Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have MarkJacobson, founder and CEO of Terrain Analytics, a strategic workforce analyticsdata platform, helping companies find the best market to hire the best people inanywhere in the world. Mark, thank you so much for, for joining us today.

I'm so excited not only from. Yourjourney and, and where, what brought you to, to Terrain Analytics now and, and,building a company, but also your insight into, I think what a lot of peoplecare about, which is data. And, and, and in many different ways people areutilizing it.

Founders are utilizing to give peopleinsights, other founders or companies alike on what to do or actions to take.So it's always exciting about, chatting with founders like yourself who have, aparticular eye into, a market and, and. A wealth of knowledge into thatparticular space.

But before we get started on terrainanalytics and, and what brought you here what were you doing before you startedthe company?  

Mark: First off, thanks verymuch for inviting me to be on your podcast. I really appreciate it. Excited forthe conversation. What prompted me to start Terrain was I'm a serialentrepreneur at heart.

I've been involved in the startup communityfor a long time and. Really I'd started a lot of service companies before.Yeah, so Terrain is the first software company that I've started, and I did itbecause I just felt there was opportunities that I'd seen where there were alot of questions being asked by companies, by my clients over time.

Even just kind of hearsay. Where theywere kind of itching at the same, they were trying to scratch the same problem,right? Of like, how do I solve a talent related problem in a better way. Andso, truthfully, we experimented with some ideas, but the, the catalyst kind oftook me back to early in my career yeah, I was a grunt working at a law firmand we were working on really, really fun deals at the time.

Some of the largest venture financings,m and a deals, the largest i p o at that time. And it was the star power ofentrepreneurs that really kind of spoke to me. I grew up in la I worked inHollywood agencies in summers and kind of saw a similar dynamic of, kind ofeverything revolving around.

This, kind of individual or group ofindividuals. And so, early in my career I heard the saying invest in a peoplewith a B idea over an A idea with B people. Yeah. And when I went throughcollege and did the business playing competitions it was the opposite. It wasalways like, well, you were sitting there voting on like, well, what's the bestidea?

Yeah. Nobody in that room was qualifiedto like do the thing, so it didn't really matter. But I just found that reallyfascinating. Like this was. Common wisdom, like you just simply invested in theA people and you let them figure it out. The idea didn't matter. There werepivots, there was other stuff.

Yeah. And so I kind of just alwayscentered on talent because I knew that if I was central to talent, if I wasconnected to talent, I would be around great ideas, I would be around greaterinnovation. And that just kind of interested me along the way. Companies werealways trying to solve the talent problem.

Since 1997, we've been in the war fortalent and the tools are getting better for like ATFs, the tools are gettingbetter for d e i, they're getting better for culture. But how you actuallystrategically plan for talent was noticeably absent. Yeah. And I think that ina post pandemic world where talent is more distributed now than.

The, everything like the Andy is upped,right. Trying to find people, trying to recruit people, trying to retainpeople. Yeah. It's just gotten more complicated. You need systems to do whathumans have naturally done. Yeah. You can't tell me the difference betweenDallas and Denver or Dublin and Zurich.

People don't know, right? It's alwaysexperiential and someone says, well, like my founder worked here, my CTO workedthere, my board member worked. Google opened an office there. Facebook isthere, there's all this like anecdotal evidence that goes around. And so reallywhat we wanted to do with Terrain was to say there's a, a data driven way tomake better decisions around how you hire and retain and accomplish your hiringgoals.

So yeah. That was, that was the impetus.That's why we started to Terrain.  

Julian: Yeah, and I mean, I'm,I'm hesitant to jump right on into, to talent o obviously, I, I have a littlebit of interest in that running a two-sided marketplace for talent, but I, I'minterested in the, the transition from service. To then software platformbecause I, it is so interesting to see, you see, you see key insightsthroughout your experiences and then, and then you, build a software around it.

