Unknown
So that was, kind of an awakening moment, you know, to realize what we got to do. And, that was a first, you know, first couple of weeks in the building and, you know, also, like, you know, seeing these meetings where I remember my first meeting, I showed up, you know, talking about agile, and it was like, you know, a good 20 people in the on the main table and another 20, you know, around the next to the wall as we love to do it.
00;10;45;13 - 00;11;06;23
Unknown
And really, I remember, you know, listening and, and clearly seeing that no one had done agile ever in their lives. And so I asked a question, I say, hey, you know, who here has used agile in, in real life? And, you know, it was a it was a study group on how to implement agile for DoD.
00;11;06;27 - 00;11;26;16
Unknown
Right. So kind of important that you've used it before. Okay. And, you know, there was only one person that raised a hand of, you know, 40 people. And that was a pretty big awakening moment for me to be like, so why, what are you doing here? You know, why are you here? So, that was not a great start for me to build a good rapport with all these people.
00;11;26;18 - 00;11;52;09
Unknown
I was always pretty blunt and pretty, clear in my intentions. And, a lot of people are not used to that and play politics all day, and I'm just not like that. So that was a it was a good a good first couple of weeks. Yeah. I mean you're an outlier, right. And I think this is kind of like foreshadowing into, you know, why and how, you know, as sage kind of, you know, came to be and became a successful product so quickly.
00;11;52;09 - 00;12;13;25
Unknown
But, I think you're, you know, that injection of, you know, an entrepreneur into that environment is really, a theme that I think in the last five, five ish years, five, ten years or more. So recently, you know, a lot more folks being akin to, you know, we need this different type of outlook. We need these different perspectives.
00;12;13;25 - 00;12;36;11
Unknown
We need to shake things up. You saw it early on. And so it kind of gave you an advantage to, you know, kind of starting to get the, the wheels turning on ways that you could probably innovate, in a, in a much quicker capacity. But, you know, important to kind of see what it's like on the inside, and the seed of an end user before you can do that as a vendor and industry partner.
00;12;36;13 - 00;13;03;21
Unknown
I wanted to kind of jump back into, you know, some of these initiatives within, like, you know, like the DevSecOps, DevSecOps initiatives, you know, just kind of talk a little bit about some of those unique challenges, you know, you faced in kind of implementing agile dev setbacks practices with within these structured environments. You kind of touched on it, but like maybe a little bit more as to why it's so challenging, especially in like a military setting.
00;13;03;23 - 00;13;21;29
Unknown
Yeah. I don't think it's that challenging, honestly. I think, we like to pretend it is, you know, we like to pretend software is special. I mean, the mission is special, but software is software. And of course, there's, tremendous, risks, doing it wrong. And you don't want to use people that have never done it before to do it in DoD first.
00;13;22;01 - 00;13;45;13
Unknown
So that's part of the challenge, you know, the culture and, kind of the way to think about, continuous delivery of value and getting real time feedback from the end users and all these things that we take for granted. You know, on the commercial side, building software, rapidly, getting feedback loops, very, fast and trying to make sure we're not wasting a bunch of time, money building product that no one wants to use.
00;13;45;15 - 00;14;08;26
Unknown
And so, you know, what I felt was that everybody was begging for it. People were just kind of waiting for someone to take the lead and remove the barriers to entry and remove, you know, give that top cover, you know, protection, if you will, to get things done and empower, you know, the people at the lowest rank that know how to do these things to get it done.
00;14;08;26 - 00;14;32;01
Unknown
And so that was kind of my job is to really, you know, be the punching ball, instead of those guys. Right? Enlisted and majors and captains getting stuff done. And so, you know, we did a great job partnering with all these people to kind of bring this to life really rapidly in weeks. And I think the velocity was such that, you know, the building was not used to, that kind of pace.
00;14;32;01 - 00;14;50;22
Unknown
And, we demonstrated that a small group of people can actually come and completely disrupt the way, D.O.D. does business. And what I found is, you know, if you if you run fast and you, you get stuff done, very few people want to get in the way and have the courage to, you know, to be the one slowing you down.
00;14;50;24 - 00;15;11;03
Unknown
And so, you know, what I found is you just keep moving and ignore them. And and, you know, no one is here to slow you down. And, and I think that the fear for many of the government employees is, is to take that leap of faith to like, go ahead and do it and ask for forgiveness later. I find that, you know, the chance of getting in trouble if you follow the law.
00;15;11;03 - 00;15;37;08
Unknown
And I'm not saying, you know, go do stupid things, but just common sense. Thanks. Is is you have no risk of of losing your job. And, and so I think it's kind of that complacency that got, you know, got really became the norm, you know, to, to do business in DoD and the lack of urgency and, you know, the lack of, of risk taking has been kind of the norm.
00;15;37;11 - 00;16;05;16
Unknown
Yeah. And we just can't afford it anymore. So, we need to, to step up their game. Yeah, yeah. Well said, you know that. You know, there's a pretty consistent chain of command of to, to break out of some of the norm and, to challenge some of the status quo is most a bit frowned upon, which is the opposite of what you see with a lot of commercial tech innovators, firms that are, that are building, you know, across the country, Silicon Valley, building quickly and, kind of challenging the status quo.
00;16;05;18 - 00;16;28;02
Unknown
It's a reverse style of thinking than maybe your traditional embedded governments, but sorry, folks, let's let's kind of move on to, you know, this genesis of Ask Sage. So when was it that you kind of had the initial idea and talk to me about that transition to, you know, kind of making that leap into, you know, starting this up?
00;16;28;04 - 00;16;58;00
Unknown
Yeah. So we start as sage January of 2023. So, right after, you know, the the big, push of ChatGPT. Right. And so we say, I saw you using it say to see beyond the gimmicks and see how much it would impact my day to day life in coding and cyber and, you know, just doing my, my LinkedIn engagement and my, my emails and, you know, I mean, all the way to to coding.
00;16;58;00 - 00;17;26;09
Unknown
Right. And so we pretty quickly realized this is going to be something that's going to disrupt the way people, get things done and how to empower them. And so, you know, it's kind of a, an assistant on steroids, chief of staff, lawyer coder. Right. And so, I was pretty quickly, aware that we need to bring this to the department.
00;17;26;11 - 00;17;57;28
Unknown
If we want to be able to move fast and break those barriers, and we need to find a way to to do that quickly. I also was tracking, you know, the CCP trying to bring their GPT Baidu stuff to, to the Chinese government. And so that's, you know, scary because you have, you know, way more people, eagerness to to disrupt and get that augmentation of, of velocity with JNI, which, you know, today with AI, sage is about 35 acts.
00;17;57;28 - 00;18;19;25
Unknown
So one person turning into 35 people, that's a lot. It's not just, you know, 20%, 30%. We're talking like, you know, 35 times faster, up to 50 times for contracting and legal and other things. So, cutting, you know, 90% of ice age is built by Ice age. So, I mean, the the value we were able to create.
00;18;19;27 - 00;18;40;13
Unknown
Jerry, with two people, when we built our ice age, my wife and I, which I, empowering us to get things done has been my boggling when you compared to my other companies I had to build and the number of people that were needed to to get to the same kind of levels of, of speed and, delivery.
00;18;40;16 - 00;19;09;04
Unknown
That's been mind boggling. And so we knew right away that this had to be, you know, commodity and easily accessible, in the department. So that was, that was, you know, really something we, we wanted to get done and we were able to get, you know, from high and duty impact level five, authorized in, in a few months, and very small investment, by using gen AI again.
00;19;09;06 - 00;19;37;21
Unknown
And so that's been, you know, a massive enabler to show also startups and companies that, they can get stuff done. Yeah. It's really cool to see, this next wave of startups that are building, with the use of, of Genii, and not needing the, the overhead. That's necessary. Right. So all that trickle effect of not as much capital being needed, which is a good timing for that, because access to capital is super expensive and very difficult.
00;19;37;21 - 00;19;56;04
Unknown
And so some of these tools coming out are just so timely. And I love how it's not only a tool that's being used, to roll out for your customers, it's being used internally for you to scale your own business. Right. So it's it's really neat to see that. And I, I love hearing that, that success story. I also I have to expand.
00;19;56;04 - 00;20;15;02
Unknown
So so your wife, has she ever partnered with you before on previous ventures or is this the first one? No, it's the first one. Yeah, that was a classic. And I'm always curious on, like, you know, co-founders that, either married or siblings. It's always an interesting dynamic. Yeah. Co-Founder is basically like your your partner in marriage anyways.
00;20;15;02 - 00;20;37;16
Unknown
Right? It's just something you can do a bigger partnership anyways. But, I think, I guess she's not a co-founder. She joined after a year, but, doesn't matter. She's she's a CEO of the company, and she's been awesome. That makes a massive difference. And so, yeah, you know, I think it's obviously, something you want to be cautious about and, you want to do it, right?
00;20;37;19 - 00;21;08;19
Unknown
And it's not for everybody, but, I think it's been, going very well. Yeah. That's awesome. So I wanted to expand a little bit more on, you know, this idea of what an LLC, agnostic platform entails and why it's crucial for the future of secure, like and adaptable AI systems. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think when I built at sage, I wanted to make sure it was, built the way I would want to consume it, in the government and also as a company.
00;21;08;21 - 00;21;31;29
Unknown
And so, you know, we don't know who is going to win, a lot of different players between Google Meet, you know, OpenAI and throw a brick and bunch of open source models coming out. DNI so you want to be able to tap any model and train your data once and, have this agnostic layer between your data and the model so you can consume any model.
00;21;32;02 - 00;21;50;12
Unknown
Right away when they come out. And so we built a stack that's capable of doing this. And that's been a, you know, tremendous enabler for us to, you know, within same day, be able to deploy the latest models. You know, you take the oh three models that came out, you know, two weeks ago from OpenAI.
00;21;50;15 - 00;22;10;02
Unknown
Within three hours, it wasn't saved. Right? So that kind of stuff enables you velocity, and you can try things out and see what sticks and see which model does a best job. To get your different tasks done based on your needs and based on what you're trying to achieve and also the costs. Right. Which models and scale.
00;22;10;05 - 00;22;32;17
Unknown
And so we had to build kind of this abstraction layer for billing and for consumption and for security and for data ingest, where you can ingest your data. Once you can have this zero trust layer, where you can label data on a per, cell basis, and then, you know, label it and then tied back to, each user on a need to know basis.
00;22;32;17 - 00;22;56;08
Unknown
So you can enforce that need to know, so that's been a huge enabler to be able to do, you know, classified work and be able to also go after the regulated industries like banking and health care. With that, you know, need of privacy and security as, as a baked in, consideration and, bolted on after the fact.
00;22;56;10 - 00;23;26;20
Unknown
Yeah. It's a common question. We get, you know, in this whole dual use kind of ecosystem. Right. You know, where we're folks, you know, ask the question, is it better to kind of, you know, try to angle and start in, you know, in a government setting, you know, if you're, if you're able to kind of, prove that, you know, this can operate efficiently in a regulated, secure environment, does that help, you know, alleviate some of the selling pain points when you're going into other regulated environments like health care or fintech?
00;23;26;22 - 00;23;48;16
Unknown
I mean, I think it goes both ways. At the end of the day, you need to have a good product that can scale and have not a bunch of technical debt and cyber debt that you where you take shortcuts. And we see a lot of companies do that. They put security last. They don't think of, you know, scale and then they have some quick wins and then they have a massive tech debt and cyber debt to fix along the way.
