Darren and the remote kind

Justin  2:35  

All right, welcome back to another episode of remote voices. We have a really awesome guest today it's Darren from work from Darren Introduce yourself tell us what you guys do give us kind of the elevator pitch

Darren Buckner  2:51  

very excited all week to be on the Here we are. It's big time I've made it here with the with the gang gang and I like to call it

so works really well. From is that it's really a remote work super connector. Our goal is to help people and teams build better networks remotely. But our origins come from helping people find places to work remotely. And through that we have built one of the largest remote work communities in the world. We have over 120,000 people who, who have joined our community to help people find the best places to work all over the world, as well as their people that work at these places. Ultimately, we've been connecting people around remote work and their work style and the ways that they most need the things that matter most of them for many years. And we have recently evolved to to make that more front and center

Justin  3:43  

and we've kind of moved some pivots lately because of Coronavirus a, I don't know if you want to dive into that a little bit.

Unknown Speaker  3:49  

Yeah, you know, like like every business I believe at this point we you know, we are also affected by what's going on around us and the the global pandemic has has affected Excuse me some of the things that that we had been doing in very specific ways, for instance, places has always been a really important part of our ecosystem where people work, the information around the places that they work, when they're going there, who's there, who else who's who, who else goes there, all these things mattered a lot. And during a pandemic, people are working from home. You know, it's, it's, it's not so relevant anymore, the places that we have been sourcing all around the world in the same ways. And so what we realized is that, for us, it really was a time for us to accelerate what we had already been planning to do, which was bring more of the connectivity between individuals, and through teams and individuals and teams, the teams of bring more of the people connections to the forefront. I like to say we sort of have evolved from, you know, internet connections to personal connections, and it was a natural evolution for us.

Justin  4:53  

And you guys are doing that in Slack, right. Like you have a pretty large slack community that you're you're talking to these folks, folks in every Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  5:01  

yeah, you know, we've, we have, we have a very big slack community. And these are these are folks who have, you know, been some of our most amazing community members, if you will, folks who have already opted into more networking, more access, more recommendations, and all the all the culture and the fun stuff that, that we've been creating over the, over the years, really direct access to that in slack. And that has actually evolved kind of separately and in some ways from our, our community platform. Well, you know, finding the what we call sort of space discovery. They're not they're not divorced from one another, but that they've evolved separately. One is very much a utilitarian tool. Alright, a thing that people use to discover information specifically to a certain use case, and the other is more of a day in day out, you know, experience of connecting with people and around the things that matter most

Justin  5:57  

interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think hunter reach Got you guys in Yac, as well, right, and you're using that to kind of talk, you know, inside of the community.

Darren Buckner  6:06  

Yeah, it's been a great tool.

Unknown Speaker  6:08  

You know, we're we're all about connecting folks. And you know, Yac has been fantastic way to do that. It love to see that, well, you know, as remote first, you know, company and people and community, we're always looking for opportunities to communicate better. And one of the things that we've learned about slack is in our slack community, and in the communication apps there is that it's, it's a certain type of communications very temporal. You know, it's not very asynchronous, it's, it's kind of sort of have to be there and be aware in the moment, right. And so, with Yac, and this sort of asynchronous video, or can be audio opportunity, as well as some other awesome things that you're able to do with yet, but the audio especially like the async nature of the audio is really something that we can take advantage of and it allows our community to, you know, communicate in ways that were otherwise difficult.

Justin  6:58  

Yeah, I imagine it's it's great Kind of those personal connections, especially now and we're not able to get out of the house as much and we're all cooped up inside. I mean, we asked you when you, you know, got on today, where Yeah, you're like, well, I'm working from home. We're all working right now. So, you know, being able to connect with other people I think is insanely important. Well, I have not looked at the content for today. So it looks like we're starting right off the bat. There. We're gonna bring you up to speed this Yes, please. Viral phenomenon that you apparently missed out on which, to be honest, I don't think you really missed out on much. I don't know Jordan, you're the most cultured of all of us. Do you want to give us the breakdown of what's going on here with this? I don't even know if it's an audio read this out. But it's it's emojis. So I don't know just from the time

Jordan  7:44  

I won't I won't read the tweet but basically for the people listening on audio only. We're discussing that is what it is meme. So it's the eye emoji with the lips followed by the other eye. Um, and the started as a trend on Tick Tock probably they started becoming thing like a year ago, but really took off in the last couple of months. And now a group of folks have decided to make this a product or turn it into a mobile app.