But what a particular was the difficultyaround that transition and, and what was changing in terms of the customers youwere chatting with and the, the conversations you were having going fromservice. To platform and, and just, just, for what it's worth, we've had quite afew founders on here, going through that transition and all have experienceddifferent hurdles during that transition period.

What, what in particular was challengingfor you moving in that direction? And I guess also what was surprising to youabout a process or, or an aspect of the business that was maybe easier than youas had expected? ,  

Mark: great question. Andprobably more challenges than I ever imagined. Yeah, , my prior experience, Ihad always started companies where I had some relevant experience.

I could do the recruiting, I could dothe selling, I could build the company, I could run the finances. Thetransition from service to software was a tough one because I needed aco-founder. Yeah. Uh, I needed a technical co-founder. And so, step one, wasnot just identifying the idea, but it was finding the right person.

That would be a good compliment to methat I could get along with. And so I was really lucky to find my co-founderRiley. He's just absolutely amazing. And we've been through a lot. So like ourability to work through challenges, to have good conversations, challengingconversations, push one another, push back on one another.

I think we do it in a really healthyway. Mm-hmm. and we've worked together for many, many years, so hopefully he'dsay the same thing. . But so identifying your co-founders. One thing,understanding what you are great at doing and what you're not going to do. Ithink one of the recipes for Riley and I is like, we don't step on each other'stoes.

Yeah. He's got a very clear lane that heowns. I've got a very clear lane that I own. We're constantly talking andworking together, but we're never trying to like d. We don't really likeundermine each other either. And so I know a lot of founders can get into likecounter arguments and we just really haven't had that many.

So that's been, that's been good.Another thing was just how did we settle on the idea? Yeah. We had multipleideas. Like, workforce analytics was not our starting idea. We actually workedthrough two or three other ideas and so we boots. Before we ever raised anymoney. And so that was kind of a novel concept too.

We didn't go through a YC program, wedidn't go through an accelerator program. We didn't have grants. Webootstrapped, we actually had to go find customers that would pay for us tofigure out the idea. So yeah, that ended up being our starting point, which isa little bit more.

non-traditional, I guess. Mm-hmm. , westarted a little bit more project based. We really wanted to be certain that wewere solving a pain point before we went and built a company around somethingthat we thought was just interesting. Yeah. And so therein light like a numberof iterations as well. . And so we had our aha moment, and we can get into thatif you want, but it was really centered around like the Amazon HQ two rfp.

And we just thought, wow, this is areally meaningful opportunity. We think we can solve it. So we went and wefound paying customers, we solved it for them, and then we began the process ofmaking the scalable a repeatable process and then moving that into being asoftware driven business. So our, our arc has been a little bit atypical.

Yeah, I know a lot of founders aretechnical and a lot start. Kit Up software, day one. We actually built abusiness. We had revenue, and so we've moved in to kind of compliment ourskills and what we're able to do.  

Julian: Yeah. Maybe this tiesinto the aha moment, but what in particular, if I'm thinking about, yourjourney, why, why not, find a way to provide them the talent in thoseparticular areas versus allow them the, the information and tools to do thatthemself.

It is like, rather than finding them abunch of fish and. You, you're pretty much teaching them, how, how to send thereel out there and, and you know how to, how to cast and, and, fish forthemselves. What was the, I guess maybe what was the catalyst to shifting yourmindset into, okay, we're not gonna provide talent, but we're gonna provide asolution for them to go higher individuals themselves.

What was that moment like?  

Mark: I think the, I thinkthe finding them talent part is the thing where there's a lot of competi.There's a lot of agencies, there's a lot of tech enabled vendors. There's ATSsystems. Like there's a lot that's been invested in, in the HR tech space,specifically designed to get you the talent.

So how you get it, the way you track it,the way you retain those things were really, really well covered. And we feltthat if we were gonna do anything different, we had to find the, the greenfieldspace. And so for us, what we realized, Not only is the talent acquisition partpretty well covered the Internal planning is also pretty well covered, so youhave large players like Workday, people analytics is covered.

