Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we're here withAye Moah, CEO and co-founder of Boomerang, which is the leader in thoughtfulproductivity software on different Email platforms that empowers people to focuson what matters most. Mo ah I'm so excited to chat with you and learn about thelong journey you've had at, at Boomerang and it's such an exciting process,especially as you know now.

I think more so than ever, companiesare. Ultra fixated on productivity. We're thinking about, running leancompanies. We're thinking about how to maximize people's not only skillsets,but their productivity in, in ways that they can impact work day to day. And asfounders, know, it's something we obsessed about o often.  

So I'm excited to hear what you areworking on and, and how that's enabling employees and founders to, to workmore, more efficiently. But before we get into all that, if we were to thinkback before Boomerang, what were you doing before you started the company?  

Aye: I was working in userexperience design and product management in different startups in Boston. So I,yeah, graduated from college and then started joining big companies and it keptgoing smaller and smaller. Yeah. Until we started boomerang and I think it kindof was kind of a very clear indicator of how I was gonna go is at every companythat I worked for. Yeah. I was always the kind of the productivity geek oradvocate.

Yeah. Looking at new tools, trying outdifferent things, scripts. Yeah. And kind of sharing with other people in my,team. Immediate coworkers like, Hey, have you seen this new tool that I'mtrying out? And that kind of extended out to when we eventually started our ownproductivity company. So I think it's kind of a natural progression.

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ialways like to talk to founders with a product background because I think asfounders we may have. Maybe an idea of what we think people in the userexperience will be, but oftentimes we get it wrong. And, and in particular,what have you seen in, in your background experience where founders or productsmay not have the ideal user experience?

And what do you go to, to, to help kindof, Alleviate or reliever even support or encourage a better experience whenbuilding product.  

Aye: I think it's a lotabout going to the real source, which is the users and never assuming you arethe users. Yeah, and it's especially tricky. One, you are building a veryhorizontal tool like weaving, right?

We are building email calendar,scheduling, meeting scheduling, and everybody kind of felt. They are the users,or they could be the users because they're using email every day. Right? Sowhen we're designing, when we are talking to our customer, we are writingemails to our. Marketing emails your customers, it's very easy to fall intothat trap of not actually going to the source.

Right? Yeah. And I think there are a lotof, different started methodology that people talk about. Go talk to the users.Who is going to use it? Who is going to want it? Mm-hmm. . and what we'd doneat the, and this is a very strong company culture for us. Mm-hmm. , from thevery beginning we did things like user field studies because what we wanted toknow was how do people actually use email?

How do people actually use their meetingscheduling tools? And the way that we did was just follow people around. Thefirst part of our company history, I would actually basically beg people to.Hey, can I come? When you get to work, like between, eight or nine Yeah. Can'tsit with you to see the first part of your day, how you handle your inbox.

Yeah. That gave us so much insight intolike, people when you just like do surveys or something, people say thingslike, I'm overwhelmed by email, or I hate these, junk emails and all thosethings that they talk about. Yeah. When you actually go and sit down behindthem. Problems are not what they say the problems are.

And you start to see, okay, like junkemails are yes a problem, but you delete them in less than one seconds. Yeah.So they don't actually take up that much of your time. Right. So I think that'sthe main advantage that we have because of my UX background as a founder, is wealways go Yeah. To the very source of the problem and actually observe theusers in their natural habitat.

Yeah. And understand. Insight about whatis the real problem and what, how we can solve it. Because we usually, as afounders, we tend to start from the solution and try to find the problem. Yeah.And true understanding of the user problem actually guide you in every part ofthe way. Yeah. Whether you make product decision, marketing, email, customersuccess, demo.

Yes. All of that come from like who theuser is, what they are thinking right now at this moment. Mm-hmm. , what do wewant them to know and that. You egg space thinking.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What was,what was the reception of, of when you would go visit people and, and what werethose common problems that you would see that, that they would have going throughtheir inbox?

And I'm trying to think about, I'm surethere are things that annoy me in my email, but maybe there's a lot that I'munaware of that is just taking me longer than I, than I need to accomplish atask. What were you seeing and, and how are people receiving you? I mean,having a, having a shadow in the office is so interesting, especially now with,with everything.

I guess desperate.  

Aye: Yes. So it, it is alittle bit harder now, and now it's mostly virtual. Like share your wholescreening and we'll just kind observe you. Okay. This is pre covid that I'mtalking about and people tend to like, the first like few minutes, they werekind of awkward about it and then they kind of forget you were there.

Because the way that you want to observe,and this is from the UX training, is you try to be as neutral. You don't makereaction, you don't make sound. You try to be a, a silent shadow, right? Yeah.And what we found was people were actually, a lot of the time their problem isgetting sidetracked and do different things.

