Equity wins: From designer, to Atlassian IPO, to Kinde founder with Ross Chaldecott

00:00 Jason Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Startup Equity Matters. The topic today is from designer to Atlassian IPO to kind founder, Equity Wins. It's an awesome story of working through entrepreneurship and product design into one of the great tech success stories, certainly Australia's largest tech success story that I know of. We're going to talk about exits, we're going to talk about founding companies, employee ownership culture, really fantastic opportunity to talk to Ross Choldecott today. As you know, Startup Equity Matters is a podcast to help early stage founders and their teams to get more value from their equity. So today we're going to focus on, you know, just learning about like some some cool exits and like a great journey and the success that that's brought. I love being able to share these sorts of things with you. So welcome, Ross. Hey, Jason, thanks for having me. So excited to go along this journey. Thanks a lot for joining. We've caught up a couple of times in the past. I think we caught up at South Start or you caught up with my teammate, Cal, at South Start. So big shout out to events like that for bringing people together and, you know, creating that connectivity that we need. You're currently founder at Kind. It's K-I-N-D-E for those of you that are checking it out. Awesome startup.

01:37 Ross Tell us a bit about Kind, mate, and what excited you about this problem? The Kind is, well, the thing that we do is we build infrastructure software for developers to help them to accelerate their product development. And Kind is really, it's the fulfillment of kind of a life's work, if you like. It was a problem that I found as an early stage founder when I left high school, started a business, trying to create a few different products and found that infrastructure was the blocker. You know, if you wanted to get a merchant account, this is in the late 90s in South Africa, there was no VC going on then. There was no real infrastructure around the Internet. And so just getting a merchant account to be able to sell things on the Internet was a total nightmare. And we went into the bank, discussed with them, and there was like blank faces all around. They had no idea what we were even talking about. And so I kind of, you know, after seven years of banging my head against infrastructure problems, decided it was time to get a real job, went out and did a bunch of things and was fortunate to land at Atlassio. And in my Atlassian time, I saw the same problem. Infrastructure was a problem. You know, it was hard to do payments. It was hard to change payment plans. We needed whole teams to manage identity and authentication. And it just seemed like this was abnormally hard when you had these big companies that were growing so fast, having to manage what was just fundamentally commoditized infrastructure, not anything useful for the company. It wasn't anything that was accelerating our growth. It was just something that we needed in order to operate as a company. And then, you know, campaign monitor after that, which is another great place to work in Australia, another great Australian company, and then fortunate again to land at Shopify. And again, at Shopify, this is one of the companies that enables just about, you know, I think it's 50% of the retailers on the Internet at this point, having these same infrastructure problems. We had a team of a few hundred people dealing with identity, another team dealing with auth, another team dealing with billing. And, you know, if you wanted to make a change to a billing plan, you had to go and engage in engineering, get them to do that work for you. And it just seemed like madness. It seemed like I'd been sitting around waiting for somebody to solve this infrastructure problem so I could really easily go and build products on top of it. And no one was doing it. And so kind is kind of the result of that. We wanted to solve that problem. Love it. Love it. And is it something very unique in the way that you're solving it or is it more just the fact that you're actually solving this problem and otherwise it's been, you know, just a big mess previously. I mean, it is to a large extent a big mess. There are companies that solve verticalized pieces of it. So you've got auth providers, you've got billing providers, you've got feature planning providers. The thing that we think is really interesting is not so much each one of those individual verticalized, commoditized products, but really when you bring them together. And so the thing that kind is trying to achieve is not just giving you access to really great auth at the box and really great billing and feature flagging, but helping you to do those all in one single place. So if you think about compound products, compound products are already I believe the future there. When you bring together a bunch of disparate products, you actually gain a real real technology and inside advantage because you get all the data from those different products, and you can do really really powerful things by bringing those pieces of data together. So we really think about the future is helping our businesses, not just to do the technical side, but actually helping them to grow as businesses helping them to better understand their customers better understand how their business is performing. Look for insights, look for opportunities and grow grow, you know, substantially faster than they can today. Love that love that and you've just I'm gonna I'm gonna add an extra question in today because I know you're such a great product mind and design mind. But just before I do that, who is the, you know, user or customer that you're currently really focused on that kind. There are kind of three key audiences that we talked to, but the primary one is engineers. So we really think very heavily about how do we make engineers lives just way way way better. How do we make it easy to set up easy to get started, easy to use the tool and make it somewhere that they can fall in love with. And that's kind of the high level of just about all the feedback that we receive is I just love this product is so simple. You've taken something that was that was really hard to do ready, clodgy and really horrible and you've made it really easy. And that's that's kind of the greatest praise that you can get. But then we also think about CTOs, people who are running engineering teams, people who are building products. And a lot of the thing we hear from those people is, you know, why are we paying so much for this infrastructure? It seems crazy that we're paying so much for all and the current providers. And the third is, you know, they are really going a lot more upmarket and therefore charging substantially more. And they're starting to miss that fair value exchange. And we really think heavily about how can we make this a fair value exchange? How can we make this a product that is that is the right fair cost for what we're actually charging for it? And then the third market we talked to is early stage founders, people who are starting businesses, growing businesses, you know, trying to create that impact in the world. And really, you know, those founders will hopefully go on to become the leaders of organizations that have both engineers and technical leaders within them. And so we really think about how do we build as much community around it? Our purpose in life as a company is to create a world with more founders because we believe that that founders are the people that lead to all of that additional growth. They're also the people that make the biggest impact on the world. You know, if you think about all the biggest technology, humanity, economic and environmental changes that have really improved our life as a species, just about all of those have come from founders, people crazy enough to go and start crazy things.