You've got really, really strong vendorswhere they've got internal company data. We realized that the opportunity wasexternal market data. It was things that companies didn't already know, andthere were huge gaps. It was also a tremendous spend. Yeah, that really was alittle bit not obvious, like you don't think how much you really spend ontalent every.

Relative to what you pay for softwarerelative to what you pay for real estate, but it ends up being absolutelyenormous. And so we felt that this would make a material difference to acompany. When they say, how do I pick the market? I'm gonna go be in becausethere's discovery, there's there's search costs there.

then you have to go out and recruit.Then you have to find the people. Then you have to think about real estate.Then you gotta retain them. So there's all these components that go into themath and the equation of mm-hmm. , what does it cost to attract and retaintalent? And we thought if you set that up wrong, it is an incredibly expensiveerror that you make it, it's really hard to get out of it.

So if you can go find. better markets.You can retain people, you can acquire them. Better different levels ofcompetition improve your d e I like think about how you Yeah. Build yourbusiness. We didn't hear anybody talking about that. Yeah. And the existingtools were, are pretty archaic. Like we're competing with people that wannabuild their own spreadsheets or that are relying on census data.

Yeah. That's where we felt, Hey, that'sgreat. We can make a material. We're not competing with everyone building AIand ml. The market just looked much more attractive to us. So that's why wepicked Yeah. That we made.  

Julian: Yeah. And what, whatare some, just outta curiosity, what are some common trends you're seeing interms of where companies are looking to build out teams and what are some ofthe, I guess, challenges, but benefits of having, remote teams nowadays?

Not necessarily needing them in aphysical location, but needing them essentially in, in an aggregate location,maybe. For meeting up or, or maybe understanding the fundamentals of, of thatarea and logistics, if it's like a certain type of software, what have youthat, that, needs maybe government or compliance involvement.

What are some trends on, on where peopleare building and how are they building in a remote, kind of almost remotefirst, culture nowadays.  

Mark: Yeah, so the world hasbeen so fluid since we started this cuz we started before work from home wentinto play, everything went all remote. So everyone thought, okay, the office isdead.

I, I don't need to worry about locationwhatsoever. , and it's not really a, a totally true narrative. What we'velearned is that companies of certain industries and sizes are more likely toembrace all remote, and that's great. There are a lot of companies that simplycan't do that. So biotech, pharma companies, they cannot be all remote.

If you're in manufacturing or hardware,you cannot be all remote. Mm-hmm. . There are large companies that have morethan 10 offices. and they're thinking about the impact of where their talent isand what happens if war breaks out in Eastern Europe. There's a lot ofdifferent dynamics that come to play where a continuous planning model reallymatters.

And so you may be saying, well, I wannado labor arbitrage. I don't wanna recruit in San Francisco, Seattle, New Yorkoften because it's so. I need to find lower cost markets where I can still getexceptional talent. Yeah. The, the cost of discovery is massive, we believe.Yeah. And so then being able to tell the difference between what's happening inbiotech in the UK versus Switzerland versus, anywhere in Asia or Latin America,you cannot extract this information anywhere easily.

Mm-hmm. . And so you're really at aloss. And again, that investment in town is so. . We look at it like this is a,a very fluid conversation where you're starting to see companies bringemployees back to the office. Amazon's announced it SNAP has announced it.Google's announced it.

Salesforce has announced it all. Thebellwethers that said we're fully remote, maybe there was an alternative, maybenot, but they're seeing the pendulum swing. . And so what you're seeing is thatproductivity is being cited as something that's important. You don't need to bethere five days a week, but you want to build culture and you want to createserendipitous interaction.

You wanna spark innovation. You'reseeing YC on the other end of the spectrum start to bring their batches backinto San Francisco. There's probably a little bit more middle ground ratherthan either end of the spectrum where things will kind of naturally balanceout. And so finding the way to optimize your investment and talent in thesemarkets.

