Jeremy Lundy

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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: It's Toronto's podcast on the Canada's podcast network.
[00:16] SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, I'm Phil Bliss, the Business Visionary, and welcome to Toronto's Podcasts.
[00:21] SPEAKER_00: Part of the Canada's podcast network is your source of the great insights from entrepreneurs
[00:26] SPEAKER_00: across Canada.
[00:27] SPEAKER_00: So you can listen, discover, and engage.
[00:31] SPEAKER_00: Today, we are with Jeremy Lundy, whose company tech-correct offers test automation and
[00:37] SPEAKER_00: development acceleration consulting for software development projects.
[00:42] SPEAKER_00: Jeremy, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:45] SPEAKER_00: The first question I always like to ask people is, how did you get started?
[00:50] SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about how you became an entrepreneur.
[00:54] SPEAKER_00: You know, your journey to get from where you were to where you are now.
[00:59] SPEAKER_00: It's always interesting.
[01:00] SPEAKER_00: Everyone gets their different ways.
[01:03] SPEAKER_02: So basically what I was working for a large telecom company, and I had gone out, I was managing
[01:13] SPEAKER_02: a development, and I'd gone out to ask the market for someone to come in and help with
[01:20] SPEAKER_02: basically test automation and sort of what are now called DevOps practices.
[01:26] SPEAKER_02: To come in and set up my test automation framework, train my staff to be able to maintain and
[01:33] SPEAKER_02: extend that framework, and then leave because I did not want to have a long-lived consultants
[01:40] SPEAKER_02: in my organization.
[01:42] SPEAKER_02: And I was told that that didn't exist, and even if it did exist, I couldn't afford it.
[01:48] SPEAKER_02: So I noted that down at the time, and I said, well, someone should definitely do that.
[01:53] SPEAKER_02: When it basically came time to leave that company, my business partner was also in between jobs,
[02:01] SPEAKER_02: and we sort of sat down, and we talked about a couple of ideas that we had, and we were both
[02:07] SPEAKER_02: in positions financially where the start of our own company wouldn't be the most insane thing in
[02:14] SPEAKER_02: the world. That's a problem. Yeah. That's proven to maybe not be true.
[02:21] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we were both in a position where it was sort of a, if we were going to try it at any point
[02:27] SPEAKER_02: now, seemed to be the correct point. So we decided to start the company and offer the services
[02:33] SPEAKER_02: that I was looking for in my prior position.
[02:36] SPEAKER_00: So you explained a little bit about what your company does, but what does it do exactly,
[02:41] SPEAKER_00: in terms of who do you sell to, or should I say who'd buys from you?
[02:48] SPEAKER_02: So the main people that we like to talk to are companies that either build software for sale,
[02:55] SPEAKER_02: or software for internal use, software for operations, and are really at a point where
[03:02] SPEAKER_02: they're starting to scale their development team. So a lot of times, if you're a startup company,
[03:10] SPEAKER_02: or you're a very small team, you're able to run at speed, and you're able to, because everyone is
[03:17] SPEAKER_02: so involved, you can sort of get by without having a lot of bulky frameworks around because you can
[03:23] SPEAKER_02: just sort of talk to people, and if you have a team of three people, there's no reason to
[03:28] SPEAKER_02: communicate by a, say, a ticketing system, or a backlog management system, or something like that,
[03:34] SPEAKER_02: you can just keep person to person. When you start to scale a team like that, though,
[03:39] SPEAKER_02: when you start to onboard new developers, if you don't have the appropriate framework in place,
[03:47] SPEAKER_02: you can basically say, okay, well, here are three new developers, you're at three existing
[03:51] SPEAKER_02: developers, now need to train these three developers. So if we take one person and have them do the
[03:57] SPEAKER_02: training, you're sacrificing 30% of your development capacity to just bring the new people online.