07:25 Jason And so we really think about those two groups as we're building this company. So cool. So for any of you out there, if you have any of these problems, think Ross is solving this. And he has incredible experience in product and design and he's trying to price it fairly for you. So I highly recommend checking that out. You touched on two things that we care so passionately about at Cake as well, which is fair value, you know, creating a product and pricing it correctly for the stage and for what that company can afford. Big believers in that at Cake. And you know, we're tremendous supporters that innovation entrepreneurship can change the world for the better. So absolutely love hearing that that mission. And, you know, for those founders out there as well, finding a way to connect what you're doing into something very meaningful for you and your team that's authentic is a really critical insight there as well. So look, I do need to get back onto the equity side of things because it's called startup equity matters. I'm sure I could enjoy some product chat more, but let's do that. So tell us about your journey. It is an interesting journey. Just a little bit. We've touched on a few of the companies you've worked at. But your origin story is quite interesting to me because you started off as an entrepreneur and working with your father. And I love for me, I saw like kind of a direct line almost of, you know, that being central to you end up ending up in in Atlassian, which was just like, obviously such a, you know, career and life defining phase.

08:58 Ross Oh, yeah. Yeah, so you were telling me a bit like right back in the day you sort of went straight out of school wasn't into almost product design and entrepreneurship. Was that was that true? Essentially, yeah, I mean, I was I was kind of bundling around looking for something to do when I finished high school and and my dad was kind of in the in the mood for starting something new. And so it just made sense for us to start this thing together. And so we started trying to build, you know, we started doing, you know, just basic website building for companies and just being, you know, developers on call and and and helping people to realize things that they had. But then we realized as well, there was great opportunity. So, you know, we tried building kind of an early Shopify marketplace type of thing. We, we built an early ticketmaster type of thing. And and and realize that it was that there was great opportunity to be had there, but the infrastructure just wasn't there at that point, especially in South Africa. If you think about ticketing ticketing at that point really relied on physical printed tickets that were no iPhone so people couldn't turn up at an event with an iPhone and scan a barcode. And so it was about physical tickets. And and so you've got to build all this infrastructure to actually deliver those tickets to people to actually get them to them and postage is if you know anything about South Africa postage in South Africa doesn't work. The postal system is basically nonexistent. And so you had to use couriers to get tickets to people and started to become a really cost prohibitive thing to do. And so, you know, there were just so many roadblocks to try to build this. We tried damn hard. And it was an awesome experience. And I'd say, you know, I grew probably more from doing that than at any point. Previous, you know, besides maybe Atlassian and Shopify. Yeah, it was definitely the biggest growth opportunity of my life is when you start off as a leader of a company and instead of just kind of going through the ticket