Yeah, that's, that's the math that, youknow, in a cost conscious environment that we now live in mm-hmm. , those aredecisions that you have to make and you have to kind of push your dollars evenfurther. So, yeah, again, it, it's not a one size fits all world that we're in,but I think the fact that it is so complicated means you have to have a better.

Way to make these decisions.  

Julian: Yeah. What are some,common I guess, not pitfalls, but what are some common mistakes, of companieswill make regarding, hiring talent? And is, is it long-term planning? Is it,identifying if a certain location is actually, the right pool of talent?

Where are they missing in terms of, ofthe knowledge or, or what is the knowledge gap for them and some commonmistakes that they make?  

Mark: I think it's notunderstanding. So it's very easy to say, well, I think there's universitytalent, and so they must have great engineers. Or, Hey, I think that likePhoenix is known as a great customer support center, but you know, I don't haveanything else to compare it to.

So maybe we just go there and then. Theworld again, just gets much more complicated. Yeah. Not every city is built thesame way with the same number of companies, the same industry representation,the same functional representation. So yeah, you would make a differentdecision about your marketing funnel or your sales funnel based on all the datathat comes in.

And you would say, okay, well we'regonna target this area. We're gonna, do mail over here. We're gonna do radiothere, we're gonna do outdoor here, we're gonna do online there. But you don'tdo that with talent. You kind of apply the same. And so I think when you're ina different market, being able to understand, wow, I can spend top dollar inmarket A and get two times better talent quality, where if I go into market B,I'm gonna spend middle of the road or the same amount as in that other marketand get half as good talent.

We're not trained to think that way,right? You The tools haven't been there, but we will in time and you will say,okay, this is where I can go to successfully open. And find data science ordata analysts in biotech or enterprise customer support for this type ofcompany in this location, this time zone and whatnot.

Companies are just really pushing theboundaries on where they'll recruit because they want talent density. Theydon't need to have just one office. They don't need to have 500. They'refinding that balance and then understanding the dynamics of each market. That'swhere we're seeing really sophisticated companies begin to make really, reallyspecific decisions about where they invest and how.

Julian: Yeah. What are somekey, I guess, identifiers that you see a company needing before they become,someone that, that needs your service to their businesses? What, what kind of,when are they at, at the point where they need to really start evaluating andunderstanding where the hiring market is for, for it to make sense?

And is it a certain series round or certainemployee size? Mm-hmm. going into a certain particular market. What, when, whendoes a company know that they need to start investing in like a technology?Like.  

Mark: We see companies ofall sizes. So we've worked with companies as small as like a hundred or 150people and they're saying like, we wanna move into a different market and kindof make our first foray.

How do we think about it? Our sweet spotis probably a company slightly bigger, maybe a thousand employees where you'vegot multiple locations. But I really think, again, like. what? No matter whereyou are on that spectrum, trying to understand where you can go compete mosteffectively for the talent that you want and optimize what you spend on it,that's a best practice to develop as we go forward.

The world is just like that, global.We're gonna have multiple markets that we operate in going forward. So tryingto think about. What your employer brand is, what the composition talent is,what the industry representation is, whether there's the functional talentthere. Mm-hmm. , these are all just good questions to ask probably when you'relike north of 50 people.

Yeah. Most companies that we talk tothat are smaller and they're like, listen, we're 20 people. We'll hireanywhere. That's cool. , at some point you may say, we want to have like two tothree approved locations. We want be in certain areas for the followingreasons. It's easy to get together, whatever, be your customers.

But the bigger you go, the more thisdiscipline becomes evident. Yeah,  

Julian: yeah. Tell, tell us alittle bit about the traction that, that you're seeing at Terrain. How manycompanies are you working with? What, what are the size of those companies? Notonly what's exciting about, where you've uh, grown to as of now, but what isexciting for the next kind of incumbent in, in the, in the, in the future tocome?

Mark: Well, we're reallyexcited about the future. I think we've kind of finally found that, mvp, thatproduct market fit. And so as we're in the process of scaling we, we really tryto be disciplined about who we target and what the use case is. , like I said,it's, it's typically a larger customer base for us.