[04:03] SPEAKER_02: So what we do is, is we help companies, help team, help software development teams focus on building
[04:12] SPEAKER_02: infrastructure's code, test automation, development, and test environment, and production
[04:17] SPEAKER_02: environment parity, so that people don't have to go and say, well, here is how you set up your
[04:22] SPEAKER_02: development environment, and here's how you commit code and get it into production. We help
[04:29] SPEAKER_02: companies set it up so that all of that is written down and automated, so that they don't have to
[04:35] SPEAKER_02: spend as much time training people on the vagaries of how the development process works.
[04:41] SPEAKER_00: You're from Toronto, we were talking earlier, and you've been to other places, but you're back in
[04:48] SPEAKER_00: what are the benefits of doing business in Toronto, and the other side of it is what are the
[04:54] SPEAKER_02: challenges of doing business in Toronto? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think I'm
[05:02] SPEAKER_02: love Toronto, I can't imagine being anywhere else at this particular time. I think that
[05:08] SPEAKER_02: one of the great things about Toronto right now is the tech community is fairly active, there's a lot
[05:13] SPEAKER_02: of sort of meetups and conferences going on all the time, really good opportunities to network.
[05:19] SPEAKER_02: I think that, and this is sort of just something that I picked up from going to those types of
[05:25] SPEAKER_02: events. Yeah, I think there's a certain lack of free-moving capital, shall we say, on the startup
[05:32] SPEAKER_02: side. So I think I talked to a lot of people that are in the startup space, and they have a really
[05:40] SPEAKER_02: hard time finding venture capitalists, angel investors, who are willing to sort of take the plunge
[05:47] SPEAKER_02: with them, because it's just such a smaller market compared to Silicon Valley. So a lot of companies
[05:54] SPEAKER_02: that are able to capture a bit of imagination, they end up going down to Silicon Valley,
[05:59] SPEAKER_02: finding capital down there, and then coming back and building their product in Canada.
[06:04] SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to fix that, because I do not have billions of dollars to invest in startups.
[06:10] SPEAKER_02: Which is, yeah, so I'm part of the job. It's kind of interesting thing, you know, I'm a little older
[06:16] SPEAKER_00: than you, but it's been going on for 30 years. The sad thing for my perspective is it hasn't really
[06:21] SPEAKER_00: changed. If you really want capital, sometimes it's best to leave town and go to San Francisco or
[06:28] SPEAKER_00: Boston or London, even not London Ontario, London England, and find it there. No disrespect to
[06:35] SPEAKER_00: London Ontario, just maybe. So, you know, the sort of benefits, I mean, but Toronto's an,
[06:42] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm from Toronto. What's Toronto's an awesome place? Why would you recommend it to other
[06:47] SPEAKER_02: entrepreneurs who are looking to start a business? Yeah, so I mean, I think that from a talent
[06:53] SPEAKER_02: perspective, there is a lot of talent constantly coming into the city, even from someone looking for
[07:00] SPEAKER_02: a job perspective. There's a lot of businesses moving into Toronto and snapping up talent.
[07:05] SPEAKER_02: I think that one thing that I frequently run into is you go to a networking event,
[07:12] SPEAKER_02: someone's like, I just landed in Toronto from, you know, place X last week. Do you know of anyone
[07:18] SPEAKER_02: hiring? And I'm like, well, send me a resume. I'll do a quick review of it. I'll send it around
[07:22] SPEAKER_02: to five people. The weird thing is that the majority of the time, by the time the person,
[07:29] SPEAKER_02: by the time I follow up and say, hey, have you sent me that resume yet? They're like, oh, no,
[07:33] SPEAKER_02: I already found a job. Don't work. It's like the market. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So really talent,
[07:40] SPEAKER_00: if you can get it. Okay. So there is a lot of it though. The interesting thing is our best
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: ideas often come when we least expect them. So how do you disconnect, you know, recharge,
[07:53] SPEAKER_00: get inspired, you know, in an around Toronto? What's your process? From a disconnect and relax,
[08:00] SPEAKER_02: type of thing. I really enjoy the amount of sports that are going on in the city. Obviously,
[08:09] SPEAKER_02: the Raptors just won the championship, which was fantastic. And I followed that pretty closely.
