At Centercode we believe in technology's ability to make everyone's life better. In the Delta Huddle Podcast, we bring together industry experts and visionaries to share their insights about building products and bringing them to market.
We're excited to announce the very first episode of the Delta Huddle podcast! Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode, is joined by David Perry, CEO of Carro and Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode, to discuss tech optimism, maintaining user delight, and doing more with less when it comes to user testing.
In this episode:
- Looking at the recession as an opportunity and adapting to change
- Importance of bulletproofing your products when the economy is at risk
- Critical reliance on releasing high quality products
About Our Guests:
David Perry is the CEO of Carro, a new e-commerce partnership network used by over 30K Shopify brands. GetCarro.com helps brands gain attention, sales, and new customers by partnering with other brands in the network. The goal is to keep users on your store and add everything they need into your cart. Carro provides all the other products they want that you don’t currently sell. Before Carro, David’s previous company Gaikai was acquired by Sony PlayStation to establish leadership in the future of streaming video games from the cloud. That service is called PlayStation Now.
Luke Freiler is the CEO and co-founder of Centercode, a delta testing solutions provider that helps hundreds of enterprise and high-growth tech companies continuously perfect their products by leveraging the enthusiasm of their customers. With a background in user experience and software development, Luke continues to lead the design of the Centercode Platform, a comprehensive SaaS solution that enables companies to continuously engage with their audiences throughout product development and iteration. A self-identified Tech Idealist, his vision is for a world where technology truly serves to solve real problems. He is passionate about working with product makers to turn that vision into a reality, one product at a time.
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Episode Transcript:
00:00:00
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
This is the Delta Huddle podcast. Hello, I'm Stefan Stenroos and I'm incredibly excited to welcome you to the very first episode of the Delta Huddle Podcast by Centercode. At Centercode, we believe in technology's ability to make everyone's life better. And over the last two decades, we've used the power of user testing to improve products, find solutions, and discover user delights.
00:00:25
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
Now we're ready to bring those best practices and industry insights directly to you. In the Delta Huddle Podcast. In the Delta Huddle Podcast, we aim to bring industry experts and visionaries together to share their insights about building products and bringing them to market. We’ll dive deep into the world of Delta Testing. Learn about the struggles and successes of testing programs and ultimately push the boundaries of what's possible in user testing.
00:00:48
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
In this episode, our VP of Marketing, Chris Rader, sat down with Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode, and David Perry, CEO of Carro. David is a member of the Centercode Board of Directors with a successful history in tech and gaming. His new business, Carro, is an e-commerce partnership network used by over 30,000 Shopify brands. Before Carro David's previous company, Gaikai, was acquired by Sony PlayStation to establish leadership in the future of streaming video games from the cloud.
00:01:18
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
That service is known as PlayStation Now. Both David and Luke brought some incredible insights and wisdom to the table. Together, they tackled topics such as the direct benefits of user testing, brand evangelism, tech optimism, doing more with less, and maintaining user delight. On behalf of everyone at Centercode, we can't wait for you to join us on this journey through Delta Testing.
00:01:40
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
And we thank you for tuning in. Without further ado, this is the Delta Huddle podcast.
00:01:50
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
David and Luke, we're excited to have you on. I understand you both have known each other for some time. How did you meet?
00:01:57
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I can kick this one off. It's kind of a fun story, actually. So long ago when David was deep into Gaikai and looking for different options to bring that to market. He actually reached out to us as somewhat neighbors. He was just a short town away and was looking to find a way to use streaming gaming as a mechanism to help product testing.
00:02:22
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And he had some really great ideas that would alleviate some common challenges at the time. And we ended up getting together to talk about that. But the way we actually became friends, which was kind of a weird thing for Southern California, was we went out to lunch. I don't know how much of this you remember, Dave, but we went to lunch at CPK and there was crazy weather and it flooded the parking lot.
00:02:46
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But we were sitting in this CPK, you know, intended to be just a normal casual lunch. We were sitting in this CPK and we're listening to car alarms go off outside as the water is literally engulfing these cars. I remember a Corvette, a brand new Corvette that was, you know, basically up to its door handles and water because Southern California is not designed for rain.
00:03:07
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And we basically got stuck at this CPK for about four hours. And in that time, we just realized we had a lot in common, became friends, and we've kept in touch ever since. And at a certain point, as Centercode was growing and I had already looked at Dave as a mentor with a long, successful history, I asked him to join the board as an advisor and to help work and shape the company.
00:03:30
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And he's been a phenomenal resource with just incredible big ideas ever since. So he had his wonderful exit to Sony on what became a really great service. And what was really cool about that was Dave's perspective then changed to just really big ideas. He had been one of those people in tech that had already kind of hit that success that everyone was looking for.
00:03:51
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So for him and he expressed this to me very early on for him to feel like he reached the next level, he needed to add a zero to the next acquisition and that next opportunity. So that was kind of how we started. I’ll let you add anything you want, Dave, but that was, that was a fun day and I still fondly remember it.
00:04:08
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It was crazy. We literally watch people waving out to the cars to save them.
00:04:13
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Like, boats going out.
00:04:14
David Perry, CEO of Carro
You can just imagine you're looking at your car going, What do I do? Do I? Do I go and save my car or what? And it was shocking to see how much rain came down so fast. That actually happened to me another time. It's kind of funny, years ago there was a car that came out, the Dodge Viper, and it was a really cool cherry red sports car that Dodge decided to make.
00:04:37
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And I bought one of the early ones and it had no roof on it. And I one day got a chance to meet with the head of Sega who had flown out from Japan. And so to have the head of Sega visiting was really exciting. So I took him to this restaurant in Laguna Beach and, and we were in the restaurant and it's all glass walls and I'm looking at my car outside and it starts raining and it's just the same kind of weather.
00:05:04
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It's that day. It was a downpour. And I'm sitting there trying to have this really important dinner, but I'm looking at my car. Justoutside the window. So then the dinner came to an end and I'm thinking to myself, what do I do? Do I walk? Do I go get my car in front of him? Do I literally walk away?
00:05:25
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Just pretend it wasn't mine. And then I finally went back and got in the car and saved it. But it was just trash. The amount of rain that ended up in that car was ridiculous. But I do remember that day. What was cool, I think, was the conversation really got into tech and I think that's been a fun thing with you is of all the people I know, you're one of the ones that really pay attention to what's going on.
00:05:51
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so we usually start catch up conversations with what new tech have you bought or what are you into or what have you heard about what's going on? Companies and ideas and industries tend to connect more than you would think. And so a crazy one that happened to me was I got a call one day saying I was making a video game for the Matrix movies, and I got a call from someone at Neverland saying, Can you… is there any way Michael Jackson could play your game before it launches?