00;23;48;18 - 00;24;13;15
Unknown
And it's just as in scale and turns into a nightmare. So I think, you know, for us, we had to build a rival nation from the get go, be able to run on any cloud, be able to be completely gapped, be able to be deployed on a customer fabric, be able to run at the edge, be able to tap any models and be able to, you know, comply with all the the cyber best practices.
00;24;13;18 - 00;24;33;27
Unknown
And bring that security baked in. That was kind of the foundational pieces of the puzzle from day one. And I think we did a great job keeping that in, you know, as a, you know, foundational piece of, of the technology. And then you see others, you know, come up and try to rebuild what we built, particularly within the government.
00;24;33;29 - 00;25;02;13
Unknown
You know, internally, with government teams or contractors, paid to, to rebuild of the shelf products, which, you know, not only is is silly and shortsighted, but it's also kind of, you know, comical to see those guys trying to compete with a company that does this for a living. And you know what? What's scary is they end up building, a subpar, you know, capability with spending, you know, millions of the taxpayer money.
00;25;02;15 - 00;25;42;28
Unknown
And then what you, you don't have in those products is kind of that, product product mentality where, you know, all these considerations for scale and reuse and, you know, saving the taxpayer money and being able to consolidate and build capabilities that can be reused across, you know, the the CVD emergency agencies, the duty and the OCC, and also commercial, on not, you know, even a factor because they want to sell again and again the same things, where we want to build a commercial product that's, you know, off the shelf and reusable and easily accessible and reusable across across, agencies.
00;25;43;01 - 00;26;02;28
Unknown
And so that's why we're so cheap right now. I mean, you can literally get started 15 bucks a month on that stage and get an account and get started. So the barrier to entry is non-existent, right? You know, and we see the government spending five, ten, 15 million, which, by the way, a 15 minute engagement on Ice Age will give a D.O.D. license of ice.
00;26;03;05 - 00;26;23;16
Unknown
Right. So, and they have, like, 20,000 users, you know, right. Compared to the the 4 million users would, would be able to do with that same amount of money. So that and people don't always pay attention to these things. Right. And that's why you see, you know, immense amount of funding being wasted in, across the government.
00;26;23;17 - 00;26;40;22
Unknown
But and you see it now with Dodge, you know, looking at some of these things, you know, but but if you look at D.O.D., I would argue probably 70% of the funding is going down the drain on day one, you know, which is which is a pretty scary number. Yeah. I mean, it's a model that's clearly under the microscope at the moment.
00;26;40;24 - 00;27;08;05
Unknown
You know, the the idea of of shifting things to, taking commercial, you know, tech products that can be injected, versus building everything from scratch. You know, it's just, I don't know, it's seems like a common sense concept, but it's also a model that hasn't changed in years. And so, you know, getting getting stuff to, you know, getting change through the door and, you know, what's been a very pretty rigid ecosystem for years is, is, not an easy thing to do.
00;27;08;07 - 00;27;35;24
Unknown
I do like to have an optimistic mindset that, you know, looking at a case study like, sage, you know, things are changing, but, you know, there's still a lot of work to be done. Your background clearly, you know, played a big part in helping get this technology into the right hands. You know, your background in cloud, in cyber, in these environments, you know, obviously propped up, like, you know, you're building this with that mindset already intact.
00;27;35;24 - 00;28;04;12
Unknown
So I think that certainly helps versus the, the founder that maybe had, you know, no ties to, you know, to defense. You know, I wasn't chief software architect for, you know, for some of the largest agencies. So I think that's that's a good case study. I want to kind of pull on this thread a little bit. You know, in our discovery call, we we talked a little bit about, you know, you're you're slowly become this fastest growing defense company, right.
00;28;04;14 - 00;28;29;01
Unknown
Right. So you've become one of these fastest growing defense companies, you know, supporting some 14,000 government teams. You you talked about, you know, this breakdown between, you know, government agencies, but also, you know, corporate customers that kind of have that fine balance. Let's I wanted to to to go a little bit deeper into one of the largest, you know, gen AI deployments with, with the Army.
00;28;29;03 - 00;28;52;03
Unknown
Can you talk a little bit about this case study? And you know, how it kind of came to be and, and maybe expand on the level of impact that it's had? You know, through this engagement? Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I can't help but to be sad a bit when I talked about the Army engagement, you know, coming from the Air Force to see, you know, the Air Force in the Space Force behind the way behind what the Army is doing.
00;28;52;06 - 00;29;16;21
Unknown
You know, when we left the building, back in 2021, the Army went so far behind us it wasn't even funny. And now they're leading the pack on everything. DevSecOps cloud, you know, and I and I, as a whole. And that has to do, of course, with the leadership, particularly with little Gal Sego. You know, the Army CIO is, really a visionary guy.
00;29;16;21 - 00;29;37;04
Unknown
And to get stuff done, it's kind of a, you know, very similar to, to what I do. And, you know, he's is really thinking outside the box and, and he's not afraid to, to get stuff done. And so, you know, he started an engagement very early with Ice age, for us, a few hundred users to see what sticks, learn from it.
00;29;37;04 - 00;29;58;18
Unknown
He did a great memo enabling the consumption of Gen AI securely instead of, you know, what the spatial did with a very short sighted ban on I banning all gen I use across these the Space Force for almost a year, including with public official data, which is unheard of. That's never happened in history of any technology on the planet.
00;29;58;20 - 00;30;19;14
Unknown
So you could even use it with Google data, right? So which is unheard of. So very shortsighted for, you know, the, the new, fancy service, D.O.D. service and supposed to be innovating and, you know, bringing innovation to the DoD as this new newly born, you know, innovative service without all the impediments of the other ones.
00;30;19;14 - 00;30;44;17
Unknown
Right. To innovate, allegedly, as you can see, leadership has everything to do with whether or not, an agency can innovate because Army has all the impediments of the legacy, old, you know, D.O.D. service and, yeah, you know, the Space Force was the one with no impediment, but poor leadership that led to disastrous outcomes. And so, you know, Army has been has been awesome, right?
00;30;44;17 - 00;31;14;11
Unknown
They, they are starting now, you know, 150,000 users. Wow. You know, which would be the largest, jenn-air deployment, in, at least in the government, if not, you know, even maybe on the commercial side. So it's and it's so many use cases, you know, between cutting cyber acquisition, contracting and legal data analytics, you know, saving the taxpayer, billions, for a very small investment.
00;31;14;13 - 00;31;43;24
Unknown
A few million bucks, you know, and so the return on investment has been pretty incredible, for the taxpayer. And I think it's probably one of the only way we can, use technology to save time and money, particularly with the cuts that are going to come, you know, with the new administration, I think, you know, if you're going to cut people and you're going to cut, you know, funding, you have no way but to start automating and, you know, getting rid of the noise.
00;31;43;26 - 00;31;59;23
Unknown
And for that, there's there's just no better way that than technology. And I think, Jen, I particularly is going to be the low hanging fruit and the easy, you know, push button to get things done. And to all me has been leading the way and to know we're going to be working on secret and top secret as well.
00;31;59;25 - 00;32;22;07
Unknown
So it's going to be a huge scale and they did this idea IQ with us that's accessible government wide. So they were smart enough also to be like, hey, we need to make this available to the entire government and not just DoD or not just, you know, the Army. So now anyone can, you know, very quickly and have it available, within, within hours.
00;32;22;10 - 00;32;39;23
Unknown
With no barrier to entry. You know, they can even use a credit card to buy licenses at, you know, 15 bucks a month and, and get started and, you know, for 90 bucks a month, you get you get ten users. So that's nine bucks a user. That's a game changer, you know? So, no other costs.
00;32;39;23 - 00;33;03;02
Unknown
No, no, you know, nonsense. No additional costs. Every time we release, you know, five times a day, we're now charging more for more for the new features or the new plans, or it's just flat, flat price. Easy to go, easy. You know, pricing and, scalable, which I think is key. We built it ready to go after the entire workforce because we, we we think.
00;33;03;03 - 00;33;29;13
Unknown
Right. Any anyone that has a known blue cloud job needs this right to, to go faster. So, yeah, I mean, as far as timing goes, you're in this perfect storm with this new administration, with the amount of cuts, you know, the plan in place to, to supplement the output. You know, you're you're really kind of perfect timing for, for pushing, sage and taking this use case and, and really building on it.
00;33;29;13 - 00;33;54;13
Unknown
So, yeah, assuming people understand, they need technology to replace what they lost. Sure. And the fear, right, is some people will be in this freezing mode where they don't want to innovate, and they don't or they don't. They are scared of of making decisions on, any changes. And they would be stuck in this like, state of less funding, less people.
00;33;54;16 - 00;34;22;23
Unknown
And yet, no, you know, way to accelerate. So that's scary a little bit, right? We got to spend a little bit of money to, to then save a bunch of money. So it's not just like cutting stuff, right? It's also investing in better things. And so I know that administration understand that. But, you know, I think, my fear is the people that will execute this may be worried to invest in this kind of, you know, new culture, of fear.
00;34;22;24 - 00;34;43;15
Unknown
You know, they there's a lot of fear right now, a lot of uncertainties. Right? So I think it's very important that people understand that. Hey, the only way to succeed in this is going to be to use technology, which is what companies do, right, to come and and save money so that you can then, you know, still produce value, right?
00;34;43;18 - 00;35;10;03
Unknown
And not just take cuts and then lose all the value you used to be, bringing to the taxpayer. So, yeah, I, you know, we talk about this quite a bit, on the podcast and also, you know, we have an entire, you know, kind of tech recruiting piece to our business, right? So we're always having conversations with engineers with product folks that yeah, there's no it's no secret that over the last three years there's been a lot of tech layoffs.
00;35;10;05 - 00;35;35;00
Unknown
It's a big, big issue happening, you know, and, as we record this right now. Right, you're getting big tech layoffs from meta, performance based, they say, and they're still looking to hire up, folks that are, you know, technically savvy in areas of AI and machine learning. And so what we try to encourage is, you know, look, the, the, the, the role of, of tech workers are is going to be changing.
00;35;35;03 - 00;35;55;21
Unknown
And in order for you to be a part of the conversation to, to be considered for that next wave of what's, you know, what's in demand, you're going to have to adapt and take on and and upskill yourself. Yeah. So there's a there's an opportunity to, to, to to jump on it. A lot of folks refer it to like the, you know, the internet, you know, boom.
00;35;55;21 - 00;36;15;05
Unknown
A lot of folks were like, not not buying this. I'm not really sure what this is all about. And the early folks that got in, you know, they wrote a really successful wave. It's just very hard, I think, for folks to wrap their head around change. And, you know, it is a scary time. Everybody's role is probably going to be impacted in some way, shape or form.
00;36;15;07 - 00;36;34;25
Unknown
The question is, do you want to to be a part of the positive impact that it brings or, you know, the downside of it? And so yeah, hopefully the folks that listen to this, that, that maybe are anticipating, you know, some sort of change in their current role, they, they see it as motivation or encouragement to, you know, go, go, you know, go get, go get a certification.
00;36;34;25 - 00;36;57;00
Unknown
Go, go get a course, under your belt, that's, you know, maybe prompt engineering related, and figure out how to, best take whatever your skill set is. And, that compliment with, you know, deep tech, progressive tech. Yeah. We got 12,003 videos on the website for people to get started. So on our YouTube channel. So, you know, that's a great, so cool right there that a bunch of free course.
00;36;57;00 - 00;37;10;20
Unknown
I mean, it's so easy to find, you know, courses on pump engineering and and you're right, you know, people that are putting their head in the sand and hoping it's going to go away are going to pay the price, and it's not going to go away. It's going to get older and harder to keep up and catch up.