Unknown Speaker  8:10  

So the Apple

Jordan  8:12  

App though, do we know that's what we don't know? That's what we don't know. I've seen I think I've seen some screenshots of testflight builds on people's

Justin  8:18  

phone. I think it's fake man. I think it's all fake. I think. I think Tyler, our investor tweeted this out yesterday, I actually I put the hunter on the thread that at this point in time, the invite only FOMO you could just basically build a membership or like a invite only portal for anything. It doesn't even have to be real. Just hype it up, be afraid that they're missing out on something,

Darren Buckner  8:40  

for sure. That's for sure. possible.

Justin  8:42  

And Darren, do you guys drive that FOMO in your group, you know, is that something that you know that membership I saw a really cool tweet yesterday that was like something about the difference between like membership and subscription, right one is personal connection. You know, what why do you guys have invite only you know, can anybody just work from you know, how do you guys do it?

Unknown Speaker  9:02  

Yeah. Yes, anybody can join work from and we've always been, we've always been that, you know, we've, we've always had an experience that anybody could access. And we've also had experiences that not anybody can access. So you have to either opt in, pay for, you know, have some sort of an invitation to it. One of the ways that we've often do it or done in the past is by inviting people based on contributions in the community, since we started as a crowdsource experience, experience that people would have to contribute in order for it to grow. That meant that there would be people that would contribute more than others. And And for that, we would reward them, you know, we would invite them to other experiences. And we felt that that was not only a great way to, you know, sort of welcome and grow an amazing community, but also a great way to an appropriate way to reward that activity of folks taking the time to do things that aren't always easy, right. everybody's busy. To spend your time, you know, contributing to something, it's something that we wanted to reward. So we've we've approached it that way. In the last few months, I thought a lot about, you know, what, what could we do to create more of a invitation only kind of experience for those who have been a part of what we've been doing for so long? And how to how do we get them into something, you know, all the new things in that way? And, you know, it's hard, it's not a straight line. I think we don't want to do it just for the sake of doing it, which maybe this is what this is, and we sort of talked about it, we don't want to do it just for that. But at the same time, there's so much that you can, so much, there's so much that you can learn as well as some sort of like intimacy that you can get with a community when it's when it's a small group when it's a group that's highly engaged. I know that I know, you folks know that very well. says the same. Yeah,

Justin  10:46  

all the time. I don't know if you want to talk about that, that we've spun up in Yac.

Hunter  10:51  

Yeah, so I i, this is sort of like an invite only thing but I opened it up to our public Twitter is like, just creating External groups within Yac. And that's really why I invited you, Darren and part of your team is because I think it's really important to start off, if you're going to do exclusive things like, like what we're talking about. Now, it has to start off small because you have to grow organically they it's like any sort of like friend group, right? You don't just invite everybody to the school to your house, like he started off with like one or two friends, and then they kind of just organically grows, it really reaches a critical mass or just can't grow any further. It just becomes unmanageable. And so that's really what I tried to replicate at Yac is, okay, well, maybe you're having a hard time figuring out the mechanics of our app, or maybe you're not, you know, maybe you can't get your whole team on right away. But you can still get the benefits because now you can invite your small group. And so I've, I've sort of started these conversations. In fact, I have three separate groups that we're experimenting with, which isn't one of them in which that you're in. But it's just really interesting seeing the conversations that are coming out of it people. You know, yesterday in the Ross group, the remote as a Service Group, someone was asking for hiring advice. And like that's a perfect channel to have that so I was actually just talking with Kp over a cup yesterday we were going back and forth on Twitter about all the benefits of having something closed group you know, you can get some really good feedback and you're not asking like the world for feedback and I tried to boil the ocean, you're just getting really concise feedback from a few few people that you can build the core features for. So I'm pretty big on this. I just honestly I hate this meme now. I thought was hilarious like two days ago, and now I hate it.