00:06:24
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so I got into my car and drove to Neverland and I'd let him see the game and then we hit it off. But in reality, I found across the board, you know, in all industries and all walks of lives, these people have grown up playing video games. Now. And when I first started to meet with companies, I realized that the senior executives, this was early in the game industry,
00:06:49
David Perry, CEO of Carro
The senior executives had never played video games and could care less about us. So I'd be sitting in these board meetings with older people and they basically had nothing to say, no interest in what we were doing. But in a very short period of time, they moved on. And then the people who are now in charge, the CEOs, CFOs, all those people grew up with video games in their homes.
00:07:14
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so we're super welcome now. They're super welcome, everyone. Yeah. And that was a really fun experience. I once gave a commencement speech at a university about, you know, what I'd experienced. And I kept saying that these doors will open and you really have to decide whether or not you'll walk through those doors. Will you take those opportunities?
00:07:36
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I used to live in England and here I am living in America. I got an opportunity. I got on a plane and came over. And so at the end of my commencement speech, the dean was just really, really annoyed because he's like, it's not a it's not about luck. It's about education. So it's kind of like the world is all about education.
00:07:58
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Not really what happens is doors open and you get on the plane, you don't get in the plane, and that can change everything. And so I've had a lot of fun with all these interesting companies and sort of introductions, and you might be at the right place at the right time or meet someone at an airport or whatever.
00:08:16
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It's fascinating.
00:08:17
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Yeah. So. So what about, I'll say Centercode, but it's probably a little bit of luck and Centercode. What about Luke and Centercode drew your attention. Why did you gravitate towards that?
00:08:30
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Well, when you come from the game, industry testing is just part of your DNA. It's something you do all day, every day, and testing is critical to success. And what happened was I liked the way Centercode was thinking because it was thinking forward, like, where's testing going? Not just, you know, we just can help you through testing.
00:08:50
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It's like, what is the future of testing? And then if you look at the portfolio of companies that they had worked with, it was so impressive, like the brands, the library of brands that they've worked with was incredible. And I also liked little touches. Like at the time they were making it clear. I remember once seeing a website version that Luke was working on and it had like a home and you could see all these different devices around the home that they would support testing on.
00:09:21
David Perry, CEO of Carro
But they also had things like drones in the shot. And it just made me go, if I'm in the drone industry, it's great to see that you're calling me out as someone that we could work with Centercode too. And so this idea of covering all consumer electronics or any kind of software, whatever, whatever the testing is needed is important.
00:09:40
David Perry, CEO of Carro
But where it really got me was this idea that our relationship with electronics and products has overall changed and that relationship is now long term. Like I need to get my next Apple device to flawlessly and effortlessly upgrade itself and move on, so that idea of sort of long term relationships with your devices and having this effortless experience as you continue to grow I think is very important. In the game industry,
00:10:14
David Perry, CEO of Carro
There's a game called FIFA soccer and I remember at one point they realized that too, which is it's not cool to resell you the exact same game over and over and over and over with some different stats and maybe a few graphical changes. In reality, if I'm in this world and I'm investing into building players and building teams and setting everything up the way I want it, I want that to last for as long as I, I, you know, work with this software.
00:10:40
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so this idea of Delta Testing, I think captivated me. And it was and the fact that so many great companies are working with centercode. That's why I, I just wanted to know more about it and get involved.
00:10:54
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And I remember when I first saw the Centercode office, when I came, when I worked at Western Digital before meeting Luke and I came into the Centercode office on the back wall, he had a bunch of portraits of all the brands that he worked with. I was like, What the heck? This is like every frickin’ brand.
00:11:11
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
What else could you, what else could you need? And it was so captivating to me. And I had worked at WD in beta testing, and I met with Luke and I didn't know this existed. Like he came and pitched you know, testing to WD. And I didn't know that these problems were, like, relevant in a lot of other companies.
00:11:33
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And it was so nice to be able to talk to somebody that also saw those problems. And that's like one of the things that drew to me because testing happens everywhere. You have to test before you release your product. You should test your product before you put an update out, because why would you release something that could give you negative brand imagery, like just having that negative like notion around you is not necessarily the best thing.
00:12:00
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It's absolutely critical. It's life and death for products and I think this idea of Delta Testing is really important, this lifelong relationship with your customers. And I think that it's going to impact every industry because we're at that point where, you know, most products have some kind of software firmware or some kind of.
00:12:24
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Yeah, definitely.
00:12:25
David Perry, CEO of Carro
You know, I sort of am creating an account and it lives with me. So this is all stuff that really, really matters. And I don't think there are very many companies that are going to be able to avoid that future. And so if they want to do it properly, then that's, that's a great reason for Centacare to focus there.
00:12:41
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I think they've touched on something really important that led to kind of where we went with all of this, which is that I look at it as two sort of vectors that are working against each other. One, products are just empirically getting more complex. As you know, we've had a lot of basics that we sort of build on constantly over time.
00:13:02
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So there was a point in time when, you know, the digital thermostat was new and now it has a thousand times more features and talks to, you know, 50 more products. And many of those are going to come out after it's purchased. So products are just inherently getting more complex at the same time. And I consider this a pretty awesome thing, those products are being used by a much more diverse group of people.
00:13:23
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And, you know, back in the day, go back to when we were sort of young in our careers, tech products. And first of all, we're kind of few and far between. But they were used by tech people and tech people. One of the defining things of a real tech savvy person, you know, sadly, is that we have pretty high attention spans and our patience is there to deal with problems and whatnot.
00:13:44
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But as a product, it's more sophisticated, so there's more opportunity for error and the audience gets more diverse, more mainstream, which means they have less patience for those errors. The problem's getting bigger and more consequential on both sides. So you know, and then the cherry on top and this is dialing into what Dave said is that you don't just kind of have a fire and forget strategy anymore.
00:14:08
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
You don't release a product and then let other teams handle it while you work on the next one for the next three years. The reality is you're going to put out something that's hopefully very strong and then you're going to continue to iterate on it as the ecosystem around it is iterating on. And you know, you don't know what new standard Apple or Google or whoever is dependent on your product or your product is dependent on them.
00:14:31
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
You don't know what's going to come out in a year, but the customer, if you bought their product, you're going to expect it to keep working when that happens. So everybody's kind of working against each other in an incomplete, increasingly complex environment with increasingly general audiences, Instagram audiences. So problems getting harder and going, you know, it's sort of touching on the topic we think we're planning to dial in today, which is kind of how the recession impacts all this is.