00;37;10;23 - 00;37;32;17
Unknown
And honestly, you know, the the velocity of innovation is such that you can't now wait, months or years between waves. It's continuously changing. And so learning how to learn by yourself and really investing in yourself is probably the biggest skill you need to have. And if you're still afraid of change, you're not going to be able to be in that business.
00;37;32;17 - 00;37;51;06
Unknown
You know, there's just it's going to be so much change so often that you can't not embrace it. And so that's going to be probably the biggest disruption is the velocity of learning compared to I used to be, you know, ten, 20 years cycle is now going to be a year to year cycle max, you know. So it's going to be very disruptive.
00;37;51;08 - 00;38;16;19
Unknown
Yeah. It's a good point. Well, the good news is, you know, YouTube's a beautiful resource. Yeah. And so anybody has that has a Wi-Fi, you know, connection has access to some of those classes. I wanted to, you know, just kind of, you know, hone in on a couple of things here because throughout your experience, you know, it seems like you're always at the the mode of, like, pushing boundaries of technology.
00;38;16;19 - 00;38;38;03
Unknown
And, you know, we can kind of see this, this trend or those themes from you, from cybersecurity to, to cloud services. Now, I, you know, what is it that you would say, you know, kind of gives you this continuous drive for innovation? Or is there like a certain set of principles that kind of guide this, you know, new exploration of new ideas for you?
00;38;38;06 - 00;38;58;09
Unknown
Well, I don't know. I think it has to do with, the passion that I have for the tech and, you know, so that you can't if you don't have it is very tough, right, to be okay spending so much time and learning and investing and all this, time and money into, these new waves of innovation.
00;38;58;11 - 00;39;19;10
Unknown
So it's a mindset. It's, it's passion. It's, you know, trying to get things done and also doing the right things for your kids. I mean, it's I think it's a lot of different things, you know, and for me, it's been also, you know, making sure that the nation has the tools we need to be able to win against China.
00;39;19;17 - 00;39;47;27
Unknown
And I think, that's been my prime, you know, push for, for our kids. So they have a chance at winning against China in 20 years and giving them all the deterrents and, the tools to be able to, to achieve that. Yeah. What, what kind of advice would you, would you give to, you know, let's just say aspiring entrepreneurs, this next wave of entrepreneurs that are looking to innovate, right?
00;39;47;29 - 00;40;09;06
Unknown
You know, we'll dial it into, you know, the defense tech ecosystem per se. What what would you say? Or a couple of, you know, things to keep in mind when they're thinking about, you know, building that startup that's going to be the next big thing in the defense tech world is a first step that needs to be said that people tend to ignore, which is not everybody is an entrepreneur.
00;40;09;06 - 00;40;40;00
Unknown
And that's okay. Right? It's fine to be number two. It's fine to be number three. It's fine to be part of an existing company. Not everybody's brain is designed to, to to be. It's very painful. And so, you know, people think it's easy and it's just not right. And so that's number one. Number two if you really are fully committed and that means, you know, financially and mentally to, to doing this, then particularly if you're going to go after the D.O.D., you can't do a half baked.
00;40;40;03 - 00;40;57;25
Unknown
And so you're going to go all in, you're going to have to think about hiring the right people to help you. You're going to have to, you know, if you don't know the market, really try to understand it and not build stuff in a vacuum. And then you're going to have to also, understand security requirements and all these things.
00;40;57;25 - 00;41;21;17
Unknown
And so there's a lot of things that come into play, right, to go after the DoD. And many companies get burned, right? They all go after getting a grant, you know, cyber, and trying to start there, which is, which is a decent first step. Right? But it's it's way more complex than that. There's a lot of moving pieces, and you need to be surrounded with the right advice.
00;41;21;20 - 00;41;38;11
Unknown
And you can't do it half baked. We see a lot of people like, you know, trying a bit to get together and spending a little bit of money, but not enough. And then it backfires and they lose it. All right. So if you're going to do it, you probably need to hire, you know, at least one sales guy that understands public sector.
00;41;38;11 - 00;42;04;09
Unknown
Right. So you need to do things that, you know, particularly if you've never done it before, you know, you need to, to invest to some degree to your success. And, just like any market maybe. But duty has a lot of, you know, special, you know, acronyms and, you know, handshakes and. Right. So it's like a, it's like a, a bubble.
00;42;04;09 - 00;42;24;23
Unknown
You know, we have two bubbles, right? In the in the US, we have the Silicon Valley bubble, and we have the DoD, defense bubble. I call the Silicon Valley, you know, the the Kumbaya bubble. You know, everything is nice. And they refuse to work with D.O.D. most of the time, and they think, you know, everybody's going to be nice and whatnot.
00;42;24;25 - 00;42;49;19
Unknown
And then you have the DoD side, which is the complacency bubble. You know, where we fail to have urgency and get stuff done. And and if we don't make that merge and collide and burst, into a single, bubble, I guess. Yeah. We're not going to succeed as a nation. Right? So that's what we had back, during World War two, you know, when all this was created, with Arpa and now what is, right.
00;42;49;19 - 00;43;20;26
Unknown
And all these things to innovate. And Silicon Valley was created, you know, by by the department. Yeah. Ready to innovate. And people now refuse to engage with the department, and that's, that's very scary, right. Because China, of course, is, forcing all their companies to to work with them. And I'm not saying we should do that, but we should really add the culture and, explain to entrepreneurs and companies as to why it's important that they do, willingly engage with the, the Defense Department.
00;43;20;26 - 00;43;41;24
Unknown
So, yeah. So we need to bring the kumbaya, together with the complacency and make a new bubble. Right. Bubble. And it's going to be a max, you know, an average of eight. Right? So then you have rage like the you raise the complacency now to some urgency level. Right? And then you have the Kumbaya. Everybody is nice to like, oh wait, people are not always so nice.
00;43;41;24 - 00;44;01;17
Unknown
And we need deterrence and we need tools and we need weapons, and we need, you know, to to be a strong nation, to deter people from doing silly things to us. So, I think, you know, if they don't combine, we're never going to succeed. You know, what you see is people comparing US companies success to, Chinese companies.
00;44;01;17 - 00;44;27;08
Unknown
Right? So you have people comparing, you know, I companies in the US to AI companies in China. And the US is leading this fight. The deep nonsense that you've been hearing, we're still eating right. But what people fail to realize is that DoD does not have access to best of breed U.S company news. Meanwhile, the CCP has not only stolen most of the US IP through hacking.
00;44;27;10 - 00;44;49;00
Unknown
But then they also, you know, took the Chinese, IP from their companies. And so they are in a much better position as a defense, department, to have access to best of breed technology compared to what the US, has access to. And that's a very, scary state to be in. And we need best of breed in duty now.
00;44;49;00 - 00;45;11;25
Unknown
Just you know, in companies. Yeah, yeah, their approach is, you know, a little bit more unethical than, than most. But, yeah. No, I think you're you're spot on. We've got a lot of, conversations coming up on the podcast that's really talking about this race and the importance to innovate and do it quickly. So I think, you know, your insights are are spot on.
00;45;11;28 - 00;45;32;21
Unknown
I wanted to, you know, we talked a lot about business here. Professional life, you know, just a little bit of, like, personal reflection because I'm an entrepreneur as well. I know that life, oftentimes, you know, can be. Yeah, completely impacted by what's going on in the business. How do you kind of keep the two separate?
00;45;32;21 - 00;45;56;06
Unknown
You know what? What are any kind of, you know, Nick hacks that you you, have that kind of helps you balance the professional, you know, high speed lifestyle with your personal life that does not exist. And and, by the way, that's why inntrepreneur is so hard, you know? Right. People that claim they do this, they are usually not very good entrepreneurs.
00;45;56;08 - 00;46;18;08
Unknown
Because you don't turn it off. Right? And there's no off switch stays, no weekends where you stop thinking about business that does not exist. And if it does in your life, then you're probably not going to be at the same level as others that don't have the off switch. And then you can't compete, right? And so that's the issue in this world of competition, right?
00;46;18;08 - 00;46;41;17
Unknown
You want to be able to, move fast and do the right thing. It doesn't mean you just become like Elon, right? Where you spend 120 hours a week working. Right? And that's that's fine. Right? There is a balance and there is healthy and unhealthy. But you know, if you start, you know, thinking, oh, you know, you're going to turn off things the weekend or whatnot, that's not going to work.
00;46;41;20 - 00;46;58;27
Unknown
Now. It doesn't mean you don't prioritize time any, and you don't do the right things for you, for your family and kids. And you can still do that. I, you know, I go pick up my kids at school right after, you know, at the end of the day, my wife drop them off, I pick them up. I mean, there's things you can do, right?
00;46;58;29 - 00;47;22;23
Unknown
And build your schedule around it and, and value that time with the kids and, you know, take the time, right, with the wife and whatnot. And block time and manage your time and understand that your time is, you know, the most valuable thing you have. And so not wasting with stupid meetings and, you know, people that just want to waste your time and also people that are just, naysayers and always tell you you can do X, Y, and Z.
00;47;22;23 - 00;47;41;05
Unknown
And, you know, when I, when I did my from high, engagement, I had people tell me, oh, you know, you're two people. You can never do that. It's not going to work. Right. And then when we got it before they did, when they had 15 people full time and, you know, three, 4 million bucks invested and they still don't have it and I have it.
00;47;41;07 - 00;48;00;20
Unknown
You know, it doesn't hurt to send a little email and be like oh pretty. What happened. Yeah. You know, and look it's, it's you made some pretty and stuff. But that's how you get the little bit of excitement of like disrupting things. And it's a good ego boost. And I think having a healthy ego is totally fine.
00;48;00;20 - 00;48;17;05
Unknown
Right. We see people like, oh, you know, this guy's are ego. Well, some people can afford to have one, right? You take, someone like, you know, and again, you know, I'm okay with him having an ego, right? Not okay with a government bureaucrat that's done nothing in life other than saying no to people to have one.
00;48;17;05 - 00;48;39;09
Unknown
Right. That's that's not the same. Right. So, and so, you know, all these things have to be a factor in your decisions and how you, you know, orchestrate your life. And I can tell you with Jen, I, I don't make a decision in my business with, without asking ash first. And so it becomes your chief of staff, it becomes your investor, you know, guide.
00;48;39;09 - 00;49;00;08
Unknown
And, I mean, it is everything we've done, including building the product itself. But but even, like the business decisions and the way we invest it and spend money and, you know, raise money and all that, we're driven by, I. Yeah. And thank you for not giving me a blanket answer there. I appreciate the real the real raw truth of it.
00;49;00;08 - 00;49;18;06
Unknown
You know, a lot of folks, you know, think that they're they're equipped to handle, you know, a life of of being an entrepreneur. I can tell you it's filled with a lot of depression. Yeah. There's a lot of, you know, I always say, like, I've got a bit of a bipolar disorder. And a lot of that just, you know, how the business is doing week to week, right?
00;49;18;06 - 00;49;42;14
Unknown
And so unless you're putting that level of all, by the way, that's, that's normal, right? Yeah, that's what I was, you know, you on. So no, you get depressed and then it's like, oh you get tired of it. Right? And it's it's like, why is it not going better faster? And, why are people not buying my products faster and why is it taking so much pain and but yeah, I guess it's, you know, the reward is proportional to the pain, right?
00;49;42;14 - 00;50;03;05
Unknown
So sure. And I think it's important to have, you know, little micro communities where you can kind of share those experiences, experiences with others. You know, you're not the only one that's dealing with that. You know, I, I used to love like, you know, the, the startup meetups that used to happen, we used to do a bunch of them before the pandemic and then, you know, it's hard to kind of feel that connection virtual.