Justin  12:29  

Well, it's made Twitter like literally unusable. Like you can't do anything without seeing this now, which is credit to them. Right? Like, yeah, yeah, good job. Girl. The aspect I mean, if we read the actual tweet, it says if there's no actual app, and it's merely a call to further spread, designed Twitter's inside joke. It just proves the marketing savvy of the of the illusionists in our collective thirst for novelty. And I think that I don't know that novelty is the thirst. I think there's a thirst for community. I think Especially right now, so many people are just clamoring to feel like they're a part of something. Because it's so difficult to be a part of something when you're when you're working from home. And so I think that's why it's really cool what work from is doing because exactly, it really is the future of community building, where you have to build a community away from a community kind of individually and figure out how you can join from afar, especially in this day and age. You know, Darren was saying when we got on like, 9000 new cases in Florida in one day, they're gonna shut stuff down again, right? We're gonna go right back to the fact that we can't go to the malls anyway. But we can't go outside, you know, you can't go fraternize with friends and stuff like that. And communities like work from and hopefully what we're building on Yac as well are going to be just so insanely important, I think to mental health, like just, you know, there's no doubt about it a collective thirst for being involved in something,

Unknown Speaker  13:55  

if you're spot on community is it's one of the innate things about the other All of us out, we need community, we're very social. You know, even if we consider ourselves, introvert extrovert somewhere on that on that, we still we are innately social, right? So much of our communication, so much of our understanding of the world comes through our interactions with others. And if you look at, you know, remote work, sort of as a category, and you compare that to what we've seen, if we're in office work, or when people are co located, if you will, you know, we've been doing that for 150 plus years, and we've we've created this entire culture and entire ecosystem around it remote, it removes the physical proximity. And when you are not physically located next to somebody, it does, in many ways sort of challenge your ability to use what is innate to you as a human, the social, you know, social cues that the understanding of us in the world through through the social interactions, and so we have to evolve. We just got to think of new ways to address that. It's not a good or bad I think it's just we we need to do what we always do, which is adapt. And and so we're in a really golden age I think right now with with so many people feeling these disconnects like we all get to explore it, we all get to create amazing things to help you know contribute to that getting better the betterment for everybody. And there's tons of room for it because again, we all need it, you know it there's not one flavor that everybody needs. It's it's all kind of flavors so we just have to figure out how to build these new networks you know, and and people networks are the most important thing we have. The The last

Jordan  15:31  

thing I'll add to that is before this, I was actually a remotely attending beta works render conference and loneliness was one of the topics and the lady speaking on it said, loneliness in the US is actually reported at an all time high right now it's ever been in the US. So it just, it's weird that like now we're on this podcast, right? And we're talking about, you know, the need for these communities and such. So it's crazy that like, Look, there's literally a need for these communities and people need to feel belonging now literally more than ever. It's not just people saying Oh, we need this. It's like, No, we literally need this ever more than before. How does one get stats on loneliness? I have no idea she that's what she studies. I'm interested.

Unknown Speaker  16:13  

You know, we've been a student of

Unknown Speaker  16:17  

people for a while. I mean, I think broadly, but specifically through the lens of remote work. And every every time we study every time we've looked at every time we've asked anybody if we can create a survey, every time we've had a one on one, loneliness, isolation, some some variation of that is always top right. It's always top two, top three. It's at this point, it's a fact that people are feeling disconnected from a number of things but disconnected when when they're working full time this way. And that's something we got to fix, like something we have to address. It's not something that we want to just leave up to the people who adjust the fastest, right? We need to be thinking about building new infrastructure to make this work for everybody because ultimately the gains that come from working this way are far reaching and we all benefit. We really get to craft our work around our lives, which is key. You flip it around and you become very unhappy on happiness, loneliness, like these are things this is a recipe for disaster. So we've got to figure that out.

Justin  17:13  

Definitely I see loneliness listed. It's like whenever anybody does those, like state of remote work things. It's always there in isolation. Oh, yeah, listed towards the top is like the number one concerns with remote work. So next week, says I was 14 comes with support for sound recognition and accessibility. Now we saw a little bit of this in dub dub. Darren, did you catch WWDC she watched?