00:14:57
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
You know, one of the things that I'm pretty convinced we're going to see in a recession is just fewer product releases and more reliance on those releases being hits. You know, there is a world where when the recession is, you know, when there is no recession, when the economy is going great, that's when you start to experiment. That's when you start investing that extra money and new ideas and big shots.
00:15:17
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But once you kind of dial down and you don't have as many resources to deal with, then all of a sudden you need those fewer releases to hit and pay the bills. And therefore you need to do everything you can to bulletproof that product when the economy is at risk. So to me, it's sort of these forces that have already been brewing in technology and in technology usage now you've crossed that with a recession and decline and concerns about, you know, the near-term future at least, and you really have to think differently.
00:15:47
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So that's part of why we're kind of excited to help companies get through this, this process the best we can.
00:15:54
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I think one of the things that I find interesting is the potential for Centercode to start taking a leadership position in helping companies understand how to do this properly. So not necessarily. It's when you're a company and some large company like Federal Express wants to use your software, then you need to, you know, comply with whatever their systems are.
00:16:21
David Perry, CEO of Carro
But over time, I think you want to start thinking about how you can create the leadership sort of direction to help people understand how to do things right, how to do it really well, how to do it super efficiently, and how to make the customer Absolutely. You know, as happy as they could possibly be. An example is I just spent some time with my mother.
00:16:43
David Perry, CEO of Carro
She's 82, and I was trying to teach her how to use an iPad. And it was funny because I showed her how to do things. And then it seems somehow obvious to a techie person, but when you're 82, it's not obvious. And I left her with it for some time. And then she said to me, Look, I just can't get the icons back.
00:17:01
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And she's basically getting stuck in programs because you have to flip up from the bottom of the screen to get the icons back. And in the game industry, what we learned is you can do things like frustration tracking. So you can start to see like this person that's clearly lost, they walked around this room 18 times. There's a door handle over there that they somehow don't see.
00:17:22
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So why don't we, like, do something, a sparkle or whatever, over there so we can get your attention on that door handle and get you out of this room that you're stuck in. That idea of frustration tracking is one that, you know, at some point I wish the iPad said, you know, I've noticed this motion 180 times. Like at some point can the software kick in and help?
00:17:45
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so overall, this idea of of sort of creating almost a leadership guide in each industry over time, obviously this is a major thing work wise, but over time it could be very helpful for certain companies to start thinking the really modern way to go about creating their products so that testing is is a just a core piece of how it's getting developed and making the customer's journey as silky smooth as it can possibly be.
00:18:16
David Perry, CEO of Carro
What we learned in the game industry is everything's funnel based as well. So, you know, you lose people all the time, every step of the way. So how do you get them through those funnels and it's the same with the customers for all these different, you know, services and companies out there. How do they hold on to their customers, how do they not lose them on their customer journey with them?
00:18:38
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So I think there's a lot of leadership stuff the Centercode could start to generate to help with the sort of strategies and things above and beyond the technology in the platform.
00:18:49
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Yeah, you definitely hit on a lot of our journey and kind of how we've been thinking. When we started this company, the goal was to sell a product to very small companies and help them run these types of tests because we saw the opportunity to connect companies to their customers in a complex product environment as it's a great opportunity.
00:19:10
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And it was actually the very large companies that first latched on, the companies we never thought would even be an opportunity for us. We thought they were way too big, and that has really fueled the growth of the company and that's where we've gone. But sort of alluding to some of what Dave said that led us to build sort of a sandbox approach every time we had a very expensive platform aimed at an audience that needed that level of flexibility and had a lot of opinions about how things should work relative to their context.
00:19:38
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
What we basically spent COVID doing was kind of rewinding and going back to our roots a little bit and saying, okay, we've taken all this time to work for these amazing companies, and the best thing we've come out with is a lot of wisdom. We've learned the pros and cons, and what we ultimately realized is that beta testing, which is what we spent a lot of time really talking about, was an idea.
00:20:00
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
It wasn't a system, it wasn't a process. It was something that everybody recognized, but everybody would interpret a little bit differently. And everybody was kind of reinventing the wheel over and over. And the nature of working with a bunch of very large companies, meaning they each wanted to some degree to have the opportunity to influence that wheel. And therefore it got pretty complex.
00:20:20
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And what I eventually described to my team is, is that, you know, one of our challenges, it's a benefit, you know, a blessing and a curse is that most of our customers use about a third of our product, but it's always a different third, and they're sort of required to figure that out. And again, at that large enterprise scale with those big brands that makes some sense, they have dedicated teams that are solving this problem and are very passionate about it.
00:20:44
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But the reality is the vast majority first of all, the vast majority of companies aren't that large. But more importantly, this is a decentralized responsibility. This is something that product managers are typically taking on because it relates so closely to their goals and what's keeping them up at night. So what we spent virtually all of COVID doing from home, like everyone else, was rebuilding crucial parts of the tool in a much more prescriptive manner.
00:21:10
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And we took everything we learned and said, okay, this is a path that is scalable for anyone all the way up to those largest enterprises, and there's going to be a hell of a lot less guesswork and building here. We're going to allow you to pop in the features that you want tested. And the system is then going to take much more advanced technology to take advantage of your list and prescribe it to the testers, engage them, understand them, build profiles on them, and effectively automate user testing.
00:21:39
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So when we talk about Delta, it is basically beta in a modern context. It's really focused on automation. How do we make this something that a product manager can do with very limited time? Which again leads us back to this kind of recession idea that now that you have pretty suddenly in many cases fewer resources to get, in some cases the same job done.
00:22:01
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And we sort of position it as it's a force multiplier. The idea is that you can have a single person now who can take advantage of the fact that you probably have hundreds of customers who are passionate about your product. They see it as solving a problem they have, be it boredom or, you know, a work problem or anything in between.
00:22:19
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
They want to help. They want to volunteer their time to be part of shaping the solution to their problem. And simply connecting those dots kind of doubles down the value in a recession because you don't have all the people and the internal time and resources that you may have had, you know, in the heyday. So that kind of force multiplier concept of “here's a system that you can leverage for a single individual in a part time capacity to collect sentiment and issues and praise and ideas from, you know, hundreds to thousands of people with the system doing most of the work” is a way to to combat those very limited resources at a time
00:22:58
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
when, again, you're kind of fighting an uphill battle at all times. So we're very passionate about providing something to companies that can just work and help them get through the recession and still produce the best product possible.
00:23:10
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Well, the great news is it's not it's not a vanity project. So you're not, you've not built something that makes your emails look prettier or something like that. The testing is core or its core. It's not something you can live without. You have to test. And so making that more efficient and making that, you know, the cost of that as low as it can be compared to building an enormous team and trying to build it all yourself.