00;50;03;05 - 00;50;25;21
Unknown
So, you know, intentionally having, you know, a little community that you meet with. Yeah. We need to restart all this stuff. Right? We did. Yeah. We did. Well, I'm starting to see it pop up. You know, there's some some interesting little micro communities popping up like station DC, which, you know, are really intentional about bringing together these key pieces that make innovation happen, especially in regulated spaces.
00;50;25;21 - 00;50;47;17
Unknown
So yeah, and the key with those, right is not to go to places just to hear, you know, people babble and, you know, complain. And right, it's all about the right being surrounded by the right people. Yeah. And people that get stuff done. Right. If you keep hearing people that are failing or not trying or not, you know, complaining and like, that's just so it's, you know, there's a lot of meet ups.
00;50;47;17 - 00;51;16;02
Unknown
I remember where, you know, people just complain all day like, we don't need that, right. You need you need, positive attitude. You need people that lift you up. Yeah. And you lift them up too, right? But it's, it's a two sided street, and too often it's one sided, and that gets very toxic. Yeah. We'll have to, connect offline in terms of, like, some of the, some of those, you know, communities that you, you, you know, partake in or events that, that you feel like are really fruitful because I'm always looking for that next wave as well.
00;51;16;04 - 00;51;35;01
Unknown
Let's go ahead and transition. We're going to we're going to close with a fun, you know, little segment called the five second Scramble. Yeah, a little bit of rapid fire Q&A. Some some professional, some personal, not not too personal. Let's, let's, let's kind of kick it off. Are you ready? I was born ready.
00;51;35;05 - 00;52;12;29
Unknown
All right, let's do it. Explain. Ask sage to me as if I were a five year old. Interesting. Sage helps you, save your time and, get stuff done. What's your favorite part about the culture? Ask sage. We don't talk about culture all day, and we get stuff done like that. What type of, technologist will you say thrive that, ask sage, someone that doesn't talk all day and get stuff done.
00;52;13;01 - 00;52;37;16
Unknown
You're making this a lot easier. What, what are some tech roles that you're you're actively hiring for? Yeah, we just hired 20 people. We're still hiring a couple. Not not so much on tech couple. A VP of sales, VP of marketing. A couple of, technical, customer success. But we just hired 20 people in the last, like, four weeks.
00;52;37;18 - 00;53;07;10
Unknown
In the last four months. So I'm exhausted. Remote in office or hiring remote? All remote. We don't even have an office. So. Very nice. What is a charity or corporate philanthropy that's near and dear to you? A lot. We do a lot with, one of the warriors and, you know, Unicef and, you know, and, my wife is a pro at this, so she's, she's handling it for me because she was, helping a lot of non-profits.
00;53;07;10 - 00;53;27;14
Unknown
So she knows it all, all the scams and the the ones that do waste a bunch of money with, you know, all these expenses and the ones that don't, you know. So you want to listen to her, I guess. Yeah. It's get good feedback. All right. So we already know, you know, it's, fruit for for for breakfast, but can you describe quickly you like your morning routine?
00;53;27;16 - 00;53;49;12
Unknown
Yeah. It changed quite a bit, recently, but, I used to, go, you know, fast pack as work. So eat. Well, eat the fruit while working and having meetings. Now, I try to, take time for, either, you know, eating or just in a, in a, in a tab or something.
00;53;49;12 - 00;54;10;18
Unknown
And that's where my ideas flow. And I like to, and so, like a sonar or something, you know, you get your ideas flowing, and it's it's actually pretty, refreshing. I try to do that more instead of, you know, back to back biddings where you don't have time to even think about anything. That's been very helpful for me to, to do that.
00;54;10;20 - 00;54;36;07
Unknown
And, yeah, spent, you know, saying goodbye to the kids, my wife bring them, you know, to school, and then I pick them up. Oh, there's a lot of fun. Yeah. That special having those, clear cut kind of, you know, parts of your day that that you look forward to. If you could have dinner with any tech icon, you know, past or current, who would it be with?
00;54;36;09 - 00;55;02;29
Unknown
Tech icon? Well, you know, if it's if it's going to be dinner, it's always going to be with Ellen. But, if it wasn't Ellen, I don't know, past, would be interesting to me. Steve Jobs. Yeah. I met a couple of times, but really have more time. Would be interesting. Well, I guess I'm lucky, right?
00;55;03;00 - 00;55;20;29
Unknown
I meet most of the people I would want to meet, you know, whether it's, you know, so, yeah, whether it's, you know, at Microsoft or, you know, OpenAI or whatever. So I'm, I'm kind of like, so I guess I don't already have someone I would want to meet. Because I already met them, I don't know, yeah, maybe.
00;55;21;05 - 00;55;45;28
Unknown
I mean, yeah, there's so many in the past, I guess. Right. But, current ones, I get to meet them. So that's always fun. That's great. What, what is the worst fashion trend that you've ever followed? I don't think I do, you know, so, yeah, I mean, you know, you look back at pictures when you were a kid, we all look silly, you know?
00;55;45;28 - 00;56;05;15
Unknown
Yeah. I don't know, that fashion trend or just opened to blame, you know? Yeah. I didn't really follow it, you know, it's always I. Because I couldn't care less. I've never really done anything silly, like that. So I can think of something that I wasn't. You, you know, studying at 15. I was so young. I'm already.
00;56;05;15 - 00;56;28;22
Unknown
You know, I really look young at 40 now. But imagine at 15 if you see my pictures showing up at meetings. You know, people thought like, what are you doing here? Where's your that, you know, and so I was always in suit and stuff. So I was already like, very much, you know, marketing myself as a as, as a businessman in a suit with a tie.
00;56;28;22 - 00;56;54;03
Unknown
Right? So. Yeah. Yeah. Get the baby face. And, you know, if you look back at pictures from the 50s and even the 1800s, you know, suits have not changed much right now. Now, fashion and back in the day always comes back around. Right. What's something that you love to do? But you're really bad at? Yeah. I'm good at everything I do.
00;56;54;04 - 00;57;16;28
Unknown
I don't know, that's why I, Oh, well, I don't love to do it. Maybe that's the thing. I'm always good at the things I love, that's for sure. But, What? I'm not good. As is patience for, like, minute things, like, you know, so I do woodworking, for example. But I wouldn't, want to spend time a little finite details and more like, oh, I want to build a desk and work, you know, go by the desk and be done.
00;57;16;28 - 00;57;38;21
Unknown
Right. So, like, finite stuff where you have to, you know, take your time and, no, no way, you know? Yeah. Millwork or woodworking. I mean, it's it's a tricky one, but it's something to be said about physically building something with your hands. And I like building, like, big stuff and but not like, oh, I'm not going to spend time like, on the, on the details on the tables.
00;57;38;21 - 00;58;01;28
Unknown
And, you know, I'm like, is the table right? This is I will close with the last, question. What was your dream job as a kid? I might know the answer for. Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't know if I had a dream job as a kid. Maybe you're doing it at 15, you know? Yeah, I think I did what I wanted to do.
00;58;02;01 - 00;58;18;24
Unknown
I mean, there's only only one job that I would always want to do that I will not be able to do anytime soon. Is, being president of the United States? Because I wasn't born here, so I guess it's always about the stuff you can do, right? That you can want to. You want to do right? Well, I bet if I could, I wouldn't care.
00;58;18;27 - 00;58;40;24
Unknown
But because I can, I want to change the Constitution and it's lot, a lot, a lot of work in that, appreciate the, the time spent with us, Nick. I mean, obviously, you're doing something really interesting, and, you know, this this level of innovation, across, you know, the government eco system is super timely. So we're all rooting for you as an entrepreneur and, and for us, sage.
00;58;40;25 - 00;58;44;18
Unknown
But thanks for hanging out with us on the pod. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun.
00;58;44;18 - 00;58;50;23
Unknown
All right, let's jump in. Nick, thanks for joining us on the Pear program. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So this is another big bonus episode of a mini series that we call How We Hatched. And so today we have the former chief software officer for the US Air Force and Space Force, and the founder and CEO behind Ask Sage, a generative AI platform, that enables, both government and commercial teams, to enable secure access to gen AI models.
00;02;21;18 - 00;02;41;23
Unknown
So, Nick, your journey from tech entrepreneur to the government innovator, you know, has has really kind of reshaped how technology is integrated in national defense. So we're pumped to have you join us on the pod today. Thank you. Excited to be here. Awesome. All right, now, before we dive in, we'd like to start with a pretty deep question off the break.
00;02;41;25 - 00;03;08;14
Unknown
What did Nick have for breakfast this morning? Oh, fruit. A bunch of fruit. That was yummy. Nice. Is that the go to. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Good. Yeah. Healthy start. I dig it. Healthy. Yeah. Try. Perfect. All right. Yeah. Now, let's, let's jump in to, to the heart of the conversation now. You know, we and true kind of how we hatch form.
00;03;08;14 - 00;03;26;06
Unknown
We like to get into the journey of the entrepreneur before we dive into some of the innovative tech behind sage. So. Right. And doing my initial research, you know, I read that, you know, you founded your first company at the age of 15, which is kind of crazy. What sparked your interest in entrepreneurship at such a young age?
00;03;26;06 - 00;03;46;01
Unknown
And and how did this kind of first venture shape your career path? Yeah, I started coding at seven, and then I, you know, at 12, I created my first game, I made 50 grand. And I use that 50 grand, you know, to create my company at 15. Back in France, I mean, it's unusual, particularly in France, you know, at the time, not a lot of entrepreneurs.
00;03;46;08 - 00;04;04;12
Unknown
So young. I was the youngest, French entrepreneur at the time. That was all fun. I don't know, I guess I always wanted to build stuff and create stuff and, you know, kind of like, getting things done, and I guess that leads you to being an entrepreneur, I guess, in this world. So. Yeah. Was this something in the family?
00;04;04;12 - 00;04;25;00
Unknown
Did your parents, were they entrepreneurs or you know, what kind of stemmed that for you? Yeah. Now, my dad is a journalist and my mom is a nurse. So, Yeah, no entrepreneurs in the family, I guess. Gotcha. So. So you grew up in France? You started this first business. What? You know what? What was your next step from here?
00;04;25;02 - 00;04;46;21
Unknown
You know, was this a progression of continuing down the path of starting your own new businesses, or did you go into a corporate environment and get some of that exposure? Yeah. No, I, I created, overall 12, companies back in France. And then I moved here. So I did a whole bunch of companies, sold them, in a way, you know, built 187 products, I think, now.
00;04;46;24 - 00;05;07;17
Unknown
Wow. Yeah. No, no, I mean, other than a few, engagements with the buyers of the companies that bought us, we I never spent time in in the corporate, world, I guess. What was that first company that you built and what was, you know, what was the the problem that it was solving? Yeah.
00;05;07;17 - 00;05;26;23
Unknown
So I was part of the team that, helped create PHP, you know, the programing language. And so we, we had a, first company to build a, e-commerce website at the time that was pretty innovative, like in France. So we brought the SSL payments, back then to, Europe. And we were the first one to partner with banks to do it securely.
00;05;26;23 - 00;05;53;12
Unknown
And, then we started selling, you know, kind of CRM and CMS, you know, management system websites to be able to help, companies to, you know, business on the internet back then. So, pretty fun. Yeah. That's, that's just it's it's shocking to me at age 15. It's, That's wild. I love, love that kind of, like, early entrepreneur spirit.