[08:14] SPEAKER_02: Previously, I am a fairly large Jays fan, but I think this might be a season or two that will
[08:21] SPEAKER_02: be lost history. And I really enjoy going to the Toronto Wolfpack game, rugby league that started
[08:28] SPEAKER_02: up in the LAN port stadium down in the British village. I'm a rugby union, guys. So I enjoy the
[08:38] SPEAKER_02: working man's game. Actually, I played rugby union in high school. Yeah. And I enjoy both, but the
[08:46] SPEAKER_02: fact that there's this protein that is across the Atlantic and and bashes the hell out of all
[08:52] SPEAKER_00: comers is it's so much fun to watch. What are you most excited about in your business these days?
[09:01] SPEAKER_02: The biggest thing that we're focusing on right now is our marketing and sales process. And
[09:06] SPEAKER_02: we're working with another small company to sort of build that out. It is interesting to see
[09:14] SPEAKER_02: how certain actions like a LinkedIn post or a blog post were about to find out what a video
[09:22] SPEAKER_02: does as far as driving traffic. But the website and measuring how actions result in contact
[09:29] SPEAKER_02: coming inbound. I think that as a very technical person, the hubris perhaps that I had when I
[09:38] SPEAKER_02: started the company and said, well, anyone can do sales and marketing. That's easy. The hard part is
[09:44] SPEAKER_02: the technical bit. I was so completely wrong about that. That I think that's the most that's the
[09:53] SPEAKER_02: most interesting thing that I'm learning about most rapidly. Yeah. We're having grown up in
[09:59] SPEAKER_00: technology marketing. It's an interesting thing. You know, demand is always is always interesting.
[10:05] SPEAKER_00: The mind generation. What's the greatest challenge so far that you've faced in your business?
[10:13] SPEAKER_00: And maybe in your industry, which is sort of the software side of things.
[10:18] SPEAKER_02: Sure. So I think that one of the biggest challenges in software right now is
[10:25] SPEAKER_02: change a verse-ness. I'm not the word. I think that a lot, especially with larger organizations,
[10:34] SPEAKER_02: the ability to experiment and fail is really discouraged and has a really poor perception.
[10:44] SPEAKER_02: Talk to people all the time about the situation that they're in.
[10:50] SPEAKER_02: And maybe that situation is they're not getting changes done as fast as I think.
[10:55] SPEAKER_02: They're also not willing to change the way in which they do things.
[10:59] SPEAKER_02: I'm worried that if they change to something that perhaps reduces the speed that they already have,
[11:06] SPEAKER_02: they're not willing to go through that hockey stick transformation where you do a bit of investment
[11:11] SPEAKER_02: to get a larger return on the other end. So yeah, I think that like discussing that and really
[11:18] SPEAKER_02: bringing measurements into how fast the process is going. And then when you change that process,
[11:23] SPEAKER_02: how fast are you going after that, especially when you're maybe making changes that before and after
[11:30] SPEAKER_02: hard to compare, like sort of you're switching from apples to oranges. Well, okay, you have more oranges.
[11:37] SPEAKER_02: But what does that even mean?
[11:42] SPEAKER_00: Based on where you are now, what you know now, what you wish you'd known when you started your
[11:47] SPEAKER_02: business in Toronto. Marketing is just as if not more important than actually having a working
[11:59] SPEAKER_02: service. We spent a lot of time focusing on, okay, what is our engagement process going to be?