00:23:37
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I think of it a little bit like in the video game industry, we used to always make our own game engines. And then there was this company, Epic was building this one called Unreal. And at the time it's like, you know, everyone built their own, you know, I guess they can build their own too. But their point was really valid, which is we have a whole team of people, an army of people working all day, every day on building this engine.
00:24:00
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Do you want to all replicate that? Is that necessary use of your funds? And so why not use their engine? And of course, the whole industry has pretty much pivoted that way. There's only a couple of engines that the vast majority of software is generated on now in the games business. And so I do think that that's an important piece of it, if you're building core tech that's required for companies and if anything, to make their software better or are their product better.
00:24:30
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so there's no that's the great news. That Centercode’s making something very, very important.
00:24:36
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Yeah, you said it a couple times, but that idea of doing more with less, especially during, you know, this uncertainty that we're in. Like, I'd love to hear your guys' definition or what you guys think do more with less actually means to you like I think that's something interesting.
00:24:55
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Yeah I'm a big fan of not getting bloated and having everything you know, in large. It's easy to sort of keep making things more and more complex. And yet the speed at which things can operate and the efficiency go up dramatically, if you can simplify that. And so doing more with less for me is more about having such a clear direction and such a clear idea of what you're doing that everyone is working towards that as efficiently as they possibly can.
00:25:26
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It's when there's that saying like, how do you climb a mountain one step at a time? But the people that get lost in the fog are the ones that die on the mountain. And so just being very clear on what it is you're trying to build and then using technologies and people that will get you to that goal really, really quickly is the ultimate way to develop and save an enormous amount of money.
00:25:52
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I agree with everything Dave just said, and I'll add two anecdotes of my own. So you mentioned earlier about kind of visits to Valve. I've had a couple of friends at Valve for a very long time, and I, you know, earlier in my career had been pushed to go there. And that would be kind of my second dream job, too.
00:26:11
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
This one still takes the lead. But that's interesting. And I'll tell you, the one, they knew what they were doing when they pitched me because they walked me into the room of the group of people that had just created a game called Portal, which was like a mind-blowingly amazing thing at the time and his literal, this was never like money was never discussed.
00:26:30
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
His literal pitch was, Wouldn't it be cool to be surrounded by people this smart? That was his whole pitch. And for me, that sort of translates to a term of talent density. I've always sought the position of Centercode as I would rather have fewer smarter people around me than people who just want to do a job. And so part of it is about, you know, finding people that are very passionate about what you're trying to do.
00:26:54
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And I think you'll do more with less in that regard. I think that's very important. And another matter that Chris will know well, having worked at Centercode is sort of the age-old use of all parts of the Buffalo idea that anything that we build, anything that we use, we want to absolutely maximize. And you know the way we market as a company is anything we build.
00:27:14
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
We want everybody inside the company to benefit from it first. And, you know, so that we're all aligned, all have the same knowledge. And then as it goes out, everything is on as many platforms, as many forms to get as many people as possible, because we don't want to waste energy. We don't want to ever just use something once.
00:27:30
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So for me, kind of along with what Dave said, I think it's about having, you know, being surrounded by smart people that really care about what you're doing. They're going to, you know, work smarter. And then it really is about just looking at everything in terms of maximizing it. So for me, that's kind of how we run the company day to day.
00:27:48
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And when we recruit people, we tell them that we're allergic to the concept of hurdle pointers. These are people who point at problems all the time, but just talk about them. You see that problem over there? That's why we're not moving forward and you see that problem over there that stopped us too. And it's like these people drive me nuts.
00:28:06
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so this is part of finding talent is finding the people that jump hurdles and kick them over. I actually like him to kick them out of the way. Those are great people. I call them the 10xers and the more of those you can get around you, the better. And it's just the whole thing that just works better when that happens.
00:28:26
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So years ago, Dave introduced the term 10xer to me at a board meeting and I'm going to go ahead and stroke your ego a little bit right now, Chris, because you don't know this, we haven't talked about this, but the moment that he said that and he specifically asked me to sort of point out and talk about him, Chris at that time was the one I talked about as good five years ago.
00:28:45
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
He was still relatively new to the company, but that he was exactly that, that guy. So I love, love, love being surrounded by 10xers. It's a phenomenal way to think.
00:28:56
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Yeah, without a doubt.
00:28:58
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
I mean, I see that in Luke too. That's what drew me to Centercode is something I've never seen. So I was passionate about solving the problem of tech. Like I worked at Western Digital. I picked up books, I learned about research, I got into testing. I was really interested in talking with real people that use the product.
00:29:15
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And I was so passionate about going and talking to product and engineering teams that we have to solve these problems, like we need to solve these for the customers. And I met with Luke and he had that on this very grand scale. If he wanted to do that for every company, he wanted to make every company produce better technology and just make everyone's lives better by using it.
00:29:36
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And Luke sends me a message almost every day we talk about different products that are coming out. We talk about things that we think could be better or be improved. Things that we really like. Like we constantly talk about video games, elements that we like. We were talking about Ghost of Tsushima, where they have the wind that blows in a direction.
00:29:56
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
You talked about the sparkly handle, Dave, and it's like the wind that blew in the direction of where you should be going. And I'm like, This is captivating. Like, this is beautiful and it's very purpose built. Like it solves both things and things like that. The passion that Luke had and us noticing these things, it's just such a thing that drew me.
00:30:17
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And I think by having the like mind and sharing a passion, you get to the 10xer, someone that has the passion that we just need to be enabled to to go out and get it. And those are the doors that have been opened to me is, go figure out how to help make technology better. And we have like minded people and we all work in that direction and it seems like you share that same likeness.
00:30:42
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Dave Yeah, I believe we can recruit people from anywhere, from any company, and the conversation usually goes something along the lines of, Are you washing the dishes? And what I mean by that is you're in some big company. It's got a great brand that's awesome, but you're washing the dishes. You just, you just, everything's the same day and you're in your capability doing whatever you're being told to do, but you're not inventing and you're not surrounded by people inventing.
00:31:08
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And that's actually what they yearn to do. And so it's very easy to pull people out of what sounded like a great role. But they're kind of parked and they're not really challenged creatively. Instead, they want to go somewhere where you're breaking new ground on a daily basis. Like everything we face, we can't copy anybody because no one's done this yet.
00:31:30
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And that's incredibly compelling to hiring talent.