00;05;53;14 - 00;06;17;00
Unknown
You know, this obviously led down a few different paths. And, you know, you know, one of the big things that we always, you know, hone into here is I'm being in the DC area, you know, like govtech defense, tech innovation. Talk to me about this kind of transition from entrepreneur to government service. You know, what kind of motivated your transition from being a tech entrepreneur to taking on this, you know, a significant role as the chief software officer in the the US Air Force?
00;06;17;02 - 00;06;37;05
Unknown
Yeah. So for us, I guess I moved here about 15 years ago now, became a citizen. I think it's about, you know, ten years now. I'm not sure. But the next month, after I became a citizen, I was at DHS as the chief architect. That was, pretty crazy. You know, I wanted to give back and make a difference.
00;06;37;05 - 00;07;08;06
Unknown
And that was the time during the ISIS attacks, and, people, you know, getting, targeted and attacked and so wanted to make a difference. And so I started DHS as a chief architect, built a lot of the zero trust and kind of cyber stuff there. And then, spent about 18 months appointed, DHS and I moved to, to DoD, first as, the special advisor for DevSecOps, to the OSD, Alliance Acquisition and Sustainment team.
00;07;08;08 - 00;07;49;17
Unknown
And then we moved to create this chief self to office, in the Air Force and Space Force, really partnering with the CIO, to bring, DevSecOps and continuous delivery of capabilities, to production, to scale, across the department. So that was a lot of engagements across DoD and build a pretty significant, you know, set of engagements with Cloud One, platform one, that we created, you know, at the Air Force and Space Force to, you know, be able to do the first over-the-air update of software, on jets and bomb barrels and space systems and a lot of fun stuff.
00;07;49;20 - 00;08;13;20
Unknown
Yeah, I want to expand on that. But but before we dive deep into some of those initiatives, some of those, like the DevSecOps initiatives, you know, coming from an entrepreneurial background, you know, obviously working in smaller startup companies, a lot, many of which were your own. Yeah. You know what? You know, what were those different major kind of like cultural differences that were, you know, you're you're experiencing in these government positions.
00;08;13;20 - 00;08;43;07
Unknown
And then how would you say, like, your entrepreneurial background influenced some of your approach to, to building and trying to innovate in those government roles? I mean, I guess you can't make it more different between the, military side that I knew nothing about and, kind of, you know, completely changed the culture. And then, of course, you know, mission that also important to the nation, with people that are putting their lives on the line, you know, can't compare that to, to a stupid mobile app or whatever.
00;08;43;07 - 00;09;14;06
Unknown
Right. So, I think it's been completely, mind boggling in the first few months for me to get used to kind of the culture and the mission and also, you know, the way the system works, which honestly doesn't really work well. Right. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, issues with the department the way we by the way we sustain with the way we build, the way we reinvent the wheel, the way we fail to collaborate across teams.
00;09;14;08 - 00;09;37;20
Unknown
So there was a lot of issues and also the pace and the lack of, you know, velocity and, was really mind boggling to me. I remember one of the first few engagements we started to get, we started to understand kind of the, the key parties to, to to focus on. And we were starting to look at cost and how to get it done.
00;09;37;20 - 00;10;15;23
Unknown
And, I remember, you know, thinking, oh, that's, you know, that's easy. That's 100 grand, you know, to do this and then, you know, getting quotes at the meeting, plus, you know, range, across DoD and, you know, we say to see, wow, you know, there's, there's a duty cut tax. I guess you're doing business, you know, in the department, the way we, we have these, companies helping us, often, you know, with this kind of DoD bubble that is the defense industrial base with clearances and all the things that prevent startups and innovative companies to participate.
00;10;15;23 - 00;10;45;10
Unknown
So that was, kind of an awakening moment, you know, to realize what we got to do. And, that was a first, you know, first couple of weeks in the building and, you know, also, like, you know, seeing these meetings where I remember my first meeting, I showed up, you know, talking about agile, and it was like, you know, a good 20 people in the on the main table and another 20, you know, around the next to the wall as we love to do it.
00;10;45;13 - 00;11;06;23
Unknown
And really, I remember, you know, listening and, and clearly seeing that no one had done agile ever in their lives. And so I asked a question, I say, hey, you know, who here has used agile in, in real life? And, you know, it was a it was a study group on how to implement agile for DoD.
00;11;06;27 - 00;11;26;16
Unknown
Right. So kind of important that you've used it before. Okay. And, you know, there was only one person that raised a hand of, you know, 40 people. And that was a pretty big awakening moment for me to be like, so why, what are you doing here? You know, why are you here? So, that was not a great start for me to build a good rapport with all these people.
00;11;26;18 - 00;11;52;09
Unknown
I was always pretty blunt and pretty, clear in my intentions. And, a lot of people are not used to that and play politics all day, and I'm just not like that. So that was a it was a good a good first couple of weeks. Yeah. I mean you're an outlier, right. And I think this is kind of like foreshadowing into, you know, why and how, you know, as sage kind of, you know, came to be and became a successful product so quickly.
00;11;52;09 - 00;12;13;25
Unknown
But, I think you're, you know, that injection of, you know, an entrepreneur into that environment is really, a theme that I think in the last five, five ish years, five, ten years or more. So recently, you know, a lot more folks being akin to, you know, we need this different type of outlook. We need these different perspectives.
00;12;13;25 - 00;12;36;11
Unknown
We need to shake things up. You saw it early on. And so it kind of gave you an advantage to, you know, kind of starting to get the, the wheels turning on ways that you could probably innovate, in a, in a much quicker capacity. But, you know, important to kind of see what it's like on the inside, and the seed of an end user before you can do that as a vendor and industry partner.
00;12;36;13 - 00;13;03;21
Unknown
I wanted to kind of jump back into, you know, some of these initiatives within, like, you know, like the DevSecOps, DevSecOps initiatives, you know, just kind of talk a little bit about some of those unique challenges, you know, you faced in kind of implementing agile dev setbacks practices with within these structured environments. You kind of touched on it, but like maybe a little bit more as to why it's so challenging, especially in like a military setting.
00;13;03;23 - 00;13;21;29
Unknown
Yeah. I don't think it's that challenging, honestly. I think, we like to pretend it is, you know, we like to pretend software is special. I mean, the mission is special, but software is software. And of course, there's, tremendous, risks, doing it wrong. And you don't want to use people that have never done it before to do it in DoD first.
00;13;22;01 - 00;13;45;13
Unknown
So that's part of the challenge, you know, the culture and, kind of the way to think about, continuous delivery of value and getting real time feedback from the end users and all these things that we take for granted. You know, on the commercial side, building software, rapidly, getting feedback loops, very, fast and trying to make sure we're not wasting a bunch of time, money building product that no one wants to use.
00;13;45;15 - 00;14;08;26
Unknown
And so, you know, what I felt was that everybody was begging for it. People were just kind of waiting for someone to take the lead and remove the barriers to entry and remove, you know, give that top cover, you know, protection, if you will, to get things done and empower, you know, the people at the lowest rank that know how to do these things to get it done.
00;14;08;26 - 00;14;32;01
Unknown
And so that was kind of my job is to really, you know, be the punching ball, instead of those guys. Right? Enlisted and majors and captains getting stuff done. And so, you know, we did a great job partnering with all these people to kind of bring this to life really rapidly in weeks. And I think the velocity was such that, you know, the building was not used to, that kind of pace.
00;14;32;01 - 00;14;50;22
Unknown
And, we demonstrated that a small group of people can actually come and completely disrupt the way, D.O.D. does business. And what I found is, you know, if you if you run fast and you, you get stuff done, very few people want to get in the way and have the courage to, you know, to be the one slowing you down.
00;14;50;24 - 00;15;11;03
Unknown
And so, you know, what I found is you just keep moving and ignore them. And and, you know, no one is here to slow you down. And, and I think that the fear for many of the government employees is, is to take that leap of faith to like, go ahead and do it and ask for forgiveness later. I find that, you know, the chance of getting in trouble if you follow the law.
00;15;11;03 - 00;15;37;08
Unknown
And I'm not saying, you know, go do stupid things, but just common sense. Thanks. Is is you have no risk of of losing your job. And, and so I think it's kind of that complacency that got, you know, got really became the norm, you know, to, to do business in DoD and the lack of urgency and, you know, the lack of, of risk taking has been kind of the norm.
00;15;37;11 - 00;16;05;16
Unknown
Yeah. And we just can't afford it anymore. So, we need to, to step up their game. Yeah, yeah. Well said, you know that. You know, there's a pretty consistent chain of command of to, to break out of some of the norm and, to challenge some of the status quo is most a bit frowned upon, which is the opposite of what you see with a lot of commercial tech innovators, firms that are, that are building, you know, across the country, Silicon Valley, building quickly and, kind of challenging the status quo.
00;16;05;18 - 00;16;28;02
Unknown
It's a reverse style of thinking than maybe your traditional embedded governments, but sorry, folks, let's let's kind of move on to, you know, this genesis of Ask Sage. So when was it that you kind of had the initial idea and talk to me about that transition to, you know, kind of making that leap into, you know, starting this up?
00;16;28;04 - 00;16;58;00
Unknown
Yeah. So we start as sage January of 2023. So, right after, you know, the the big, push of ChatGPT. Right. And so we say, I saw you using it say to see beyond the gimmicks and see how much it would impact my day to day life in coding and cyber and, you know, just doing my, my LinkedIn engagement and my, my emails and, you know, I mean, all the way to to coding.
00;16;58;00 - 00;17;26;09
Unknown
Right. And so we pretty quickly realized this is going to be something that's going to disrupt the way people, get things done and how to empower them. And so, you know, it's kind of a, an assistant on steroids, chief of staff, lawyer coder. Right. And so, I was pretty quickly, aware that we need to bring this to the department.
00;17;26;11 - 00;17;57;28
Unknown
If we want to be able to move fast and break those barriers, and we need to find a way to to do that quickly. I also was tracking, you know, the CCP trying to bring their GPT Baidu stuff to, to the Chinese government. And so that's, you know, scary because you have, you know, way more people, eagerness to to disrupt and get that augmentation of, of velocity with JNI, which, you know, today with AI, sage is about 35 acts.
00;17;57;28 - 00;18;19;25
Unknown
So one person turning into 35 people, that's a lot. It's not just, you know, 20%, 30%. We're talking like, you know, 35 times faster, up to 50 times for contracting and legal and other things. So, cutting, you know, 90% of ice age is built by Ice age. So, I mean, the the value we were able to create.
00;18;19;27 - 00;18;40;13
Unknown
Jerry, with two people, when we built our ice age, my wife and I, which I, empowering us to get things done has been my boggling when you compared to my other companies I had to build and the number of people that were needed to to get to the same kind of levels of, of speed and, delivery.
00;18;40;16 - 00;19;09;04
Unknown
That's been mind boggling. And so we knew right away that this had to be, you know, commodity and easily accessible, in the department. So that was, that was, you know, really something we, we wanted to get done and we were able to get, you know, from high and duty impact level five, authorized in, in a few months, and very small investment, by using gen AI again.
00;19;09;06 - 00;19;37;21
Unknown
And so that's been, you know, a massive enabler to show also startups and companies that, they can get stuff done. Yeah. It's really cool to see, this next wave of startups that are building, with the use of, of Genii, and not needing the, the overhead. That's necessary. Right. So all that trickle effect of not as much capital being needed, which is a good timing for that, because access to capital is super expensive and very difficult.