Probably 500 and above. I think thesweet spot's really a thousand. Certainly those like breakout stage late stagecompanies they do hyper-growth and everyone's thinking about wherever yourdollar's going. So, we've kind of identified tech and biotech as our twoprimary verticals. We tend to work with real estate as well.

This concept of site location, talentintelligence this is an evolution of behavior that's existed for a long time.Yeah, so we're just building our story to demonst. Here's where companies haveexpanded. Here's where companies have consolidated into, they had grown throughm and a, they had too many locations.

They're tapping out in certain markets.We hear stories like, Hey, one of our clients a top 20. Life science companyhad employed a, a strategy consulting firm and they took 'em to the wrongmarket, accidentally, they didn't know, but they didn't understand. Yeah, it'sa single employer didn't have the right talent.

So they're reallocating budget becausethey have to now be in certain markets. Those are the things that we look foras we continue to grow. , we're cresting into that seven figure arr. We're,well on our way with, with large customers, fortune 500, global 2000. Ipersonally still like the growth stage companies cause I've spent so much of mycareer and startups and we're hearing companies are like, wow, all right, wellI can, I finally can move to, Miami, or I can think about Raleigh, or I canthink about yeah, Tallahassee versus I don't know, like St.

Louis or so. And, and startups are greatat asking questions. They're always kind of digging in, going deeper anddeeper. And so to be able to provide the right level of insight, the rightlevel of competitive intelligence that's our mission. That's what we'refollowing. And so that's where we're really kind of seeing traction from ourgo-to-market motion.

Julian: Yeah. What are, whatare some of the biggest challenges you face today?  

Mark: Building a brand?Yeah. I think. , how do you, how do you put a brand on the map for the firsttime? And then how do you do it in a an economy where everyone's kind of quickto say no and slow to say yes?

Yeah, . So we're getting very good athow do you frame a problem? When do you diagnose like the right time? But yeah,I mean, look, there's macroeconomic headwinds that I think a lot of otherstartups are facing, and we're just finding, we're getting very creative in ourdeal making, in our targeting in order to kind of overcome that and keep ourgrowth trajectory going.

Julian: Yeah. If everythinggoes well, what's the long-term vision for Terrain? ,  

Mark: we always think aboutit in terms of building an enduring profitable business. Yeah, we get askedthat question a different way. Like, Hey, what's your exit plan? And I'm like,yeah, I didn't work this hard to like exit the business overnight.

I, I, I really like it. But I think ifwe do right for our investors and shareholders, we're gonna build a viablelong-term business that's profitable. It's part of our dna. We've, we've beenreally scrappy from day one. We've bootstrapped we know what we have to do tokind of be profitable. We didn't over-invest, we didn't over-hire.

We've proven the, the the value to ourcustomers. But, in time, I think there's probably two paths, right? You eitherbecome a public company or you get acquired. But for us it's still too early inthe game to worry about that. We just wanna delight our customers and we wantto do right by your investors and, and build an enduring business.

Julian: Yeah, I love that. Ilove that. I always like this next section cuz I called it my founder FAQs. AndI'm gonna ask you a bunch of rapid fire questions and, and we'll see where weget. But first, first things versus what's particularly, particularly hardabout your job.

Mark: Oh gosh, I'm blowingthe, the rapid fire what's hard? There's a lot of unknowns, yeah. And I thinkjust having the patience and perseverance to work through things that may popup in the day or may pop up at all that hadn't been thinking about and justfiguring out how to do it. Cuz this is my first time as a software ceo.  

Julian: You, you discussedthis part about brand and it's, and it's a, it's a haun problem outside of,most companies think about fundraising or building talent or, finding productmarket fit outside of that. It is, the, the brand component is so powerfulbecause it, it, it, it plays on, the, the word of mouth phenomenon where youstart to, to be a contagious company.

What are some things that have beenhelpful in, in regards to building brand that, that maybe you didn't expect at.