00:31:34
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Yeah. One thing that stands out to me is just as we're talking to this, is sometimes I think we have customers that are almost in that same likeness, the 10xers of customer base. Like there's some customers that go above and beyond. One of the content pieces we're working on coming up as our brand evangelists and like how you take someone that is essentially, you know, interested, very loyal to your brand and what you get out of them, what's the power that they hold in convincing and referring your product to other people and their more willing to buy the products that that you produce?
00:32:07
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And we use a lot of those people as what we call, you know, beta testers, the people that come in and give us feedback. Do you guys see anything in terms of your customers and how they can help you do more with less than these in these times?
00:32:24
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Well, definitely in our case, yes. So the company that I'm currently building is helping brands that collaborate with each other. And so one of the most important things with brands, if you think about it, is, is attention. You'll never meet a brand that's like, Please, no more attention. They can never get enough. It's an insatiable thing. That's why they're always doing PR and marketing and social media, whatever is just more and more and more attention.
00:32:49
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So that was one thing we're thinking about. Is there any way we can help them with attention and the second thing that we thought about was, you know, can we help get them more sales? These are two very critical things. And so as far as our business goes, we're basically thinking what is the most simple way that could happen for all of us?
00:33:08
David Perry, CEO of Carro
How do we make that a win for everybody in the least complicated way? And so the idea we came up with was quite simple. Today if you make a product and you get it into a major retailer like Target or Costco or something like that, it's very exciting because you're getting their foot traffic for free. And so we sort of realized who's doing that for you online, like who's taking your product and trying to get it into lots of retail stores.
00:33:34
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And there isn't really anybody that does that for you. And so that's what we started to build our technology to do so we can actually take your product. Let's say you make helmets, we can get them put into a bike store. And then and the way it works is, it just wires the two companies together so you don't actually, it's virtual wholesale, so you don't actually have to send, you know, freight a whole bunch of helmets to their warehouse.
00:33:58
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And then they have to guess what colors and sizes are going to sell. This idea of just making business more efficient and simple because their inventory becomes the inventory of the bike companies. Another bike company is every helmet and every color and every size. And this is just how you can use digital technology to very, very much move things forward and remove cost and complexity, increase margins.
00:34:21
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And in this case, by putting your products, can you imagine how valuable that traffic is? Someone's in a bike store online thinking of buying a bicycle and there's your helmet. That's a pretty interesting, you know, visitor versus just putting a banner somewhere on the Internet where, you know, there's context somewhere. Yeah. And by the way, this traffic is free because you decided to partner together.
00:34:44
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So this idea of brands collaborating I think is a very interesting space that surprisingly most e-commerce companies today actually build their company alone. They're on the Internet alone. They go to Shopify or they go to Magento and they'll help you actually technically stand up a store, but then you're on your own. It's considered headless commerce because there's no, they don't give you any traffic, they just give you technology to build your store.
00:35:14
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so for me, this has been a fascinating space. I mean, who am I to be in e-commerce, right? I'm from the video game business, but you look at any space and you say, is there any way that we could make this, you know, simplify it or find ways to get people to sort of approach it from a different angle?
00:35:30
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And I really believe when you look at just about any direction in any industry, there's just so much opportunity. And that's why I think in the testing space, it's actually, you know, testing. Oh yeah, we've been doing that for years. Not at all. Not, not the way it can be done. And I think one of the things that you touched on earlier was this idea of the knowledge that you're learning as you work with so many companies to you that might seem like, Yeah, yeah, of course that's how it works.
00:35:57
David Perry, CEO of Carro
But if you're a new person who's just building your first product, like a Kickstarter just got funded really well, you don't have any of that knowledge. And so how do, how do they work with Centercode and actually get that knowledge from you was really, I guess, my question.
00:36:12
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Yeah. I mean, that core competency of Epic and Unreal is exactly that, right? It just hit the ground running. So yeah, for us that one of the first sort of loves of mine in the company was the recognition of content marketing. And it's a story I've told a billion times and it's something I am enthusiastic about to every founder I ever speak to is… you know, one of the most important things about attracting an audience for me has always been to get rid of the idea of secret sauce.
00:36:45
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Everything you've learned is of value in building authority for you. So we've spent an enormous amount of time learning. I think that, and as you guys have both touched on, is, you know, that in our logo list are the two biggest assets of the company we have and connect those two dots. And we have the opportunity to save a lot of companies just tens of thousands of hours and give them a system that they can use to get through these problems without having to learn every painful lesson that we did and you have in your past and so on.
00:37:14
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So yeah, very important to me and for us, our customers are obviously a really big part of everything we build. One of my biggest concerns right now is sort of what the world has sort of shifted there. We don't travel as much. We don't get in front of people as much. And just being engaged with customers is more challenging than it was three or four years ago.
00:37:35
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Employee engagement is another problem. Something we talk about a lot is now that we're all diverse and all over and don't have the opportunity to sit on a whiteboard and really sorry, sit on a whiteboard in a conference room and really get to know each other and how do we get closer. And that for us spawned this whole new generation of dogfooding as a priority and making sure that companies can get to know their employees or have their products get sorry backup and and companies can get their employees closer to the company through their products, through the things that they're building as a means to to not only produce a better product and
00:38:11
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
higher quality, but also take advantage of those employees being dispersed, yet needing to be connected to the product, the team, the company and so on.
00:38:21
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
One one thing I'd like to kind of pick up on is we're in this time of uncertainty, right? You both are executives I'd love to hear your thoughts on. Do you have different expectations in product development now that the economy is in a weird situation?
00:38:39
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I think for me, the economy being down is actually, if anything, a call to arms that we need to help the customers and brands that we work with. And so for me, it's less, it's really go time. We actually came up with the core idea for our company during COVID. So it was at the very beginning of COVID.
00:39:00
David Perry, CEO of Carro
We were like, we need to help brands. And this is going to get really, really Unser It's in here. And what can we do to help them through this time? Recessions, the same thing. So it's more of a call to arms to help them when they need it. And I think Center Cope faces the same challenges.
00:39:19
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Yeah, early in COVID, I changed my signature on my email to Wartime CEO, which I had a thousand comments and compliments on. And it was really about me sort of starting to see that thought to the whole team that, you know, we're going to have to think a little bit differently. We're going to have to get a little bit more aggressive.
00:39:38
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And that was COVID. And really what that was about was absolute uncertainty, right? If you go back two years, we had no idea where things were going and how long this was going to last. And we just didn't know what was around the curve. I look at the recession a little bit differently personally, and I think Dave, to some degree might as well, in that a recession is a shift that is reasonably predictable in terms of what the impact is going to be.