00;19;37;21 - 00;19;56;04
Unknown
And so some of these tools coming out are just so timely. And I love how it's not only a tool that's being used, to roll out for your customers, it's being used internally for you to scale your own business. Right. So it's it's really neat to see that. And I, I love hearing that, that success story. I also I have to expand.
00;19;56;04 - 00;20;15;02
Unknown
So so your wife, has she ever partnered with you before on previous ventures or is this the first one? No, it's the first one. Yeah, that was a classic. And I'm always curious on, like, you know, co-founders that, either married or siblings. It's always an interesting dynamic. Yeah. Co-Founder is basically like your your partner in marriage anyways.
00;20;15;02 - 00;20;37;16
Unknown
Right? It's just something you can do a bigger partnership anyways. But, I think, I guess she's not a co-founder. She joined after a year, but, doesn't matter. She's she's a CEO of the company, and she's been awesome. That makes a massive difference. And so, yeah, you know, I think it's obviously, something you want to be cautious about and, you want to do it, right?
00;20;37;19 - 00;21;08;19
Unknown
And it's not for everybody, but, I think it's been, going very well. Yeah. That's awesome. So I wanted to expand a little bit more on, you know, this idea of what an LLC, agnostic platform entails and why it's crucial for the future of secure, like and adaptable AI systems. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think when I built at sage, I wanted to make sure it was, built the way I would want to consume it, in the government and also as a company.
00;21;08;21 - 00;21;31;29
Unknown
And so, you know, we don't know who is going to win, a lot of different players between Google Meet, you know, OpenAI and throw a brick and bunch of open source models coming out. DNI so you want to be able to tap any model and train your data once and, have this agnostic layer between your data and the model so you can consume any model.
00;21;32;02 - 00;21;50;12
Unknown
Right away when they come out. And so we built a stack that's capable of doing this. And that's been a, you know, tremendous enabler for us to, you know, within same day, be able to deploy the latest models. You know, you take the oh three models that came out, you know, two weeks ago from OpenAI.
00;21;50;15 - 00;22;10;02
Unknown
Within three hours, it wasn't saved. Right? So that kind of stuff enables you velocity, and you can try things out and see what sticks and see which model does a best job. To get your different tasks done based on your needs and based on what you're trying to achieve and also the costs. Right. Which models and scale.
00;22;10;05 - 00;22;32;17
Unknown
And so we had to build kind of this abstraction layer for billing and for consumption and for security and for data ingest, where you can ingest your data. Once you can have this zero trust layer, where you can label data on a per, cell basis, and then, you know, label it and then tied back to, each user on a need to know basis.
00;22;32;17 - 00;22;56;08
Unknown
So you can enforce that need to know, so that's been a huge enabler to be able to do, you know, classified work and be able to also go after the regulated industries like banking and health care. With that, you know, need of privacy and security as, as a baked in, consideration and, bolted on after the fact.
00;22;56;10 - 00;23;26;20
Unknown
Yeah. It's a common question. We get, you know, in this whole dual use kind of ecosystem. Right. You know, where we're folks, you know, ask the question, is it better to kind of, you know, try to angle and start in, you know, in a government setting, you know, if you're, if you're able to kind of, prove that, you know, this can operate efficiently in a regulated, secure environment, does that help, you know, alleviate some of the selling pain points when you're going into other regulated environments like health care or fintech?
00;23;26;22 - 00;23;48;16
Unknown
I mean, I think it goes both ways. At the end of the day, you need to have a good product that can scale and have not a bunch of technical debt and cyber debt that you where you take shortcuts. And we see a lot of companies do that. They put security last. They don't think of, you know, scale and then they have some quick wins and then they have a massive tech debt and cyber debt to fix along the way.
00;23;48;18 - 00;24;13;15
Unknown
And it's just as in scale and turns into a nightmare. So I think, you know, for us, we had to build a rival nation from the get go, be able to run on any cloud, be able to be completely gapped, be able to be deployed on a customer fabric, be able to run at the edge, be able to tap any models and be able to, you know, comply with all the the cyber best practices.
00;24;13;18 - 00;24;33;27
Unknown
And bring that security baked in. That was kind of the foundational pieces of the puzzle from day one. And I think we did a great job keeping that in, you know, as a, you know, foundational piece of, of the technology. And then you see others, you know, come up and try to rebuild what we built, particularly within the government.
00;24;33;29 - 00;25;02;13
Unknown
You know, internally, with government teams or contractors, paid to, to rebuild of the shelf products, which, you know, not only is is silly and shortsighted, but it's also kind of, you know, comical to see those guys trying to compete with a company that does this for a living. And you know what? What's scary is they end up building, a subpar, you know, capability with spending, you know, millions of the taxpayer money.
00;25;02;15 - 00;25;42;28
Unknown
And then what you, you don't have in those products is kind of that, product product mentality where, you know, all these considerations for scale and reuse and, you know, saving the taxpayer money and being able to consolidate and build capabilities that can be reused across, you know, the the CVD emergency agencies, the duty and the OCC, and also commercial, on not, you know, even a factor because they want to sell again and again the same things, where we want to build a commercial product that's, you know, off the shelf and reusable and easily accessible and reusable across across, agencies.
00;25;43;01 - 00;26;02;28
Unknown
And so that's why we're so cheap right now. I mean, you can literally get started 15 bucks a month on that stage and get an account and get started. So the barrier to entry is non-existent, right? You know, and we see the government spending five, ten, 15 million, which, by the way, a 15 minute engagement on Ice Age will give a D.O.D. license of ice.
00;26;03;05 - 00;26;23;16
Unknown
Right. So, and they have, like, 20,000 users, you know, right. Compared to the the 4 million users would, would be able to do with that same amount of money. So that and people don't always pay attention to these things. Right. And that's why you see, you know, immense amount of funding being wasted in, across the government.
00;26;23;17 - 00;26;40;22
Unknown
But and you see it now with Dodge, you know, looking at some of these things, you know, but but if you look at D.O.D., I would argue probably 70% of the funding is going down the drain on day one, you know, which is which is a pretty scary number. Yeah. I mean, it's a model that's clearly under the microscope at the moment.
00;26;40;24 - 00;27;08;05
Unknown
You know, the the idea of of shifting things to, taking commercial, you know, tech products that can be injected, versus building everything from scratch. You know, it's just, I don't know, it's seems like a common sense concept, but it's also a model that hasn't changed in years. And so, you know, getting getting stuff to, you know, getting change through the door and, you know, what's been a very pretty rigid ecosystem for years is, is, not an easy thing to do.
00;27;08;07 - 00;27;35;24
Unknown
I do like to have an optimistic mindset that, you know, looking at a case study like, sage, you know, things are changing, but, you know, there's still a lot of work to be done. Your background clearly, you know, played a big part in helping get this technology into the right hands. You know, your background in cloud, in cyber, in these environments, you know, obviously propped up, like, you know, you're building this with that mindset already intact.
00;27;35;24 - 00;28;04;12
Unknown
So I think that certainly helps versus the, the founder that maybe had, you know, no ties to, you know, to defense. You know, I wasn't chief software architect for, you know, for some of the largest agencies. So I think that's that's a good case study. I want to kind of pull on this thread a little bit. You know, in our discovery call, we we talked a little bit about, you know, you're you're slowly become this fastest growing defense company, right.
00;28;04;14 - 00;28;29;01
Unknown
Right. So you've become one of these fastest growing defense companies, you know, supporting some 14,000 government teams. You you talked about, you know, this breakdown between, you know, government agencies, but also, you know, corporate customers that kind of have that fine balance. Let's I wanted to to to go a little bit deeper into one of the largest, you know, gen AI deployments with, with the Army.
00;28;29;03 - 00;28;52;03
Unknown
Can you talk a little bit about this case study? And you know, how it kind of came to be and, and maybe expand on the level of impact that it's had? You know, through this engagement? Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I can't help but to be sad a bit when I talked about the Army engagement, you know, coming from the Air Force to see, you know, the Air Force in the Space Force behind the way behind what the Army is doing.
00;28;52;06 - 00;29;16;21
Unknown
You know, when we left the building, back in 2021, the Army went so far behind us it wasn't even funny. And now they're leading the pack on everything. DevSecOps cloud, you know, and I and I, as a whole. And that has to do, of course, with the leadership, particularly with little Gal Sego. You know, the Army CIO is, really a visionary guy.
00;29;16;21 - 00;29;37;04
Unknown
And to get stuff done, it's kind of a, you know, very similar to, to what I do. And, you know, he's is really thinking outside the box and, and he's not afraid to, to get stuff done. And so, you know, he started an engagement very early with Ice age, for us, a few hundred users to see what sticks, learn from it.
00;29;37;04 - 00;29;58;18
Unknown
He did a great memo enabling the consumption of Gen AI securely instead of, you know, what the spatial did with a very short sighted ban on I banning all gen I use across these the Space Force for almost a year, including with public official data, which is unheard of. That's never happened in history of any technology on the planet.
00;29;58;20 - 00;30;19;14
Unknown
So you could even use it with Google data, right? So which is unheard of. So very shortsighted for, you know, the, the new, fancy service, D.O.D. service and supposed to be innovating and, you know, bringing innovation to the DoD as this new newly born, you know, innovative service without all the impediments of the other ones.
00;30;19;14 - 00;30;44;17
Unknown
Right. To innovate, allegedly, as you can see, leadership has everything to do with whether or not, an agency can innovate because Army has all the impediments of the legacy, old, you know, D.O.D. service and, yeah, you know, the Space Force was the one with no impediment, but poor leadership that led to disastrous outcomes. And so, you know, Army has been has been awesome, right?
00;30;44;17 - 00;31;14;11
Unknown
They, they are starting now, you know, 150,000 users. Wow. You know, which would be the largest, jenn-air deployment, in, at least in the government, if not, you know, even maybe on the commercial side. So it's and it's so many use cases, you know, between cutting cyber acquisition, contracting and legal data analytics, you know, saving the taxpayer, billions, for a very small investment.
00;31;14;13 - 00;31;43;24
Unknown
A few million bucks, you know, and so the return on investment has been pretty incredible, for the taxpayer. And I think it's probably one of the only way we can, use technology to save time and money, particularly with the cuts that are going to come, you know, with the new administration, I think, you know, if you're going to cut people and you're going to cut, you know, funding, you have no way but to start automating and, you know, getting rid of the noise.
00;31;43;26 - 00;31;59;23
Unknown
And for that, there's there's just no better way that than technology. And I think, Jen, I particularly is going to be the low hanging fruit and the easy, you know, push button to get things done. And to all me has been leading the way and to know we're going to be working on secret and top secret as well.
00;31;59;25 - 00;32;22;07
Unknown
So it's going to be a huge scale and they did this idea IQ with us that's accessible government wide. So they were smart enough also to be like, hey, we need to make this available to the entire government and not just DoD or not just, you know, the Army. So now anyone can, you know, very quickly and have it available, within, within hours.
00;32;22;10 - 00;32;39;23
Unknown
With no barrier to entry. You know, they can even use a credit card to buy licenses at, you know, 15 bucks a month and, and get started and, you know, for 90 bucks a month, you get you get ten users. So that's nine bucks a user. That's a game changer, you know? So, no other costs.
00;32;39;23 - 00;33;03;02
Unknown
No, no, you know, nonsense. No additional costs. Every time we release, you know, five times a day, we're now charging more for more for the new features or the new plans, or it's just flat, flat price. Easy to go, easy. You know, pricing and, scalable, which I think is key. We built it ready to go after the entire workforce because we, we we think.