Unknown Speaker  17:35  

I got a little bit of it. I haven't. I haven't caught all of it. But again, something I plan to do this weekend. I was just telling you before we came live that I've been heads down, you know, kind of under a rock for last two weeks, I've been working on some really important stuff. And so I just haven't had a chance to to check it out. But I actually learned about some of the basics specifically and some of the other cool things that has happened through the Raskar through the Jaeger so yeah, so Like signal signal

Justin  18:02  

Did you see the hand-washing they so they so this is what this is is they they added hand-washing as a like alert timer okay so it will tell you how long like it basically will vibrate and intervals to let you know like you need to keep watch for the 20 seconds

Unknown Speaker  18:17  

yeah

Justin  18:18  

and so what that rolled into at a technical level is now you can actually go into the accessibility settings and you turned on sound recognition so things like a baby crying a smoke alarm water running, and it will notify you I think this is super cool. I mean, especially for us like audio nerds everybody you know, we're obviously bullish on voice and audio as a as a platform. But I think this is so cool that in the future you could have like triggered I don't know imagine like if this than that trigger that happens on like, civic sounds happening in your environment happening around you. You know, our phones are just getting so much smarter. I don't know hunter Jordan hundred Have a look at an application here. Like what's an example of something cool you think will come out of this?

Hunter  19:06  

Uh, I don't know how to pronounce his name. I think it's more case friendly. mk MD or something. I'm sorry.

Unknown Speaker  19:13  

I know you

Jordan  19:14  

saw our kids name.

Hunter  19:17  

Whatever he said. He said it was like if you're playing video games and like doorbell rings to get pizza, right? Like it, it'll let you know, which is really nice because I play video games too. And I have like the nice headset now. That's like the most first world problem to ever have. But it is cool. I like it. What I really do like it though, is for the inclusivity it's a he came back from the studio and literally his entire phone was like the water is running, the water is running. And like literally, like hundreds of applications that the water was running. So I don't know how accurate it is. But if it if it delivers its promise, I think it's gonna be really cool, especially for us that are trying to, you know, build the future of work. So if we're a us as a company, you know, yeah, we're expecting people to have their head phone's in all day and they're locked in, that's gonna unlock even more opportunities. Like, you know, if they recognize the name like Jordans, you know, behind you, he's trying to talk to you right? Like that's, that's instant for me. That's, that's a nice like, okay, I can actually tell me now look at him hide you. He's snuck up on your neck.

Jordan  20:19  

Immediately. I think what's really cool about this is I think I see the application for elderly folks. Yeah, especially like my own Grandpa, because he's got a hard time hearing, you know, if this mark alarm, smoke alarms going off, and he can't hear that, but his phone can help him detect that. Obviously, it's critical information that he needs to know, ASAP, or any other, you know, similar scenario. So from that perspective, I'm a huge fan of this and then yeah, like hunter you said, the capabilities are what this might unlock for Yac is also really cool for us. But I think the immediate accessibility use cases really cool.

Unknown Speaker  20:55  

Yeah, that's like where my mind went to initially do is accessibility and the power that that could you know, Lock for a lot of people in that, you know, the safety the the peace of mind. And that's so important. I also I also went immediately to, I think it was yesterday I was sitting in one room playing with my young son and and I had the phone the other one but I have my my air pods in and and I was like, What time is it I get somebody like I didn't need clocks. I you know, Siri, what time is it and heard in my ear and it's something about having the phone in the other room and but still being connected to that way being able to prompt it. It just it hit me suddenly that there is an opportunity to have technology that is aware in other places nearby that can help you understand certain things or interact in certain ways. Because my phone is mostly with me all the time. I hadn't really experienced that quite the same. And just it just hit me I thought well, you know, this could be an interesting thing where I could leave the phone in a room intentionally and leave the room and feel feel confident somehow still be aware of something that's happening in that room. And it's apparent. You know, that's one of the things I could think about. Yeah,

Justin  21:59  

Hunter talks a lot about Just like what life will be like when we don't have mice and keyboards and where there's an input method and there's

Darren Buckner  22:05  

we're gonna get there Hunter, I'm waiting. I'm like, Yeah, you're

Hunter  22:11  

already there.