00:40:02
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
We've had them before. We have them every decade. And for my company and I would guess for Dave's as well, there's going to be a few hurdles and you have to think about the job market and not but, but it's actually more opportunity than not. And I think products like ours can shine in a recession. I think in our case, because we can act as a force multiplier to help fewer resources do more and we can be a solution to some of the near-term problems that they're facing and we can help them sleep at night.
00:40:29
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And I know a good deal about Dave's company. I'm a big fan of it, and I think he's got some of the same opportunities and benefits as, you know, as a CEO, you can't just shut down and go into a fetal position every time the recession hits. You have to say, okay, it's going to happen. It's macro, it's outside my control.
00:40:47
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
What can I do about it? How does our business react to it and how do we take advantage of it and how do we turn these lemons into lemonade? So for us, a big priority is how do we help more companies and as a result, succeed more in a recession and when the recession is over, we'll change our gear to figure out, okay, now how does this apply to the good times?
00:41:09
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Yeah, I love that temporal nature of like a temporal mission going on. You have your ultimate mission of, you know, you want to make products better. And then during this time, how do we help? How do we get that in front of people to help their business? Because companies are struggling. All over the US, there's layoffs, there's a few people, there's stress.
00:41:28
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
I see it. I talked to a few people that have survived the layoff wave and they're left to their own devices. There's very few people. There is less budget at the place that they're working at and they need to figure out how to still get a good product out the door because that good product means that that's revenue coming back to the company and that's that's going to help the company ultimately.
00:41:51
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
So like that, I love that mission, that submission of like let's help during this time. It's a little bit different when times are, you know, going well and all that's, you know, cool. But right now everyone needs help. Every company needs help, right? And it's banding together to get something like a… Dave in his company, like getting those two companies together to help each other is huge.
00:42:16
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Right? That just seems like a good message to me.
00:42:19
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I think the challenge we face and Dave and I shared a quick email about it the other day. I actually really appreciated his thoughts on it. One of the bigger challenges is just kind of moving the ship. So I think we have a great opportunity to help a lot of companies get through this. The challenge is getting those companies aware of that and making sure that they're thinking this way because, yeah, they're all thinking about testing because as Dave said, it's something critical everybody has to test.
00:42:49
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But that doesn't necessarily mean they're thinking about, okay, well, how can testing get me through this? How can it help me alleviate other shortfalls that have suddenly been forced upon me? And if we can get that word out, then I think everybody can benefit a lot. And that's really what we're trying to do.
00:43:06
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So basically in the game industry, we learned about this idea of the funnel, meaning that these are all of these steps where you're losing people. And it is quite shocking. I mean, it's one of the things that a lot of companies don't really take the time to analyze every single point at which their customers will maybe use their product less or or at least start using the product.
00:43:30
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And all of those different stages can be adjusted. And I think that that's one of the pieces of the puzzle that probably can have. The biggest difference is actually taking the time to understand that. And when you're doing your testing, really take the time to understand where the losses are, where you know, if you think of a bucket, where the holes in the bucket and people are pouring out.
00:43:52
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And the reason is, it can profoundly increase the overall happiness to the far end of the funnel and how many people are making it to the end of it. And so every hole that you block, it might seem trivial. It's just like I've seen situations I kid you not where people will have a 50% drop off because they ask for an email address at the wrong time.
00:44:16
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And it's like, what? You know, that sounds crazy, but in reality there are always ways and we in the game in the few, what we learned was if we get a point, like if you if you're playing a video game and everyone's leaving the game or not not completing level five, then we would actually think to ourselves, what can we do to get you to go to level six?
00:44:36
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So in level five, we'd say, Here's what a horse or a sword or something you can only use in level six. And so they're in level five with this really cool item. They're about to be able to use that level six and we get them across that bridge. And so looking for those holes in the bucket and trying to block them can have an absolutely profound impact on the amount of revenue generated.
00:44:57
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I think in the engagement that you can get along with the audience. So you don't want to lose anybody in that funnel. And testing is obviously a very, very key piece of that. You’re not just plugging the hole and you have to see what difference that made. And obviously in certain cases, just removing the hole, not plugging it, not having that hole.
00:45:18
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Do we have to ask for the email address right now? Is that actually really helping anything right now because we're guilty of this in our own product, I see it as asking for things before we need them. And so effectively we've decided to add a hole to the bucket. I don't know why, so we have to get that out of there.
00:45:35
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so there's ways in a recession to really start analyzing that. Where are the holes in the bucket? Do we have to even have the holes? Can we plug them? Can we test that? And the amount of impact you can have as far as sales lift could easily override the negativity of the recession.
00:45:53
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
That's a brilliant take. I worked for a company previous to Centercode where we released a very, very technical product to a reasonably mainstream audience. And we have this thing that I will never forget, which was our return rate on that product. It was something that sold at Best Buy and whatnot, and it was a physical product with a software component to it.
00:46:17
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
A lot of moving parts and the return rate was over 50%, which is a definite issue in that. But what was crazy, that wasn't the crazy part. The crazy part was that something like 75% of the returns, the plastic in the box containing all of the stuff wasn't opened. So what they eventually realized way too late was people bought the product, opened it and said, Oh my God, that's a lot.
00:46:45
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Closed the product, took it back.
00:46:48
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Oh man.
00:46:50
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
They didn't even open it. And this was just a gap in their testing. They needed experience testing on the product itself, but the out of the box section just never got the love it needed from the right audience. And you know, there's an image I've been floating around internally within Centercode that we're planning to use shortly. And what it's really sort of saying is that many companies right now think of their primary ways of testing as kind of testing and focused on quality issues.
00:47:17
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Does it work? And then the other side of, you know, real time video stuff and whatnot, does it do what the customer wants in a very temporal way and they sort of think of those two as kind of the half of the test, each halves of the testing and what we've sort of realized and explored is there's something in the middle and that middle is kind of breaks down into a couple of things.
00:47:42
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
One, it's the real world function of that product from a quality perspective of once it gets into a dirty environment with a crazy Wi-Fi network with 30 things on it that you couldn't predict in a lab, is it working? And so that's sort of patching a hole on the quality side. And then on the other side, and I think this is where you're talking about the leaky bucket analogy, which I love, is the feature adoption over time is is each of these things that go beyond that initial UX interview in the short term, real quick turnarounds is once this product is absorbed or sort of soaked into its real environment, are there things that are
00:48:16
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
going to be a huge turnoff that even if it seemed like a good idea upfront, you don't really use it much anymore? And I think there's products in VR that have this challenge in a very severe way. There's a lot of things that the product is initially exciting and the initial sales are great, but the falloff is extreme.