Mark: I think one of thebest things that we did was outperform with the analytics that we couldsurface. Mm-hmm. , we're in a world where it's very easy to rely upon what afriend said or what a different data source. . Yeah. And so we have to provideinsights that are above and beyond those end up being very memorable.

And so we can then connect that back toa financial impact. And we do, we do quite well there. I think our, yeah, ourUI is very clean. It's, it was pretty new. No one had seen what we had donebefore, but ultimately it was the leave behind. It was the impact of, if youtake. , if you take the terrain data and you apply it, does it have a materialimpact to your business?

And we've been finding that ourcustomers have been super happy with that and super happy that we go the extramile through customer support. Yeah, we don't just leave them on their own.Yeah. We really have time with them. .  

Julian: Yeah. It sounds likeyou, you, you take some of that service experience and, and build it into the,the life cycle of your customer, which I think is, is super powerful from, fromfounders coming in from a service background because those relationships,especially early on and going from zero to one, influence and impact the, theone to 10 and, and how that kind of foundationally sets your company up forsuccess.

What are some ways that you staymotivated as a founder through the, the ups and downs of, of being a founder in,in this experience? .  

Mark: Yeah. I don't have ahard time staying motivated . I think, we've made representations to ourinvestors and to our customers that we're a great long-term partner.

And so I've always stood behind thatpersonally. I truthfully, like I care about my people yeah, tremendously. ,they've trusted me, they've trusted Riley. They trust that we're going to buildsomething, and so mm-hmm. , they've made a decision to work with us and notsomewhere else. So every day I wake up and I look at the faces on the team, andit's like, I don't find it particularly hard to like, want to see them besuccessful yeah.

And want to create this shared vision.So, motivation's never been a challenge, and I think just loving the subjectmatter too makes it really easy. Like we, we picked something that we loveabout, or that we love, that we talk about all the time. And it's a verytopical conversation too. I mean, you go anywhere and you talk to people aboutwhat are you noticing about people coming or going and your city, and it's justeasy to, to stay engaged with.

So, we have a lot of love and excitementfor the topic and it, it keeps us focusing. .

Julian: Yeah. Being anexperienced founder and especially a founder who's, who's worked with a lot ofother founders as well, is, is for, for those early on in, in, in theirexperience as an entrepreneur what, what are some, what is one piece of advicethat you found particularly helpful early in your career that, that has stuckwith you?

Mark: So there's probablytwo. The two that I share the most frequently, one is, follow the things thatyou love to do Yeah. That you want to be great at. Because I think being greatin this day and age requires extreme commitment consistency, perseverance, grit.So you know, if it's just not fun or not interesting, like pick something else.

Life is too short. Yeah. Focus on thethings that make you happy, where you can really it doesn't feel like you'reapplying effort. Yeah. To, to be great. The second thing is find a greatmentor. I'm really lucky to have had a couple amazing mentors in my career.They're people that I go back to.

I've got an incredible relationship withmy board and my chairman. They're the ones that help me solve problems that Ican turn to, that I can be vulnerable with and just say like, mm-hmm , this isa problem that I don't know how to solve. And so, having that to draw down onfor best practices, best experiences to help you open doors.

probably my two best pieces of advice.Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. Being thatyou've had such an, a wealth of experience working with founders and, and withcompanies, you farm wide what, what makes a, what key things makes a companysuccessful? Is it, is it how they run their business strategically?

Is it the culture? Is it how they viewproduct? What, in your, I guess, experience, have you seen a common, I guess, acommonality between companies that makes them success? Is there anything or, oris there nothing ?  

Mark: Yeah, great question.I mean, I think there's probably a number of things that can go into thatrecipe.

Yeah. I, I think a lot of it is thedecision framework that you apply to finding what problem you're solving. Ithink it's the way that you motivate your people. I think people wanna beinspired, I think they wanna believe, I think especially very early at ourstage, like sub 20 people you're out there to change the world.