11:00 Jason You kind of have this crazy accelerated learning cycle that you go through that most people don't don't experience and Stuart cook on the other day, you know, and he had an ESOP exit as well, you know, different product different journey, but he'd gone very early out into sales. And so he went, you know, into that sales entrepreneurship and you kind of went into whether it be marketing product design sales all of it in one, you know, much more with a technology slant. But the the big insight that I get from it and that maybe that's just my mindset is that, you know, having that entrepreneurial having all those lessons early on, you know, and pitting yourself against the world and not just slotting into a job and a pay packet can help you accelerate your career and get you into those roles where you're leading. And so let's let's take it on then to Atlassian where it like was product management even a role when you started the head like did that even exist because I feel like it's a very recent phenomenon. How did it all start there? So I joined we were a company of 20 years ago. I was the fourth designer in the company.

12:03 Ross And, and we were pretty fledgling design team kind of making it up as as as we went along and but then you know that was really I'd say one of those big starting points for us to get into the business and get into the business. And so by the time I left four and a half years later, we were a company of 1500 people. The company looked totally different. The, you know, the team that I joined when I joined the company, which was the Jira team, I was the I was a designer of one on that company. And so I was the first designer in the company. And I was the first designer in the company. And I was the first designer in the company. And so by the time I left, I had a team of almost 30 people working on that product. Just in it from a design capacity and so I was my mind, you know, we're going to get it.

12:46 Jason We're going to get 30 people a cake and we think we're growing fast and we are like it's crazy to think of that scale going from 280 to 1500 and really, really hyper scaling through through that phase. You know, wonderful experience. And did you get equity straight away? Were they were they straight on to the whole, you know, easy thing right from from day one? So I mean, I joined a few years into the company.

13:10 Ross But, yes, I got equity granted day one and and it was it was kind of a weird thing because it was in your back then nobody spoke about equity. Nobody thought about equity. It was, it was kind of like a great thing because it was never talked about equity. In your back then nobody spoke about equity. Nobody thought about equity. It was it was just like this piece of paper that I got when I joined the company that said we're going to grant you X number of shares. And I was like, OK, that sounds cool. I don't really get it, but fine. But, you know, at least I get my pay packet every every month. And so that was great. And, you know, there were a few people that had when they first issued the equity, I think fairly shortly before I joined, they'd done it with with T-shirts to everybody because the glass in his T-shirt mad that said, I'm an owner. And there were all these people walking around with I'm an owner T-shirts. And I was like, that's a pretty cool T-shirt, but I don't really understand what it means. And it was only really later on at the point where we were just pre IPO. And they brought in an external investor to to offer people a buyout on some of their shares that I realized that actually what I had there was actually worth something because they tell us, you know, you can get X amount per share. And and I kind of just fell off when you go look at what I had expecting it to be, you know, it's going to be a you know, maybe we'll go on a vacation with this money and suddenly realizing that this money would would potentially be life changing. Fortunately, I didn't sell any of it at that point.

14:35 Jason Waited till the IPO because that was already already potentially life saving. And then I guess by the IPO, things were even better. So look, love, love hearing that, love hearing that. And so, you know, so you, you went through a five X period during that period. How many years were you there before the IPO?

14:56 Ross Four and a half years. And I actually left a month before the IPO to join campaign monitor, which was an awesome move. But I missed all the big parties. It didn't change my equity situation.

15:06 Jason But it meant that I missed the IPO parties. Really glad to hear it didn't change your equity situation. I think sometimes leaving a company can have a very negative effect. And and that's something that we all need to keep learning about is how to make sure we protect our teams that have been there through the journey and make sure they get involved in the success. Yeah. So look, it's it's this is, you know, one of the most successful tech events, you know, financial events in Australian history. And I'm really excited to be able to learn about this and share this with everyone. So let's try and, you know, dig into this a little bit. So I guess we talked a bit about the granting. We talked a bit about the moment where you really sort of started to value this thing and realize what it could be worth. What so did they give you an opportunity to exit at that point and say there was like we call that a secondary in the industry? Did they tell you that there was a secondary opportunity at that point and then you could opt in or opt out?