00:48:32
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
The next generation doesn't succeed. There's all sorts of problems that follow. And what we've seen is that successful user testing, you know, long form user testing, what we would call Delta, can increase pretty much any product by about a star rating if you're looking at that five. And my sort of view that I'm trying to get out there is you've got the UX on one side and the QA on one side and you think your testing was covered.
00:48:57
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But there's this hole in the middle where that star is hiding and that hole is your real user. Over time and kind of adopting this product, finding those leaky holes and whatnot, fixing them before it's too late. And then you have that truly successful product which again in recession, when you have half the products. And you know, by the way, we do work with a lot of companies.
00:49:17
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
We get to hear about a lot of roadmaps. And that's not an uncommon thing to hear this year is my roadmap just got cut in half. I need to do a lot more with half the products and that is such a meaningful thing for the success of those companies and those product owners. So to me, that's kind of the missing gap that we're trying to fill, if you've got your testing out there already that it covers that real time experience and that quality.
00:49:41
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But there's something more about how people interact with a product when it's on their own terms over a period of time that can really expose a lot more. And that's where our passion lies.
00:49:50
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So I hope in future podcasts that you're going to really cover more of those kinds of examples because frankly, if you're if you're responsible for testing to have all of those sort of real world, Oh man, I never even thought about that. The last thing you want is to open the box and close it, right? That's a nightmare. That's an absolute disaster.
00:50:12
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I get it right. You can imagine all the testing that went into the product and making sure the interface and the UI and everything's perfect, but they never get there because they look at it and just go, Oh, that's a nightmare. And I get it. I bought an eBike recently and what was funny was I went on YouTube to see how to build it.
00:50:32
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And it's hours and hours and hours and lots of wiring, lots of complexity. I mean, spiders nests of cabling and I looked at it and just went, Oh, like this is a disaster.
00:50:46
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I've got about three or four of those products in my home office right now. Still in their boxes.
00:50:52
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Yeah. So yeah, and I have one actually. I just got a whole new VR gaming thing downstairs that I just know when I start, it's going to take me hours to get it all, to get it all working. It's called Tilt Five. Have you heard of that yet? No. Which is like this tabletop game system. So you put this, this shiny silvery surface on your table and it reflects you're wearing
00:51:19
David Perry, CEO of Carro
This sounds crazy, but you're wearing glasses that are actually projecting an image that bounces straight back into your eyes on this very special surface. So you're looking at your game in three dimensions on top of your table. And I'm super excited about this. I know it's going to be awesome. I've actually tried a demonstration of it once.
00:51:37
David Perry, CEO of Carro
It's going to be awesome to have it, but I just know opening that box and getting it compatible with my computer and everything. So just kind of I mean, imagine my 82 year old mother trying to get that working. It's just impossible. Yeah. So this is this really important stuff. And I think that if you and future podcasts cover it and sort of explain very clear examples that are almost head slapping, you know, dangerous moves, then hopefully you'll help some people avoid some real pain and suffering in the future.
00:52:09
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Again, I think that that sort of leadership position, that circle is creating.
00:52:13
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I agree. My version, it's kind of a happy ending, I guess, of your story is when my mother, who first got obsessed with Alexa as a solution for her house, she just loved the idea, which blew my mind, not a technical person. And I remember going to her house and having to set that up. And at the time it was a nightmare.
00:52:31
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
It was really challenging to get it on the network. WI fi was a mess. She wanted them in a couple of rooms and getting them to sink was a nightmare and it was just such a pain. And this week, just coincidentally, the new Echos came out and they have Eero support, which means they'll act not only as an Echo, but as a way to extend the mesh network in your house.
00:52:51
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So I purchased and replaced a few of those too, to kind of put across my house, and I was stunned at how easy it was. Now we're fifth generation. They're literally Echo Dot Five versus our Echo Dot Ones. I was stunned at how easy it just blew my mind how well it works, how fast it works, how easy it was.
00:53:12
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
But the reality is most companies don't have Amazon's money and opportunity to get five generations in before they truly get it right. Those companies are going to disappear or lose interest long before that. So that's where, you know, I wish that the one five years ago wasn't quite the nightmare, but it is nice to see it persevere.
00:53:33
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And it's wonderful to see when technology truly does work, when it is useful and, you know, it's the thing and this is maybe a note to sort of close some of this on that. I look forward to the time when it's not a surprise. It works. Well. I find that there is so much technology. I'm delighted at the fact that it worked because I expected it not to, as opposed to I'm just delighted at the value it brings to my life, which is what it really should be.
00:54:05
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Yeah, I agree completely and it is a pleasure when something works. I went on a bike ride with a friend on the weekend and we both had the same helmets and it turns out our helmets allow us to just talk to each other and they're hands free. So it's just as we're writing in to say, Hey, look over there, what about this?
00:54:22
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And it's great to have a conversation while you're writing, but you know, that could be really painful. And so they had this simple thing where you just we both had their app installed and we're like, we're going to have to type in serial numbers or something. And it just basically said, Point your camera at his app. And we did and they had a QR code on there and the two helmets just synched and it was just like, Oh, thank you, we can go for the ride now.
00:54:48
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I was prepared for like 30 minutes. This is going to be a whole pain, but it's worth it because once it works, it's great. Yeah, but when it's when you go, Oh, actually we're probably, I don't know, 45 seconds in and we've solved the problem. It's amazing. And so I applaud the companies that really put your time first.
00:55:07
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Yeah, my variant of this was last night. I installed a new Apple TV. The new Apple TV out, which for the record, big Apple fan. But I can't tell the difference between the new Apple TV and the last one. But the first thing I had to do before my wife could use it was really log into every single app on that device.
00:55:33
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And Apple is known for producing brilliant user experiences that are typically flawless, but they're also an ecosystem and they ultimately don't put a lot of control as much as you might think on those individual apps. And what blew my mind is I know, we've moved from past cable and we must subscribe to, you know, half a dozen of the common streaming services, Hulu, Netflix and whatnot.
00:55:57
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Literally every single one of them on Apple TV had an entirely different process for how to log in. Some are QR code. The YouTube one loads up your YouTube app on your phone. There isn't just a username and password. Suddenly Hulu and Disney Plus need me to share a password. So that didn't involve me creating. I mean it was a 45 minute process to get it to a workable state.
00:56:23
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And honestly, the only reason I did it was so that I wouldn't have to deal with my wife coming after me for not having it done. But even that's just an example of like, Apple put out a gorgeous but the ecosystem extends it. And my user experience isn't so much that I'm judging those individual apps, I'm judging the product I just added to the network, which happens to be this new Apple TV.