00;33;03;03 - 00;33;29;13
Unknown
Right. Any anyone that has a known blue cloud job needs this right to, to go faster. So, yeah, I mean, as far as timing goes, you're in this perfect storm with this new administration, with the amount of cuts, you know, the plan in place to, to supplement the output. You know, you're you're really kind of perfect timing for, for pushing, sage and taking this use case and, and really building on it.
00;33;29;13 - 00;33;54;13
Unknown
So, yeah, assuming people understand, they need technology to replace what they lost. Sure. And the fear, right, is some people will be in this freezing mode where they don't want to innovate, and they don't or they don't. They are scared of of making decisions on, any changes. And they would be stuck in this like, state of less funding, less people.
00;33;54;16 - 00;34;22;23
Unknown
And yet, no, you know, way to accelerate. So that's scary a little bit, right? We got to spend a little bit of money to, to then save a bunch of money. So it's not just like cutting stuff, right? It's also investing in better things. And so I know that administration understand that. But, you know, I think, my fear is the people that will execute this may be worried to invest in this kind of, you know, new culture, of fear.
00;34;22;24 - 00;34;43;15
Unknown
You know, they there's a lot of fear right now, a lot of uncertainties. Right? So I think it's very important that people understand that. Hey, the only way to succeed in this is going to be to use technology, which is what companies do, right, to come and and save money so that you can then, you know, still produce value, right?
00;34;43;18 - 00;35;10;03
Unknown
And not just take cuts and then lose all the value you used to be, bringing to the taxpayer. So, yeah, I, you know, we talk about this quite a bit, on the podcast and also, you know, we have an entire, you know, kind of tech recruiting piece to our business, right? So we're always having conversations with engineers with product folks that yeah, there's no it's no secret that over the last three years there's been a lot of tech layoffs.
00;35;10;05 - 00;35;35;00
Unknown
It's a big, big issue happening, you know, and, as we record this right now. Right, you're getting big tech layoffs from meta, performance based, they say, and they're still looking to hire up, folks that are, you know, technically savvy in areas of AI and machine learning. And so what we try to encourage is, you know, look, the, the, the, the role of, of tech workers are is going to be changing.
00;35;35;03 - 00;35;55;21
Unknown
And in order for you to be a part of the conversation to, to be considered for that next wave of what's, you know, what's in demand, you're going to have to adapt and take on and and upskill yourself. Yeah. So there's a there's an opportunity to, to, to to jump on it. A lot of folks refer it to like the, you know, the internet, you know, boom.
00;35;55;21 - 00;36;15;05
Unknown
A lot of folks were like, not not buying this. I'm not really sure what this is all about. And the early folks that got in, you know, they wrote a really successful wave. It's just very hard, I think, for folks to wrap their head around change. And, you know, it is a scary time. Everybody's role is probably going to be impacted in some way, shape or form.
00;36;15;07 - 00;36;34;25
Unknown
The question is, do you want to to be a part of the positive impact that it brings or, you know, the downside of it? And so yeah, hopefully the folks that listen to this, that, that maybe are anticipating, you know, some sort of change in their current role, they, they see it as motivation or encouragement to, you know, go, go, you know, go get, go get a certification.
00;36;34;25 - 00;36;57;00
Unknown
Go, go get a course, under your belt, that's, you know, maybe prompt engineering related, and figure out how to, best take whatever your skill set is. And, that compliment with, you know, deep tech, progressive tech. Yeah. We got 12,003 videos on the website for people to get started. So on our YouTube channel. So, you know, that's a great, so cool right there that a bunch of free course.
00;36;57;00 - 00;37;10;20
Unknown
I mean, it's so easy to find, you know, courses on pump engineering and and you're right, you know, people that are putting their head in the sand and hoping it's going to go away are going to pay the price, and it's not going to go away. It's going to get older and harder to keep up and catch up.
00;37;10;23 - 00;37;32;17
Unknown
And honestly, you know, the the velocity of innovation is such that you can't now wait, months or years between waves. It's continuously changing. And so learning how to learn by yourself and really investing in yourself is probably the biggest skill you need to have. And if you're still afraid of change, you're not going to be able to be in that business.
00;37;32;17 - 00;37;51;06
Unknown
You know, there's just it's going to be so much change so often that you can't not embrace it. And so that's going to be probably the biggest disruption is the velocity of learning compared to I used to be, you know, ten, 20 years cycle is now going to be a year to year cycle max, you know. So it's going to be very disruptive.
00;37;51;08 - 00;38;16;19
Unknown
Yeah. It's a good point. Well, the good news is, you know, YouTube's a beautiful resource. Yeah. And so anybody has that has a Wi-Fi, you know, connection has access to some of those classes. I wanted to, you know, just kind of, you know, hone in on a couple of things here because throughout your experience, you know, it seems like you're always at the the mode of, like, pushing boundaries of technology.
00;38;16;19 - 00;38;38;03
Unknown
And, you know, we can kind of see this, this trend or those themes from you, from cybersecurity to, to cloud services. Now, I, you know, what is it that you would say, you know, kind of gives you this continuous drive for innovation? Or is there like a certain set of principles that kind of guide this, you know, new exploration of new ideas for you?
00;38;38;06 - 00;38;58;09
Unknown
Well, I don't know. I think it has to do with, the passion that I have for the tech and, you know, so that you can't if you don't have it is very tough, right, to be okay spending so much time and learning and investing and all this, time and money into, these new waves of innovation.
00;38;58;11 - 00;39;19;10
Unknown
So it's a mindset. It's, it's passion. It's, you know, trying to get things done and also doing the right things for your kids. I mean, it's I think it's a lot of different things, you know, and for me, it's been also, you know, making sure that the nation has the tools we need to be able to win against China.
00;39;19;17 - 00;39;47;27
Unknown
And I think, that's been my prime, you know, push for, for our kids. So they have a chance at winning against China in 20 years and giving them all the deterrents and, the tools to be able to, to achieve that. Yeah. What, what kind of advice would you, would you give to, you know, let's just say aspiring entrepreneurs, this next wave of entrepreneurs that are looking to innovate, right?
00;39;47;29 - 00;40;09;06
Unknown
You know, we'll dial it into, you know, the defense tech ecosystem per se. What what would you say? Or a couple of, you know, things to keep in mind when they're thinking about, you know, building that startup that's going to be the next big thing in the defense tech world is a first step that needs to be said that people tend to ignore, which is not everybody is an entrepreneur.
00;40;09;06 - 00;40;40;00
Unknown
And that's okay. Right? It's fine to be number two. It's fine to be number three. It's fine to be part of an existing company. Not everybody's brain is designed to, to to be. It's very painful. And so, you know, people think it's easy and it's just not right. And so that's number one. Number two if you really are fully committed and that means, you know, financially and mentally to, to doing this, then particularly if you're going to go after the D.O.D., you can't do a half baked.
00;40;40;03 - 00;40;57;25
Unknown
And so you're going to go all in, you're going to have to think about hiring the right people to help you. You're going to have to, you know, if you don't know the market, really try to understand it and not build stuff in a vacuum. And then you're going to have to also, understand security requirements and all these things.
00;40;57;25 - 00;41;21;17
Unknown
And so there's a lot of things that come into play, right, to go after the DoD. And many companies get burned, right? They all go after getting a grant, you know, cyber, and trying to start there, which is, which is a decent first step. Right? But it's it's way more complex than that. There's a lot of moving pieces, and you need to be surrounded with the right advice.
00;41;21;20 - 00;41;38;11
Unknown
And you can't do it half baked. We see a lot of people like, you know, trying a bit to get together and spending a little bit of money, but not enough. And then it backfires and they lose it. All right. So if you're going to do it, you probably need to hire, you know, at least one sales guy that understands public sector.
00;41;38;11 - 00;42;04;09
Unknown
Right. So you need to do things that, you know, particularly if you've never done it before, you know, you need to, to invest to some degree to your success. And, just like any market maybe. But duty has a lot of, you know, special, you know, acronyms and, you know, handshakes and. Right. So it's like a, it's like a, a bubble.
00;42;04;09 - 00;42;24;23
Unknown
You know, we have two bubbles, right? In the in the US, we have the Silicon Valley bubble, and we have the DoD, defense bubble. I call the Silicon Valley, you know, the the Kumbaya bubble. You know, everything is nice. And they refuse to work with D.O.D. most of the time, and they think, you know, everybody's going to be nice and whatnot.
00;42;24;25 - 00;42;49;19
Unknown
And then you have the DoD side, which is the complacency bubble. You know, where we fail to have urgency and get stuff done. And and if we don't make that merge and collide and burst, into a single, bubble, I guess. Yeah. We're not going to succeed as a nation. Right? So that's what we had back, during World War two, you know, when all this was created, with Arpa and now what is, right.
00;42;49;19 - 00;43;20;26
Unknown
And all these things to innovate. And Silicon Valley was created, you know, by by the department. Yeah. Ready to innovate. And people now refuse to engage with the department, and that's, that's very scary, right. Because China, of course, is, forcing all their companies to to work with them. And I'm not saying we should do that, but we should really add the culture and, explain to entrepreneurs and companies as to why it's important that they do, willingly engage with the, the Defense Department.
00;43;20;26 - 00;43;41;24
Unknown
So, yeah. So we need to bring the kumbaya, together with the complacency and make a new bubble. Right. Bubble. And it's going to be a max, you know, an average of eight. Right? So then you have rage like the you raise the complacency now to some urgency level. Right? And then you have the Kumbaya. Everybody is nice to like, oh wait, people are not always so nice.
00;43;41;24 - 00;44;01;17
Unknown
And we need deterrence and we need tools and we need weapons, and we need, you know, to to be a strong nation, to deter people from doing silly things to us. So, I think, you know, if they don't combine, we're never going to succeed. You know, what you see is people comparing US companies success to, Chinese companies.
00;44;01;17 - 00;44;27;08
Unknown
Right? So you have people comparing, you know, I companies in the US to AI companies in China. And the US is leading this fight. The deep nonsense that you've been hearing, we're still eating right. But what people fail to realize is that DoD does not have access to best of breed U.S company news. Meanwhile, the CCP has not only stolen most of the US IP through hacking.
00;44;27;10 - 00;44;49;00
Unknown
But then they also, you know, took the Chinese, IP from their companies. And so they are in a much better position as a defense, department, to have access to best of breed technology compared to what the US, has access to. And that's a very, scary state to be in. And we need best of breed in duty now.
00;44;49;00 - 00;45;11;25
Unknown
Just you know, in companies. Yeah, yeah, their approach is, you know, a little bit more unethical than, than most. But, yeah. No, I think you're you're spot on. We've got a lot of, conversations coming up on the podcast that's really talking about this race and the importance to innovate and do it quickly. So I think, you know, your insights are are spot on.
00;45;11;28 - 00;45;32;21
Unknown
I wanted to, you know, we talked a lot about business here. Professional life, you know, just a little bit of, like, personal reflection because I'm an entrepreneur as well. I know that life, oftentimes, you know, can be. Yeah, completely impacted by what's going on in the business. How do you kind of keep the two separate?
00;45;32;21 - 00;45;56;06
Unknown
You know what? What are any kind of, you know, Nick hacks that you you, have that kind of helps you balance the professional, you know, high speed lifestyle with your personal life that does not exist. And and, by the way, that's why inntrepreneur is so hard, you know? Right. People that claim they do this, they are usually not very good entrepreneurs.
00;45;56;08 - 00;46;18;08
Unknown
Because you don't turn it off. Right? And there's no off switch stays, no weekends where you stop thinking about business that does not exist. And if it does in your life, then you're probably not going to be at the same level as others that don't have the off switch. And then you can't compete, right? And so that's the issue in this world of competition, right?