16:09 Ross Is that how that worked? Yes, essentially. So we had that opportunity to sell a portion that would be a percentage of our shares. And I looked at it and said, this is good money, but it feels like there's big potential. I just had such a strong belief in the glass and still do. I think it's one of the greatest companies in existence. And I think it has the opportunity, the ability to continue to grow and scale in the way that it exactly the same way that it has today. So cool. But so I was just like, no, I'm going to hang on to this. I don't know if this is the right thing to do. Who could say? But, you know, Mike and Scott are just such great leaders. I had a lot of faith in them and their ability to drive us forward. And I just thought it's going to be worthwhile hanging on to these shares.

16:54 Jason Amazing decision. And how did they I mean, from your memory, how did they help you? We call it like equity story. Did they help you kind of understand where you were, where you were going with their updates in the all hands?

17:09 Ross I mean, what sort of communication do you remember during that phase and leading up to the IPO to help you understand where you were and to give you confidence that that you know that everything was under control? I mean, I feel is a is a difficult thing because it's not something that that companies going public can actually talk all that much about. So the majority of it was actually fairly closely guarded and guarded by a relatively small team. We knew that at some point we were going to IPO from the point that they brought in Rich Wong and the team at Excel. We knew that there was going to be an IPO coming because that was kind of the point. But when that was going to actually happen was a very closely guarded thing. And you only really find out that it's happening once the roadshow kicks off. So, you know, we knew we had equity from that point that they did the second G. We knew that there was going to be opportunity potentially to for us to do well and for that IPO to happen. But beyond that, it was a fairly closely held thing until the point where we were we were going public with that and telling the world about it.

18:18 Jason So it was a long period from when the roadshow starts until the listing. How do you do you remember that? I mean, that might be too much detail, I suppose, for where you were sitting.

18:30 Ross It was all fairly blurry at that point. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember. Yeah. I would have paid now knowing what I know in the world, I would have paid a hell of a lot more attention to it. But yeah, I seem to remember it was a fairly long it was certainly a long period between Rich and the Excel team taking out their investment in the company and us actually going to IPO. Was there another was there another secondary opportunity before the IPO or was it kind of now it was just that one? We're going into the big listing together. That's right. Yeah. And then of course, you know, that all happens. And then as an insider, you get locked down, you can't actually sell anything for for the first six months anyway. So it was kind of Atlantic climactic. You could see that there was a money there was exciting to see it go. It was exciting to see the company booming. You can't actually do anything about it as an insider for the first while.

19:19 Jason And were there were there many of you like what was the vibe like within the company? I mean, I know you just missed the IPO, but I guess you still had that whole period where it was really becoming real. I mean, this is kind of I think a common story for exits. You get a piece of paper on day one. Yeah. And you don't have any idea. I mean, worst case scenario, you're actually thinking, oh, do I have a tax problem? Like you're actually, you know, I've seen regularly team members like stressed and complaining that they even have to deal with it or they might getting my pay deducted. So like, you know, it's some sort of like neutral to, you know, not so cool thing to have initially. But then as the company succeeds, I feel like the excitement and the realness of it must must develop within the organization.

20:01 Ross Do you remember, you know, how that sort of felt and went within within your peers there? I mean, it's not something you're thinking about day to day, right? You're building a company, you're your heads down building product. So the majority of our time has not been thinking about, you know, of course, I'm sure Scott and I might have been very pissed if you're just running around the halls talking about your e-sophones. But I mean, I will say there's the kind of the standout moment is the all hands where they got us all together to tell us that the IPO was happening. And we had we didn't know that was happening. People had suspicions that it was going to be happening. And so it was it was a pretty awesome moment to go into that all hands, knowing that there was some important message going to be going out, but not knowing what it was. And then to have them actually announcing, hey, we're going public. That was a that was a pretty big moment and pretty standout moment. Definitely a big time for celebration in the team.

20:55 Jason Very cool. As a founder, I can't wait to, you know, provide those those life changing moments, whether it be major or minor. I think, you know, in startup land and with tech success, we have a massively outsized ability to to create financial wealth for our teams. And I'm sure that the leadership team of Atlassian, you know, really enjoyed, you know, being able to, you know, to help their teams in that way and share in success. There's a bit of an ongoing joke that the whole of Surry Hills house prices went up 50 percent after that exit. And I guess long may those success successes continue because, you know, quite often that then leads to further regeneration and further success in the startup space. You know, as people go on to found their own companies and become angel investors and or, you know, just go in and invest their, you know, their new found wealth in their communities for their families. And we just absolutely love seeing that. And it's not always in countries like Australia either these days, you can have global ESOPs and some of that wealth going, you know, all around the world where otherwise it would totally not be achievable. So thanks so much for sharing that. I won't harp on it too much. You've actually had two exits, which is ultra impressive. You've also had some liquidity from your Shopify. So after Atlassian, it was campaign monitor and then Shopify. Is that right? And there was some liquidity there. So I think you can go out again, maybe share a little bit, you know, with the listeners on how that all went down or.