[12:08] SPEAKER_02: So we worked that out and we came up with, and we've done it a few times and we've seen
[12:13] SPEAKER_02: this success of it. But without being able to communicate that and actually get that in front
[12:23] SPEAKER_02: of the right people, it's sort of useless. The way that we've gotten our contracts to this point
[12:32] SPEAKER_02: has been largely person-to-person communication, networking events, and that's great. But when you
[12:40] SPEAKER_02: try and get outside of that, communicating in written and online and social media forms is
[12:48] SPEAKER_02: so much more difficult than I could have possibly understood. I can go back and tell myself before
[12:54] SPEAKER_02: I'd be like, figure that out before you start. Product development and marketing are the only two
[13:01] SPEAKER_00: investments in a business, you know? That's my belief. What's the best piece of advice that
[13:08] SPEAKER_02: you've ever received? I think actually like the best piece of advice I've received was probably
[13:16] SPEAKER_02: from my uncle. Because when we were starting, we basically, you know, we started going to all these
[13:22] SPEAKER_02: startup events and everyone was talking about investment and capital and equity and, you know,
[13:29] SPEAKER_02: debt-based financing and that type of thing. So we were writing up our business plan and I
[13:36] SPEAKER_02: sent it over to my uncle for review, both my uncles for review and they both pretty much said like,
[13:42] SPEAKER_02: well, okay, if you think you can make money, don't take money, just go and make the money and then
[13:48] SPEAKER_02: you'll be fine. Don't focus on raising money and giving away pieces of your business if you can
[13:55] SPEAKER_02: just instead go and perform the business, basically. So I think that saved us a lot of time
[14:04] SPEAKER_02: because we didn't sort of go the traditional startup route and go to market and try and get capital
[14:10] SPEAKER_00: and all that stuff. Good, good. That's good for people to hear. We're now going to do some,
[14:16] SPEAKER_00: what I would tell him, rapid-fire questions. So I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions. Just
[14:21] SPEAKER_00: answer them as quickly as possible. I don't think too much and let's sort of see where we end up.
[14:27] SPEAKER_00: So first one is if you weren't doing what you do for work now, what would you be doing instead?
[14:35] SPEAKER_02: Ideally, something in sports. I mean, the joke that I went up the joke in dead serious. The thing
[14:42] SPEAKER_02: that I tell my wife is that when I retire, I will be splitting my time between being an usher
[14:49] SPEAKER_02: and a baseball stadium and being a martial on a golf course. Cool. So I've got the retirement plan
[14:55] SPEAKER_02: figured out. Yeah, okay. All right. Which is in my retirement plan is just two jobs.
[15:01] SPEAKER_00: What books are you currently reading and what book would or books would you recommend to our
[15:06] SPEAKER_02: audience? I am not the biggest reader. So I think I've been reading, it's a novel it's called
[15:19] SPEAKER_02: and now I become invincible, which is sort of a superhero type novel,
[15:24] SPEAKER_02: one perspective of the villain. So it's interesting to read. Yeah, I find this, you know,
[15:30] SPEAKER_00: I think average readers or passive readers, like they feel like and some people love to read about
[15:36] SPEAKER_00: what they do and other people love to read about the opposite. You know, it's kind of interesting
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: how you do that. If you had to pick one word to describe yourself, what would it be and why would
[15:48] SPEAKER_02: it be that one? I would pick the word. I know he said answers quickly as possible. I think the word
[15:56] SPEAKER_02: big, how about that? I find myself big in pretty much every regard. So I find that people tell me
[16:05] SPEAKER_02: I have a big personality. I'm pretty big into I go big into the pursuits that I pursue and
[16:15] SPEAKER_00: I'd say that. Okay, that's good. Hopefully things like Big Thinker as well. So that's good.
[16:21] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's good. It's a good thing. What's keeping you off at night? I mean, occasionally when I turn
[16:28] SPEAKER_02: on Twitter and I see what's what's going on in the world, that sometimes that sometimes concerns me,
[16:34] SPEAKER_02: but I'll steer clear of anything more specific than that. People can read into that whatever they
[16:42] SPEAKER_02: may and they can view it from themselves. Yeah, I mean, that obviously is a bit of a concern.