You're, you're putting in really, reallylong hours. So it's the, it's the connection to the mission. It is the culture.And I think cultures happens when the CEO is not in the. Hmm. Right. So if youhave a founder, it's like, oh, I know the culture. We do all this stuff, andthen like, you meet the team, and like, none of that happens.

Like there's a big disconnect. We try tobe really authentic. We, we've got some really weird quirks to, to our companythat we embrace. Yeah. Aside from being like data nerds and startup junkies wejust really focus in on the things that are unique to us and that serve as amagnet to attract others that are.

Yeah. And I think that, this allcontributes. Once you get like into the scale process, then I think a lot of itis like how do you build best practices to create scalability andrepeatability? Yeah. And those are things, when your sales motion gets a littlebit bigger and whatnot, you can kind of professionalize, but Sure.

It always evolves, it's a constant work.So yeah.  

Julian: If you were to have amagic wand, what's one thing you would wish for your company to have todayrather than whether or not you can't have it or can't have it, or, Can't haveit in the near future. What's one thing that you, you wish you had today foryour company?

Mark: Five more greatengineers, . We're work, we're working on that. We, we've been blessed. We've,again, like I said, like we've had some great success with hires. We had somegreat success with investors. . Yeah. I think every founder wants to go ahundred times faster than the pace Yeah. That they're going.

So, if we could do that, that would begreat. But look, I, I would take a handful of engineers and we'd just continueto focus on building great product and making our customers happy. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. I love that.Always like to ask this question as an insight to, to, what influences you,what impacts you, kind of not only, early in your career, but also today.

What books or people have influencedyou?

Mark: So many books. I thinkearly on I was really taken with books on competitive strategy. Yeah. It justalways kind of stood out to me like how were great companies built. So, I reada lot of Drucker early in life. Some management consulting books on mindsetmanagement and understanding people.

I've been particularly motivated latelyby a bunch of sales books and customer success books. There's some really greatideas on, framing and there's great ideas on repeatability. And then I tend tojust stay on top of all the like blogs and whatnot too. So , I'm a big fan of.

I like the Saster blog. Truthfully. Ithink there's just some like really great insights there. Jason does a reallynice job, like very relatable to founders. Yeah. But yeah, like, I mean, that'skind of like a broader broader cross section, but I'm an avid reader, so I'm,I've always got a couple things on my bedside table that I.

Julian: I love that. I lovethat. And I know we're at the, the, the close of the episode here, and, and I'msure we could go into so many different topics from this point forward, but Ialways like to give our, our guests a chance to give us your plugs. Where canwe find you? Where can we support you? What are your websites?

What are your LinkedIns? Where can theaudience get involved in? Even if, if they're a founder growing a company andthey reached that, that, that, that need to start really thinking strategicallyabout where they're acquiring talent. Where can they found you? Where can they,they get.  

Mark: Well, appreciate that.

So yeah, terrain analytics.com, that'sour website. We're coming out with a new one in a few weeks, so very excitedfor that. You can email me anytime, mark Terrain Analytics. You can find me onLinkedIn. We're, we're out there, we're visible, so, uh, hit us up withquestions. We're always happy to chat.

Julian: Awesome. Mark, it'sbeen such a pleasure. Not only learning about your background, your experienceand what train's doing, but I think you, you kind of, how you, how you'veexperienced businesses building and the different advice and, and the differentways that they can think more strategically. And, and, and you're right,companies are being a little bit more, slow to say yes and quick to say no, butI think it's all around being, being very thoughtful about the decisions theymake.

And it's really cool to hear about howyou're enabling companies to make thoughtful decisions. Especi. With talent,which is, which is as they say, the, the biggest indicator for success, whichis hiring the right people and, and building, products around that. So I hopeyou enjoyed yourself and thank you again for being on the show.

Mark: I did. Thanks so muchfor having me. I'm a huge fan of your podcast. It's been great to chat withyou. So thank you so much.  

Julian: Amazing. Thank you.

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