00;46;18;08 - 00;46;41;17
Unknown
You want to be able to, move fast and do the right thing. It doesn't mean you just become like Elon, right? Where you spend 120 hours a week working. Right? And that's that's fine. Right? There is a balance and there is healthy and unhealthy. But you know, if you start, you know, thinking, oh, you know, you're going to turn off things the weekend or whatnot, that's not going to work.
00;46;41;20 - 00;46;58;27
Unknown
Now. It doesn't mean you don't prioritize time any, and you don't do the right things for you, for your family and kids. And you can still do that. I, you know, I go pick up my kids at school right after, you know, at the end of the day, my wife drop them off, I pick them up. I mean, there's things you can do, right?
00;46;58;29 - 00;47;22;23
Unknown
And build your schedule around it and, and value that time with the kids and, you know, take the time, right, with the wife and whatnot. And block time and manage your time and understand that your time is, you know, the most valuable thing you have. And so not wasting with stupid meetings and, you know, people that just want to waste your time and also people that are just, naysayers and always tell you you can do X, Y, and Z.
00;47;22;23 - 00;47;41;05
Unknown
And, you know, when I, when I did my from high, engagement, I had people tell me, oh, you know, you're two people. You can never do that. It's not going to work. Right. And then when we got it before they did, when they had 15 people full time and, you know, three, 4 million bucks invested and they still don't have it and I have it.
00;47;41;07 - 00;48;00;20
Unknown
You know, it doesn't hurt to send a little email and be like oh pretty. What happened. Yeah. You know, and look it's, it's you made some pretty and stuff. But that's how you get the little bit of excitement of like disrupting things. And it's a good ego boost. And I think having a healthy ego is totally fine.
00;48;00;20 - 00;48;17;05
Unknown
Right. We see people like, oh, you know, this guy's are ego. Well, some people can afford to have one, right? You take, someone like, you know, and again, you know, I'm okay with him having an ego, right? Not okay with a government bureaucrat that's done nothing in life other than saying no to people to have one.
00;48;17;05 - 00;48;39;09
Unknown
Right. That's that's not the same. Right. So, and so, you know, all these things have to be a factor in your decisions and how you, you know, orchestrate your life. And I can tell you with Jen, I, I don't make a decision in my business with, without asking ash first. And so it becomes your chief of staff, it becomes your investor, you know, guide.
00;48;39;09 - 00;49;00;08
Unknown
And, I mean, it is everything we've done, including building the product itself. But but even, like the business decisions and the way we invest it and spend money and, you know, raise money and all that, we're driven by, I. Yeah. And thank you for not giving me a blanket answer there. I appreciate the real the real raw truth of it.
00;49;00;08 - 00;49;18;06
Unknown
You know, a lot of folks, you know, think that they're they're equipped to handle, you know, a life of of being an entrepreneur. I can tell you it's filled with a lot of depression. Yeah. There's a lot of, you know, I always say, like, I've got a bit of a bipolar disorder. And a lot of that just, you know, how the business is doing week to week, right?
00;49;18;06 - 00;49;42;14
Unknown
And so unless you're putting that level of all, by the way, that's, that's normal, right? Yeah, that's what I was, you know, you on. So no, you get depressed and then it's like, oh you get tired of it. Right? And it's it's like, why is it not going better faster? And, why are people not buying my products faster and why is it taking so much pain and but yeah, I guess it's, you know, the reward is proportional to the pain, right?
00;49;42;14 - 00;50;03;05
Unknown
So sure. And I think it's important to have, you know, little micro communities where you can kind of share those experiences, experiences with others. You know, you're not the only one that's dealing with that. You know, I, I used to love like, you know, the, the startup meetups that used to happen, we used to do a bunch of them before the pandemic and then, you know, it's hard to kind of feel that connection virtual.
00;50;03;05 - 00;50;25;21
Unknown
So, you know, intentionally having, you know, a little community that you meet with. Yeah. We need to restart all this stuff. Right? We did. Yeah. We did. Well, I'm starting to see it pop up. You know, there's some some interesting little micro communities popping up like station DC, which, you know, are really intentional about bringing together these key pieces that make innovation happen, especially in regulated spaces.
00;50;25;21 - 00;50;47;17
Unknown
So yeah, and the key with those, right is not to go to places just to hear, you know, people babble and, you know, complain. And right, it's all about the right being surrounded by the right people. Yeah. And people that get stuff done. Right. If you keep hearing people that are failing or not trying or not, you know, complaining and like, that's just so it's, you know, there's a lot of meet ups.
00;50;47;17 - 00;51;16;02
Unknown
I remember where, you know, people just complain all day like, we don't need that, right. You need you need, positive attitude. You need people that lift you up. Yeah. And you lift them up too, right? But it's, it's a two sided street, and too often it's one sided, and that gets very toxic. Yeah. We'll have to, connect offline in terms of, like, some of the, some of those, you know, communities that you, you, you know, partake in or events that, that you feel like are really fruitful because I'm always looking for that next wave as well.
00;51;16;04 - 00;51;35;01
Unknown
Let's go ahead and transition. We're going to we're going to close with a fun, you know, little segment called the five second Scramble. Yeah, a little bit of rapid fire Q&A. Some some professional, some personal, not not too personal. Let's, let's, let's kind of kick it off. Are you ready? I was born ready.
00;51;35;05 - 00;52;12;29
Unknown
All right, let's do it. Explain. Ask sage to me as if I were a five year old. Interesting. Sage helps you, save your time and, get stuff done. What's your favorite part about the culture? Ask sage. We don't talk about culture all day, and we get stuff done like that. What type of, technologist will you say thrive that, ask sage, someone that doesn't talk all day and get stuff done.
00;52;13;01 - 00;52;37;16
Unknown
You're making this a lot easier. What, what are some tech roles that you're you're actively hiring for? Yeah, we just hired 20 people. We're still hiring a couple. Not not so much on tech couple. A VP of sales, VP of marketing. A couple of, technical, customer success. But we just hired 20 people in the last, like, four weeks.
00;52;37;18 - 00;53;07;10
Unknown
In the last four months. So I'm exhausted. Remote in office or hiring remote? All remote. We don't even have an office. So. Very nice. What is a charity or corporate philanthropy that's near and dear to you? A lot. We do a lot with, one of the warriors and, you know, Unicef and, you know, and, my wife is a pro at this, so she's, she's handling it for me because she was, helping a lot of non-profits.
00;53;07;10 - 00;53;27;14
Unknown
So she knows it all, all the scams and the the ones that do waste a bunch of money with, you know, all these expenses and the ones that don't, you know. So you want to listen to her, I guess. Yeah. It's get good feedback. All right. So we already know, you know, it's, fruit for for for breakfast, but can you describe quickly you like your morning routine?
00;53;27;16 - 00;53;49;12
Unknown
Yeah. It changed quite a bit, recently, but, I used to, go, you know, fast pack as work. So eat. Well, eat the fruit while working and having meetings. Now, I try to, take time for, either, you know, eating or just in a, in a, in a tab or something.
00;53;49;12 - 00;54;10;18
Unknown
And that's where my ideas flow. And I like to, and so, like a sonar or something, you know, you get your ideas flowing, and it's it's actually pretty, refreshing. I try to do that more instead of, you know, back to back biddings where you don't have time to even think about anything. That's been very helpful for me to, to do that.
00;54;10;20 - 00;54;36;07
Unknown
And, yeah, spent, you know, saying goodbye to the kids, my wife bring them, you know, to school, and then I pick them up. Oh, there's a lot of fun. Yeah. That special having those, clear cut kind of, you know, parts of your day that that you look forward to. If you could have dinner with any tech icon, you know, past or current, who would it be with?
00;54;36;09 - 00;55;02;29
Unknown
Tech icon? Well, you know, if it's if it's going to be dinner, it's always going to be with Ellen. But, if it wasn't Ellen, I don't know, past, would be interesting to me. Steve Jobs. Yeah. I met a couple of times, but really have more time. Would be interesting. Well, I guess I'm lucky, right?
00;55;03;00 - 00;55;20;29
Unknown
I meet most of the people I would want to meet, you know, whether it's, you know, so, yeah, whether it's, you know, at Microsoft or, you know, OpenAI or whatever. So I'm, I'm kind of like, so I guess I don't already have someone I would want to meet. Because I already met them, I don't know, yeah, maybe.
00;55;21;05 - 00;55;45;28
Unknown
I mean, yeah, there's so many in the past, I guess. Right. But, current ones, I get to meet them. So that's always fun. That's great. What, what is the worst fashion trend that you've ever followed? I don't think I do, you know, so, yeah, I mean, you know, you look back at pictures when you were a kid, we all look silly, you know?
00;55;45;28 - 00;56;05;15
Unknown
Yeah. I don't know, that fashion trend or just opened to blame, you know? Yeah. I didn't really follow it, you know, it's always I. Because I couldn't care less. I've never really done anything silly, like that. So I can think of something that I wasn't. You, you know, studying at 15. I was so young. I'm already.
00;56;05;15 - 00;56;28;22
Unknown
You know, I really look young at 40 now. But imagine at 15 if you see my pictures showing up at meetings. You know, people thought like, what are you doing here? Where's your that, you know, and so I was always in suit and stuff. So I was already like, very much, you know, marketing myself as a as, as a businessman in a suit with a tie.
00;56;28;22 - 00;56;54;03
Unknown
Right? So. Yeah. Yeah. Get the baby face. And, you know, if you look back at pictures from the 50s and even the 1800s, you know, suits have not changed much right now. Now, fashion and back in the day always comes back around. Right. What's something that you love to do? But you're really bad at? Yeah. I'm good at everything I do.
00;56;54;04 - 00;57;16;28
Unknown
I don't know, that's why I, Oh, well, I don't love to do it. Maybe that's the thing. I'm always good at the things I love, that's for sure. But, What? I'm not good. As is patience for, like, minute things, like, you know, so I do woodworking, for example. But I wouldn't, want to spend time a little finite details and more like, oh, I want to build a desk and work, you know, go by the desk and be done.
00;57;16;28 - 00;57;38;21
Unknown
Right. So, like, finite stuff where you have to, you know, take your time and, no, no way, you know? Yeah. Millwork or woodworking. I mean, it's it's a tricky one, but it's something to be said about physically building something with your hands. And I like building, like, big stuff and but not like, oh, I'm not going to spend time like, on the, on the details on the tables.
00;57;38;21 - 00;58;01;28
Unknown
And, you know, I'm like, is the table right? This is I will close with the last, question. What was your dream job as a kid? I might know the answer for. Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't know if I had a dream job as a kid. Maybe you're doing it at 15, you know? Yeah, I think I did what I wanted to do.
00;58;02;01 - 00;58;18;24
Unknown
I mean, there's only only one job that I would always want to do that I will not be able to do anytime soon. Is, being president of the United States? Because I wasn't born here, so I guess it's always about the stuff you can do, right? That you can want to. You want to do right? Well, I bet if I could, I wouldn't care.
00;58;18;27 - 00;58;40;24
Unknown
But because I can, I want to change the Constitution and it's lot, a lot, a lot of work in that, appreciate the, the time spent with us, Nick. I mean, obviously, you're doing something really interesting, and, you know, this this level of innovation, across, you know, the government eco system is super timely. So we're all rooting for you as an entrepreneur and, and for us, sage.
00;58;40;25 - 00;58;44;18
Unknown
But thanks for hanging out with us on the pod. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun.
00;58;44;18 - 00;58;50;23