00:56:48
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So came away a little soured as a result. And it's simply because, you know, I felt endless confusion as I was going through like, why is this so different? Why is this so complicated as I'm pulling out my laptop to match, you know, one password to every one of these individual apps and pray that it's all not outdated and yada yada.
00:57:06
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So we have a lot of room to hit the ceiling of technology being wonderful.
00:57:13
David Perry, CEO of Carro
You ever considered forming consortiums for different It could be protocols or could be, you know, basically making it so that companies can collaborate better and make me put the customer first all the time so that the customers sort of transition from one device to another. There the standards become really clean and clear. Like you see, for example, this idea of attaching a device to a television that's quite commonly go to Amazon.com, slash code and type in this code.
00:57:48
David Perry, CEO of Carro
But everyone does it just a little differently.
00:57:50
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Actually more differently than I thought. Yeah,I feel like they all change it every month. And I do this once every other year. And last night's version was crazy how different they all are. They're all just experimenting. Yeah.
00:58:02
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so everyone's doing everything their own way and that still. And so to some extent I think potentially Centercode could get some because you're dealing with these companies, get them around a table and start to and invite in the ones that, you know, normally don't want any help and try to get them around the table and say, look, this is entirely customer focused concept.
00:58:25
David Perry, CEO of Carro
We have to put them first. And then if everyone agrees like this is a good way to handle that. And we start seeing more standardization because of Centercode, that would be a good start. Be wonderful. I would love that.
00:58:37
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
I agree completely. And I'll add it to Chris's ever growing list. You know, this.
00:58:42
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Can you solve that and make that happen? Chris?
00:58:45
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Yeah, I'd love to solve that. I think that my least favorite thing is setting up a new TV or having a log in. Might we set up a TV in my daughter's room and I'm just like, Oh, I do not want to have to go. Remember all the passwords for each of these things and go login and some are of that code, some are absolutely not related and like we'll have a reset password and I end up resetting my password more often than not, which disconnects all the other devices.
00:59:11
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
And then I have to redo that.
00:59:12
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
You're also not referencing that they've layered on completely unique approaches to parental controls on every single one of these as well as different codes. And yes, there is an uncomfortable amount of anxiety associated with am I truly locked down and I'm sure you know, I know Dave has a daughter. I'm sure he has the same problem to some degree.
00:59:35
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
We are some of the most techie folks out there, and I still have that anxiety of what's really going on. And, you know, it's pretty mind blowing. So I'm with you on that.
00:59:46
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Chris is going to solve it. So we're fine now. We're good. Yeah.
00:59:49
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
That’s why I got you together today. Yeah, I think that is you know, I always credit Dave for never bringing a small idea to the table. And even if, you know, some of them are so pie in the sky that they're way outside our reach, they always force us to think a little bit differently and a little bit bigger. And, you know, for example, community and finding better ways for our customers to interact has been a priority for a while.
01:00:19
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
To be honest, I haven't really fulfilled it. It's just priority wise, it's been rough, but you know that taking that a step further, it's so much more valuable, but more importantly, like it directly aligns with my passion. It directly aligns with the mission of the company and what I've been working to get my whole team to be passionate about.
01:00:38
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And again, most of them came in with that and that is just a next step to solving that problem and sort of identifying that, hey, we already work with these guys. We are there connection between them and their customers. We orchestrate that, we facilitate that. There's a lot more we could do and we could take that step.
01:00:56
David Perry, CEO of Carro
I'll give you an example is, you know, when we're making video games, there was this exhibition that was set up at E3, which is like a major convention for video games, and they created this, you red sort of a red velvet rope, glasses of champagne, looking at the art from the artists and the game industry. And it sort of made me realize how our artists, no one really ever takes the time to do that.
01:01:23
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And the fact that they're there, they were so proud of standing there with their you know, nicely framed piece of their art and all these people coming through and checking it out. And people were actually buying the things for charity as well. But this idea of there's people in your group, in your team that have these skills that are maybe underappreciated when you think about that across all of your customers, is there anyone across all of your customers that's really passionate about shipping?
01:01:53
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Right. The answer is yes. There's going to be someone in your community that is super passionate about shipping and maybe you can help them, help the other people in your community. Like what's the best way to create packaging and get your shipping costs down. And you know that all the learnings from the people who've shipped maybe tens of millions of boxes, I'd be fascinated to hear their input as well.
01:02:20
David Perry, CEO of Carro
So to some extent, helping your community helps the rest of your community by finding the people that have knowledge that's so valuable. But no one's asking, right? You know who's asking? I once went to a woodworking conference. You know, I did all these crazy hobbies and I'm out of this thing, and this guy's talking about the best varnish he's ever used in 30 years of woodworking.
01:02:44
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And it's just it's it's. I said to him afterwards, you probably just think, well, it's just the varnish I use. What's the big deal? That's after 30 years of trying everything you just me, the one that's the best. And guess what? It's great! I've used it. And so those nuggets are out there. Somehow you just have to help your community help itself.
01:03:06
David Perry, CEO of Carro
And so I think that's a good long term goal for you if you can do that. No one's asking them those questions, but others would love to know the answers. If you could get it to them.
01:03:17
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
So that's a great take. I specifically told Chris today that I'm very excited about this sort of format of bringing in outside guests and having a series of questions. And I think what you just said he can really take to heart and can kind of shape the future of this because we do have those people. We have people who are very passionate about their dogfighting program at their company and how it's brought the team closer together.
01:03:41
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
We have people who are very passionate about how their testing program really showed their customers that they care about what they have to say and that they're here for them and they have stories to tell about that. So the hope in the future of this podcast is really driven around that. We want to bring in some great industry people who can help everyone else who is trying to solve these problems.
01:04:00
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
And yeah, that varnish, that varnish, you know, tactic saved you 30 years. Yeah, that's a big deal And now a.
01:04:08
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
Lots of pain.
01:04:09
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
On to other things and having more fun. So yeah I love that.
01:04:15
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing at Centercode
I love to keep talking but I think we should close down the session. Very inspiring and motivating conversations and answers to questions when I end it with Thank you for joining us. All right. Because I have a government.
01:04:32
David Perry, CEO of Carro
Thanks for inviting me so much.
01:04:33
Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode
Thank you, Dave, for coming.
01:04:35
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
Thank you for listening to the Delta Huddle Podcast. If you enjoyed today's podcast, feel free to subscribe via Spotify. If you want to know more about Delta Testing and maximizing the impact of your user tests, head over to centercode.com. You'll find a host of resources like eBooks and webinars to help you get started. This has been the Delta Huddle podcast by Centercode.
01:04:56
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer at Centercode
We'll see you again in the next episode. Happy testing.