22:24 Ross There's there's nothing more. I mean, it's awesome to get equity, but there's nothing more awesome than joining a company that's already public because then that all that equity that you get promised actually has value. And so it's a it's a really easy decision to join that company when you know that and you know, I can't be like Shopify. You can again, like I have insane amounts of belief in Shopify and its ability to do great things. Toby's a great leader. I believe the company is a great company. And when I joined, we were already at the starting point of all that equity growth. And so there's nothing more awesome than when you join a company and you can see the value in the thing that you're getting issued. And to me, it was it was actually one of the smartest things I've ever did, which was say, actually give me a lower paycheck so that you get more equity. And that's what we paid out very well in the end and was definitely worth doing. So, yeah, it's this there's something very cool about joining an already public company. Everyone should do it sometime in their life, especially a company that's as generous as Shopify is. And I think that's that's a lot of what we took in, you know, both the learnings from Atlassian and the learnings from Shopify is a lot of what we thought about when we were building Kind is how do you know, I've had big benefit from being a part of these companies. How do we create that same sort of the same sort of generational company, a hundred year business and a big part of that is you create a team of people that have strong, strong ownership in the business and and also whose culture and values align very heavily to the one that we're creating in the business. Because at the end of the day, a company is nothing more than just a collection of people with a shared vision and shared set of values. And so if we can give them something to aspire to, if we can, you know, if we can help them to understand that the value that they create in the work that they do will directly contribute to their future potential, their future opportunity to grow and their future opportunity to thrive in this world, then that's a really, really great thing that we can do. And that's the thing that's going to allow us to create a company that's going to be here in 1020 100 years time is by creating that culture and that culture based on shared success. We actually have a value, which is we have two values. One is the company of giants, which is about growing up people and making sure that we help to make everybody within the company bigger. And the other one is to create a bigger pie, which is about we take the kind of. Bigger, bigger. Okay, we'll save it today. But if we all, instead of focusing on what is my slice of the pie or my slice of the cake, and trying to make that the biggest slice of that cake that I can possibly get. Let's try and make the biggest possible cake that we can. And then each of our each of our slices of cake is going to be exponentially bigger. And so, you know, we really try to bake in that that opportunity for growth and we talk a lot about we're a very open company we're super super transparent and basically everything with our team, both the good and the bad. And we try to talk a lot about equity, one of the first discussions we have with anyone who joins our team is, you know, this is the equity, you're being granted, how much is it going to be worth if we're you know for the size of the glassy and for the size of Canva. If we go to the size of culture amp you know what is what is going to be the financial outcome for you to help them to understand that you know they're an actual owner you know try to get them over all those the lack of understanding that I had a glassy and where I was like, Oh, that's cool. We actually try to make sure that our team understands that they actually genuinely own a piece of this cake.

25:53 Jason And it's, you know, it's up to them to make it as successful as possible because they're going to get the financial award at the end of it. Wait, I couldn't have asked for a better little segment there I was just about to ask about kind and the culture and leadership and like it's incredible you just like smashed that section I just love hearing that I feel like you really excel with the way you think about the world and teams and it is all about people it is all about doing great things with great people and doing something meaningful together I mean that's sort of how I would normally describe it I think you described it much better. And, and you know, we talked so much about a cake and startup equity matters a big part of our mission here is really trying to help people understand what what is equity really worth I mean worst case scenario you've got 10% of your company goes out the door, which could be worth, you know, hundreds millions of dollars down the track and you're getting very little value from it, other than like a party at the end you know like you want to be attracting better talent engaging and retaining them better. And then just just having a better feeling and culture within the company that we're all in this together and we're all going on this journey together and if we succeed we all succeed you know the rules of the plan are balanced so that if the founder succeed the team succeed you know it's not that like oh you know the founder can sell his shares and you're going to be like left on the on the scrap heap or what have you so I absolutely love you know hearing how you've taken all those learnings and leadership and culture from your career and bringing that into kind of that's super super cool. So I guess you just answered like so many of my questions. Awesome. I'm just thinking like how, you know, how do we now just extract out a little bit more like detail about some of the actions and processes and systems that you use it kind to practically implement this great vision and culture so how do you, you know, so what do you do