Justin  22:13  

Yeah, you're not typing anything in, in Yac. So we're, we're trying to be at the forefront of that. But it is interesting to think about with AR glasses and all of that, you know, the ability to have these extra sensors and have a computer on your face that will tell you when certain things it detects like smoke, smoke alarms, you know, water running, you left a sink on, you left the stove on, you know, I don't know, there's some cool applications there for sure. This next tweet says, What is advice? Really, how does it differ from insight and you know, what he's talking about here is in relation to like giving feedback on pitches. You know, I know these guys not on Darren if you caught the tweet, but I I built pitch@hay.com as my hay address, when the the Email juggernaut released and basically say, hey, send me a pitch. If you got a pitch deck and you're trying to raise and you don't feel like you're having much success, I'll give you feedback on it. And I sympathize with this tweet a lot for sure. Because I'm obviously giving my unique perspective on these pitch decks. I'm giving them ideas of like, you know, what I think they should do. And I do think it's interesting to ask like, at the end of the day, like what is advice? Can you give advice without it, you know, is impartial advice even possible?

Darren Buckner  23:31  

is an objective?

Justin  23:32  

Yeah. What do you think Darren?

Unknown Speaker  23:35  

Well, sure, I think I think it's possible to further be nuanced. I mean, I think objective advice you can you can you can bring in experience history, you can look you know, bring in data. If you've looked at X amount of pitch decks, or you've you've created X amount of pitch decks, whatever they some point you understand that there are some common truths, right? There are some patterns that that can be pretty much relied on. And so I think you could then say like, this is objective advice. You know, having this much, you know, content on one slide is generally bad, right? Like, I feel like that that works. But But you know, it's a thin line between objective and subjective and, and so much of, you know, the interpretation people have on what they know when they're giving advice is so personal is so, you know, it's so unique to their experience. So I think you got to take advice with a grain of salt, but you also have to understand who's giving it and if you can understand where they come from, then I think that advice actually even has more color. You get you get more more impact out of it. I

Hunter  24:33  

know Derek. Actually, I got a question. I got a question for you, Darren, because I was talking to Brooke Yeah, right. Brooke that she was saying how like, you guys just got out of tech stars and you guys are just pummeled with advice. I mean, that's one of the value props of tech stars is that they give you the advice and they put you in the room with the right people. Um, I know that you guys are getting hundreds of pieces of advice a week, so Mike, my question to you can't thousands. So my question to you is how are you able to decipher the difference between advice and insight and who you should listen to? I'll tell you the way I do without naming names.

Unknown Speaker  25:14  

name names, you know, we work with some amazing folks. It is one of the things that TechStars you know, says is their value prop and I agree it is, you work, you have amazing network, you end up being exposed and be able to get advice, get, you know, get understanding, get learning from people who have seen the movie before and these are brilliant people. You'd be a fool not to let you know not to listen to it, not to process it. The way I the way I handle it is I look for trends, I look for patterns. I you know, my mind is just cut from a prime to be that way. And it's something that I rely on in somebody so many ways, so many things in life when there's a lot of information coming at you or when there's a lot of information you had. If you can find some some commonality, some patterns and it helps you understand, you know, what's, what's the middle and what's the edges. So what we would actually experience through text or what we had experienced really a lot of advice, but you saw trends, and there were certainly trends and and so I would pay attention to those trends and then I try to dig deeper, or I'd try to disprove those or prove them, right. So build hypotheses around them. But that's, that's, I think, a really solid way to do it. But if you just listen to the, you know, advice from some different people, if there's so much input, you end up with what they call whiplash, you know, in any way they call mentor whiplash, but as often happens with your mentors, but they call whiplash, you know, because you, you'll get off on one, you know, out of one conversation and into another And literally, they say something that's diametrically opposed. And they're both brilliant people and you both, you know, respect them both. They both done a lot. It's so it's really hard. But it also then shows you that and I hope that I don't offend anybody, but nobody has to fucking do it. I mean, we're all figuring this out, you know, as like, in real time. Now, we bring a lot to the table of our experiences, but but nobody really knows how Do it for you. Right? I mean,