[16:49] SPEAKER_02: The long term future of the business is something that I think about quite frequently.
[16:56] SPEAKER_02: Stuff that's going on with friends and family that pretty much I think the things that keep up most
[17:02] SPEAKER_00: people at night is probably keeps you up. What's your favorite place in the world and why is it your
[17:08] SPEAKER_00: favorite place? Yeah, Dunedin, Florida. That's because of baseball. Yeah.
[17:19] SPEAKER_02: It is my favorite place to go and I started going that like after I got my first job.
[17:26] SPEAKER_02: The first actual working man's vacation that I took was down to spring training baseball and I was
[17:34] SPEAKER_02: the happiest person that has ever existed and every time I've been down since.
[17:39] SPEAKER_00: So if you could choose your most favorite place to go and you could get there free,
[17:45] SPEAKER_00: would it be Dunedin or would it be somewhere else? Okay. All right. Okay.
[17:55] SPEAKER_00: So what I find with entrepreneurs is they tend to have routines. So what are your three non-negotiables
[18:02] SPEAKER_00: that have to happen and I don't know whether yours is a morning routine or an evening routine?
[18:09] SPEAKER_02: The things that have to happen in a day. I'd say the mid-afternoon coffee is a big one for me
[18:17] SPEAKER_02: and also for my business partner where we have a local coffee shop we like to go to and
[18:25] SPEAKER_02: we sort of know everybody there and it's just to go in and sort of take that 15 minutes disconnect
[18:29] SPEAKER_02: and then refresh basically. I think that's okay. All right. So this is what we ask everybody. I
[18:36] SPEAKER_00: don't know that you've been listening to the podcast. Yeah. There's the beautiful tropical island
[18:41] SPEAKER_00: in the middle of the ocean. It's got one phone booth and it's got no internet. We drop you off
[18:48] SPEAKER_00: there. There's no technology at all so you don't even have a computer. You can use the phone
[18:54] SPEAKER_00: anytime in the island to call a boat to come pick you up. How long would you last before making
[19:00] SPEAKER_00: the phone call and what would you do? Did they play baseball on the island? That's good.
[19:13] SPEAKER_02: I mean I think I would probably take, you know, if it's a sunny tropical island,
[19:20] SPEAKER_02: I could probably make that work for probably a couple months but then eventually I'd probably get
[19:25] SPEAKER_02: pretty bored and then yeah then I would view it as a vacation and then come back for a
[19:32] SPEAKER_00: fraction. Okay. That's interesting. That's coming to the end of the session but I really want to
[19:38] SPEAKER_00: mean this is sort of about entrepreneurs communicating with others. Sure. How can our listeners
[19:44] SPEAKER_00: get a hold of you and do you want to add anything before you leave us today?
[19:49] SPEAKER_02: Yeah so I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter both are just Jeremy Lundy. From there you can find
[19:59] SPEAKER_02: the website by company and website like if you go to DevOpsDesignBuild.com that's
[20:05] SPEAKER_02: that's the easiest way to get to for a company. We're launching our YouTube video actually after
[20:10] SPEAKER_02: I get off this call with you so hopefully people find it a succinct description of what we do.
[20:17] SPEAKER_00: Okay. Yeah. Well listen Jeremy thanks for coming on to Canada's podcast really
[20:22] SPEAKER_00: been interesting. Hope things go well with the YouTube launch. Great thank you.
[20:29] SPEAKER_00: Thanks everyone for taking the time today to listen to Toronto's podcast on the Canada's
[20:33] SPEAKER_00: podcast network. I hope you enjoyed the podcast today. Make sure you sign up for a new status
[20:40] SPEAKER_00: or write a review for us on iTunes. You can connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
[20:45] SPEAKER_00: LinkedIn or at canvassbarkcast.com where you can listen, discover and engage. You can also
[20:52] SPEAKER_00: check out what other entrepreneurs are doing across the country. We'll see you next time.