27:56 Ross when you're hiring perhaps or, you know, what do you do with your all hands or you know how are you currently communicating with your team to, you know, build your culture and generate value from your equity. So we, you know, employee experience and culture are things that have to be very deliberately designed. They don't just happen by accident, you can try leave them up to accident and a lot of companies are really great by leaving things like that up to accident but I already am a big believer that that you start by intentionally crafting that culture I think this is just my design background. And so when I think about anything I think about it from everything is designed. Everything is designed. And I think that the greatest company leaders in the world have fundamentally been at their hearts designers Steve Jobs was a designer you can, you can have whatever title he had but his ultimate job was to be the architect the designer of of Apple computer and and likewise I see my role is kind of designing the experience of the people who work for for for kind of a lot of them are going to spend their entire careers hopefully working for kind. We want to make sure that they have a really great experience, and it's aligned to the values of the company that we're trying to build and so before we actually ever hired a single person before we had basically even written a single letter line of the kind product. We had that and those values were, you know you have you have a choice when you're building a company you can you can the standard way is you go you start your company you hire a bunch of people. And a few years down the line you're you kind of you hire people typically who you want to have a beer with or who kind of look like.

29:33 Jason And you kind of want to work. Totally agree.

29:36 Ross That's what everyone does. And, and so, and, and, and to me you're kind of leaving your, your culture and your values up to up to the top of the coin right it's just totally chance where, where the, they will be successful. And then, at some point during that journey you go and you say, Well, we have a bunch of people who feel like they represent us and what we want to be, and you try to codify those learnings into a set of values and so you go and you write this fancy set of values that's based on what you've learned from the people that you have working there. We said, that seems crazy we don't want to play Russian relate with our own values. We don't want to play Russian relate with the culture that we're creating. Let's go into Liberty craft this and so we had those values from the from day one, and those values were an attempt to say, this is the company that we want to become this is these are the people that we want to have working here and the things we want them to aspire to achieve. And so we use every one of those values, every single person who joins the company goes to a values interview because we think it's so important that they are aligned to the way we see the world and things that we want to be and that is already important a lot of people think of this as, as basically, you know, just a, just a concept for making everybody a management feel good, whereas, you know, the platitudes largely and a lot of values are platitudes, where we said, every one of our values it in another company. It could be something that they don't necessarily want to be.

31:03 Jason And, and so, you know, I think it should be like a filtering process when you're hiring, like when you say your values when you're hiring, it should force some people to not apply. I think, and you don't want to be exclusive per se we are being by definition exclusive but it's not like non diverse exclusivity is just like, these are the things we believe in.

31:25 Ross This is how we're going to behave. This isn't a joke like when you come in. This is how we're going to be behaving. Yeah. And so don't be surprised if you know this is what we do because we mean these things. Yeah, we have a value human kindness general manners. And I'd say that's like the pervading one that you can see reflected in the human beings that work at kind. And so, I guess and so ownership was a big part of the, I guess the, the culture and the values of the company and that's what we're doing. And so, I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. I think that's what we're doing. And so, I guess and so ownership was a big part of the, I guess the, the culture and the values of the company and that's sort of the key to how it's then become like a successful part of the business. Absolutely. So ownership based on our values, you know, credit, bigger pie, but it's also just something that we discussed very early on. So before anyone joins, we sit down with them and have a conversation about what their equity is going to be worth, make sure they understand what equity equity is and I often take them through a little bit of kind of my backstory to help them understand your, I've done really well out of Atlassian and Shopify. And I want that same opportunity. I want you to own it.

32:42 Jason I love that we've got I think we've got Atlassian in cake so we can take we've got a feature where you can say how many options you've got and then you can say like which company do you want to peg yourself against I'm pretty sure going to be a good fit. I think we might even have Shopify there as well. But I wish I was actually from those companies because when I'm hiring my my pitch about equity value creation would be a lot more real.