Justin  27:02  

it has a lot to do with it too. So even look at a lot device just might be that they got lucky. You know,

Unknown Speaker  27:10  

luck is a big part of the timing is a big part of it, you know, network is a big part of it, you know, grid, just being able to last long enough, you know, they have a big part of it. So when they like shots on goal, right, like just having enough shots, you're gonna get one through and, and so there's a lot that goes into it and and people don't people don't have to have all the answers. Right. So you have to take a lot of that with a grain of salt.

Hunter  27:37  

Yeah, we got to be careful with those sports references because some people might not get them just so you know.

Darren Buckner  27:43  

Yeah, it's with what's what's a good analogy shot on goal. Sorry. No,

Hunter  27:48  

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Just something I saw on Twitter yesterday. So of course it's no way

Unknown Speaker  27:53  

I want everybody's alright.

Jordan  27:54  

Yes. No, okay. Okay. Cuz it's like next week Nope, we're gonna move on.

Justin  28:04  

I've got I got one more thing on this, I was gonna ask Darren. Okay, so I tell hunter all the time, it's like something that I have to balance with is that I've heard a great quote, I think it was in a book that I read that just said like, the CEO doesn't have an opinion. And it's just something that you have to be like cognizant of as the CEO that when you say something, it's not just like an idea that somebody you know, is going to toss around. It came from the CEO. So now it sounds like a directive, right? And I think that that power probably exudes to what this tweet is saying, especially with like, you know, influencers and, you know, people in the network who are higher up, you know, when you get advice from them, it's not really advice. It just sounds like an order because you should listen to them. How do you balance that like at the company, you know, when you have feedback, or you have changes or you want to take the company in a new direction, and maybe it's just an idea that you have, you have no idea if it's the right way to do it, you know, how do you manage that expectation? With your team?

Unknown Speaker  29:02  

That's a fantastic question. It's something I'm still learning. So I'm still evolving and getting better. I think I'm I am getting better I, I used to early on, I used to share a lot of feedback, a lot of thoughts, a lot of things that may be fleeting, just sort of coming through my mind. And, and, and there's a certain there's a certain cost to that, as you mentioned, it it, it does matter when the CEO when you say something, it matters a little differently than than when somebody else might say it. At the end of the day, you've got to build I think the right relationships with the really solid relationship with your team. So the distress is understanding. And you got to let folks in Yeah, let them know how you process information. Often what I do is I preface things I say. So this is not what we're doing. Right? Or this is not something that you know, I make it very clear. And this is what I'm thinking about and or this is what I'm processing and I'm doing this in real time. And I just wanted to know, takeaways, there's no decisions here, you know, like that, that's, that's how we'll do it often, especially, you know, especially if it's if it's more broadly shared work. And I talk about this all the time, you know, Brooke and I were, you know, we're peers, we, we've been in the trenches building work from, and, and one of the things that we are working to do is to evolve also, as leaders and understand that, when she and I have banter, when she and I have, you know, certain types of conversations, there's so much context, it goes into that there's so much history or so much understanding of each other. And, you know, but that's not always the case, especially for new teammates. And that's something we want to be very aware of, because at the end of the day, we want to build something remarkable with remarkable people through a remarkable culture. You have to be intentional around, you know, and how in order to do that you can't just sort of be be be free, you know, and, and don't understand the impact of some of the things that are happening. And so we you know, we are trying to evolve on that as well. But yeah, it's, I try to be, you know, very gentle preface things.

Jordan  31:01  

Yeah, I think that's super smart.

Unknown Speaker  31:04  

I'll add one last thing. I had a good friend of mine who when I first started work for him, he said to me NBN, co before, and this was my first time doing SEO work from him. And he said, you know, you can change your mind. That's, that's fine. That's, that's, that's okay. You should be doing a good change direction for the company, you should. But you can do it often. But you got to understand that there's a cost to that, right. Like you have to, you have to wait you have to see things through you have to let things go full cycle, because it's not just you, it's never going to be just you. And so you might see it, you might feel it. You might understand the urgency and everything but still have to understand that there's a cycle that needs to be sought. That needs to be completed in order for everybody else to be able to be impacted in the right way. So I thought that was really smart. Yeah, no, that's

Justin  31:50  

super good feedback. I really like that. I think it's hard as a CEO to, to know and commit to something when you just have that unknown at the And you're like, I don't know if it's gonna work out. Yeah, if you change soon enough, it's almost like protecting your own yourself. Yeah. failure. I see that a lot. Is that fear of failure? And I think you don't learn if you don't ship you don't learn if you don't fail. Alright Hunter, you said this last tweet is yours. So go ahead,

Jordan  32:17  

asking about that no idea what it means.

Hunter  32:21  

All right. So Amazon is skills Google is action. Samsung is capsules actual note that part means absolutely apple. Okay. And then Apple is capabilities. So like what you were just talking about, right? Like, Apple can now tie in Siri to some other things without needing a device. Like it unlocks a bunch of other capabilities. And I've been, I've been doing some other podcasts lately. And a lot of things that just keep coming up is like, they keep asking me like, why are you so excited about air pods? And to me, it's very easy. It's because now, air pods unlock a whole slew of opportunities for developers. That's actually why I made AirPods as an app store back in the day, it was because I knew at some point, they needed to have some sort of place to discover these apps that are made specifically for air pods. And that wasn't possible up until was it Monday when they announced that air pods are gonna have their own API. And so I just think that Apple is really good at taking what everybody else is sort of doing. And then just making the best version of it and then just making it mainstream. So I'm just really excited for all the opportunities at least, I mean, I'm very selfish in this way, but I think that it's going to unlock a lot of opportunities for Yac which then unlocks a whole bunch of opportunities in the workplace. So that's why I picked this one.

Justin  33:37  

Yeah, I mean, I think we I think we always point out I mean, it's like a joke at this point, how much Apple waits for everybody else to do like okay jobs at something, and then eventually just like blows out of the water with this amazing you know, version of it. Apple already has shortcuts. That's what they call Siri shortcuts now. I feel like that's probably what they'll keep the branding of But if you like this concept of capabilities like what do What does Siri What does AI What does audio unlock? That you couldn't previously do? I mean, I didn't even know I did Google it. I didn't know that Samsung capsules was a thing. What an awful branded version like no one. That sounds like taking metal. What is it? It's their stupid Bixby marketplace big

Jordan  34:23  

factory.

Justin  34:24  

Yeah, I've never heard of it until now. That's that's their Siri their Google Assistant. Like, it's bad. They've heard of it. That's crazy. Like the verge always says that. It's a small terrier with shoes. It just sounds like a butler thing over here, but uh, yeah, I don't know who named it capsules. But I do think that this is interesting. You know, I think prior to now, maybe we've always thought of these, you know, Alexa skills as something that like was relegated to the home and was on a device that's plugged into a wall somewhere that you think that runs your lights, and I think like even In the use case that you said earlier, where you just, you know, you talk to Siri when you had the phone in the other room, but you just had your air pods. I think it's very interesting as you're walking down the street and your phone alerts you that a car horn, you know, is honking at you as you listen to music because now that feature is unlocked because it can recognize sounds or you know, there's like just so much stuff that I think that always on audio platform, you know, can unlock and I think we talked earlier in the episode just about like loneliness and isolation, you know, this ability to kind of have people with you all the time clubhouse, obviously being a good example of why people are, you know, yearning for that kind of community aspect. I think one of the big things they've shown there is folks that are just leaving clubhouse open for like six hours while they cook like they'll just be sitting there clubhouses open on their phone sitting on the countertop. They have air pods in and they're just listening to people talk. And I think the fact that it's live versus like a pre recorded podcast somehow gives people this sense of warmth. And involvement, even if they're not talking themselves, they just happen to know that the people on the other side of the line or are, you know, live doing this right now? And yeah, I definitely think that the idea of air pods is a platform, you know, starts to unlock that, you know, that that idea of what it would be like to have always on audio channel i think that's how we started Yac Jordan, you probably remember that we're,