33:03 Ross It's hard for them to look at you and go, Oh, no, this is this can never happen because you're living proof. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it does happen. It doesn't happen often. No, I think what's important is, you know, you know, you're not going to be able to get a lot of people to buy your product. I mean, I think it does happen often. No, I think what's important is that your people understand that they have the opportunity to make it and you know, you think about driving people to be highly motivated to be engaged. There's no better way than saying to them you own this company if you're looking for, you know, if you're climbing Everest, you don't want people who are focused on the hot on the hot chocolate stand you want people to focus on getting to the top of Everest. You want people to be focused on the top of Everest, you make sure that they own the expedition. Love it. And so you know it's made a huge difference for us our team understands ownership. It also changes the way they make decisions.

33:56 Jason If you think about, you know, decision, most decisions are made fairly selfishly. But when you're making decision that will actually affect the outcome of the company and that outcome is yours. You're going to make decisions that actually suit the outcome of the company. Especially if you've got visibility and you can see where the company's at where it's going and you've got these touch points and it's really real and you can make those decisions because you can sort of see in your own mind how you're able to to impact those outcomes. So, yeah, look, absolutely fantastic. I feel like you've got more passion and awareness about this stuff than I do. So thanks so much for joining and sharing. Well, what whichever way it is, you're you're an absolute gun at this and so I'm so appreciative. And I'm just really, really grateful that you've come on to share with with everyone your insights. That's so valuable. So, look, in the interest of time, unfortunately, I have to jump on to the final question we always

34:53 Ross finish with, you know, a creative, healthy lifestyle question where big advocates at cake that, you know, your health and your mental health is a great framework for creativity and success and tackling these tremendous challenges that we have in innovation, which sometimes do feel like climbing Everest. So, you know, how do you relate to that concept and you know what what sort of insights or habits you able to share with everyone around around that. I mean, as a founder, I think every founder knows this it's incredibly hard to keep healthy. It has to be a deliberate intent thing and it really has taken me the longest time as a founder to, to try and you know to actively invest in my health and and do through exercise and trying to improve my diet and things like that but I think that one of the things that you know, you think about it's not just me, it's, it's my team as well. It's all the people who work for kind to give their lives towards it as well. And so we try to make sure that that baked into the culture of the company is is an allowance to not take life too seriously and so our six value, probably the most important one is stay foolish we talk about that at every single all hands every Friday. And that's just a reminder that if we're doing this and we're not having fun, then why the hell are we doing it because life's just going to be a pretty shitty place to be. And, and, and so stay foolish I think is just such a great reminder for me every single, you know, every time I look at our bodies every time we have our hands and we talk about that, just such an important reminder to me to like not take life too seriously. If you get too in your own head if you get too focused on on negativity, you're never going to build something great, and you know you have to when you're building a company you have to have the most crazy outlandish delusional people along with the journey, because who the hell else is going to go and do it.

36:52 Jason So, you know, staying foolish I think is just a big big key part of that life with optimism and naivety and trying things that nobody's ever tried to do before because that's what we're doing in the start. Absolutely love that. I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for sharing so Ross, really grateful for your time today. You're an incredibly successful guy. You know you've got a fantastic new company kind on the go. Look, I'm sure you've all got great value out of that you know for for engineers and CTOs and founders out there definitely check out kind you know, it seems like you're going to have a great product with Ross and his team behind it. I think we're going to look at cake, making I am an owner shirts I don't know if I have to check with the last few guys to see if they're happy for us to borrow or steal that because I think that's just such a great t shirt idea. I think that's a little insight I had because this is for employees as well and not that I'm advocating people changing jobs necessarily I'm not trying to talk him into changing jobs but think about, you know, maybe there are some listed companies or companies in general that you really really believe in their going to be priced, you know, much lower than it was a few years ago and so look for great founders like Ross with great employee ownership culture, where you know that if you can all work together and build a great company you can come off this low share price and really benefit in that upside so hopefully you know that's just a nice little takeaway to finish on. Thank you Ross thanks for joining. Anytime it's good to chat. Stay foolish out there. Stay foolish.

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