Jordan  36:25  

yeah, hotel room. It was impossible for you and I to talk. Yeah, yeah. Cuz Oh,

Justin  36:30  

yeah, I think it'll be cool to see how Apple you know, builds that platform forward and how those accessibility things you know, obviously help people on the accessibility side but maybe just start become features of themselves the ability to recognize sounds and have triggered actions and things

Jordan  36:45  

i think i think the sound recognition I think that'll really take off the always on audio, I mean, short clubhouse exists. I don't see that being like a long term thing, but like the idea of being able to recognize like a police siren or like my smoke alarm or water on it. I think that stuff is really, really useful, I think

Justin  37:00  

I think it's a quarantine thing.

I don't know Darren, like, how much do you think you guys will have to pivot and change for quarantine? And how much do you think that will stick or you will end up going back to something pre COVID?

Unknown Speaker  37:14  

Well, for us, what we're doing now, you know, what's what we're starting to get out there into the world has already it was already something that we were we were working on. It was already where we were headed in many ways, but we just accelerated things because of the change around us. It became clear to us that our biggest impact was going to be in our most timely impact is going to be and helping to connect people in these in these ways, right? I'm all about drawing new new connections between things. And I think that the thing that I've learned time and time again with work from and building work from and building this large community and talking to literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people who who worked this way, work remotely, is it connectivity is key and and so So we, we were already doing a lot of things we decided to, you know, accelerate the timeline. And then we have this place vector, we have this ability to understand place like few others. And we can bring that into the connectivity matrix, we understand where people go, when they go there, where they go next, who else goes there, how often they go there, and we know the radius in which they will travel to go to the next place that we understand place. And we know why even they go to the places when they go, what their, you know, where, what how they're feeling, why, why they're what productivity boost they're looking to get when they go there, or maybe it's more privacy. We understand all these things. So this will help us it's only help us round out the ability to connect people in the most interesting and we think meaningful ways. So it's it's part of a larger, you know, a larger experience. But we've we've really needed to bring that to the forefront for so long plays has been focused and now it's time for I don't know, we don't have a job we have. We have something there that nobody else has and it will allow us to To bring things you know, to the forefront meaningful things that are for for people that nobody else can,

Justin  39:05  

that's awesome, you would say that you guys are in it for the long haul then

Darren Buckner  39:09  

always have been

Mission vision doesn't change. It's just it's just the, you know, the light timeline to change

Justin  39:18  

timelines and events cause pivots and you know, we got to react to that but yeah, I think it's it's good to hear that you guys are you know, you have a long term goal and you're hitting those goals and you're reacting appropriately to the to the climate around them, but awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on man. This has been great.

Unknown Speaker  39:39  

The stocks

Unknown Speaker  39:44  

we just talked about community and connectivity and how important it is. I feel like we should just keep going right six hours of this

Darren Buckner  39:51  

podcast. Yeah, what's up with that? Let's let's break some ground here. Let's stuff always on podcast

Justin  39:58  

well We will just instead have you plugged everything tell for sure they can find you where they can sign up for work from how they can join your slack community, all that good stuff. Go ahead.

Unknown Speaker  40:11  

Yeah, absolutely, definitely join us, you know, become part of our community. help us build out this future help us accomplish this vision for all of us were remote time we'd like to say, go to work from SEO. That's how you'll find us and connect with us there, create an account, start building your network remotely, it's one of the best things you can do if you're new to remote or if you've been working remotely for a long time. If you want to join our slack community, you can go to remote work slack.com there's a front door to our slack community there that that's new. Yeah. So definitely go to that and if you want to follow us at at work from on most of the things, all the things and then excuse me personally at Darren Buckner on Twitter and on Instagram, and, and you can find me on Yac at some point soon I'll have a friend who I met in the Yac but I don't know what it is called. Yet, but you'll find that

Justin  41:01  

we're working on a landing page for you right now that you'll be able to send out and anybody will be able to join a work from Yac group. So, hey, I love it actively worked on. Well, awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you joining us today. Yeah, thanks, dude, turn our video off here. Thanks so much for your time, and I'm gonna play us out with some music

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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