So you will see, okay, I got an email,it's. Something I need to look up somewhere. They go there, then they are indifferent tab, different things, different contexts, another 10, 15 minutes,and then people go from one thing to another. So they don't have this like, I'mgoing to, accomplish X, Y, and Z.

Yeah. That's setting the intention forthe time. So they just kind of like float through their inbox and going off towherever it takes him. Then the other one is we also. Meeting schedulingusually takes 20 to 30% of the people's time that when they're going throughtheir inbox, because they see, oh, I need to schedule this, pull up theircalendar, try to find the time transcribing or whatever that they do.

Then they are off to like, oh, now I seethis calendar appointment that I need to reschedule. Then they are off todifferent stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what we found was, ability to kind ofstay focused on tests like what you need to do. Mm-hmm. . And then the other partthat people get sidetracked is they get email that they can't deal with rightnow.

Yeah. They need to deal with later. Andthat's part of why like we know Boomerang was a critical part of the, abilityto move your email. Ah-huh. to a future time was a very critical part of likehow to. Through your inbox and get your mental load square away. Yeah. This isthe other part that we learned is people get overwhelmed, not just because oflike number of emails of the digital bits on your screen.

It's the mental load I need to rememberabout this email. Yeah. In a week. Yeah. And they don't have a easy tool.That's part of their workflow to deal with it. Yeah. So yeah, we were findinglike, and then there are times. They will think of something to remind somebody,but it's not the right time yet.

So then that's part of like the soundlater and like making sure, okay, I need to remind this person only if theydidn't respond to me by this date. Yeah. So those kind of things again ismental overhead that weights people down, not actually the actual bits and youknow what you write there. Yeah. So having these tools to offload your mental.

Overhang is been the main way to getproductivity. Right. So it's the clearing of your what needs to be taken careof. Right. And then we also learned, when we started to think a little bit moreand deeper into the research is energy management more than time management. Sowhen you have the highest amount of energy, focus and clarity, , sometimespeople kind of suck into this inbox where, accept your decision.

Like, sorry, I, I'm gonna restart. Yeah.So. one, people have the, highest focus and mental clarity in the morning theyget into the inbox. Mm-hmm. , and then that kind of step all of their energyaway because Yeah, inbox is a series of decisions to be made. Right. So then bythe time they're done with it, they have decision fatigue.

They don't have the mental energy todeal with the hard stuff. Yeah. So then, It kind of get your day completelysidetracked. Right? And at the end of the day you're like, I don't know what Igot done today. It just feels like I'm doing a lot. Right. It, it's busy,right? But you didn't get to move the important strategic thing moving forwardand founders, that's the main thing, right?

We get so many things demanding our attention,and if we always go from like urgent things that other people demand of us. Wedon't have enough time and mental energy to deal with the strategic long termthings that we need to drive forward as the founder.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah. And, andthinking about, kind of that experience and that process as a founder, I'm, I'mthinking about how do you integrate with so many different technologies andconnect them in, in such a seamless way that it, it doesn't add another windowthat you have to go through, which I think everyone.

Everyone knows about, how many windowssomebody could go through before they kind of lose attention, right? Yes. But,but I think it's more complicated than that because going to a window inessence is, is is taking your attention to something else. How, how, what isthe challenge about building technology that integrates with so many differentpieces and, and, and, and having experience that you don't feel thatintegration, it doesn't feel it feels extremely.

Aye: Yeah. I think that waspartly why we went with the route that we did. Yeah. Is building on top ofexisting email platforms so that people don't have to go off of their naturalworkflow. Right. We want to keep people in their natural, natural habitat. Theydon't have to change, they don't have to implement yet another productivitysystem because when you do that, the maintaining the productivity system alsotakes energy and sometime.

The time saving that you get is notreally offset by the amount of effort you have to put to keep the end likesystem maintained. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why we build Boomerang everythingaround where are people already spending their time? Yeah. And can we be partof their workflow as intrusively? As and intrusively as possible?

Yeah. It can be just part of like, youneed this right now. Here is a button, you need this. Here we are giving youhere. And I think that's really tough as a founder. Yeah. It's a strategy thatyou have to make thinking we are going to build on top of somebody else'splatform. Yeah. Then you don't have full control of the user experience.

Right. Yeah. You have to fit into wherethey. . And so you're a little bit at the mercy of the platform partner. Yeah.Yeah. But at the same time, retention and people coming back and using it andbeing part of their daily workflow is a little bit easier. Right, right.Because if you are some other destination, making sure people come back toyour.

side to your tab, to your app day afterday is a struggle. Yeah. So for us, retention is we are in their Gmail, we arein their Outlook. Yeah. Right. We just need to make sure that they get on boardand started using it, and then once they started using it and know how to usethis. You just become part of, like, you're just part of their naturalday-to-day workflow.

Julian: Yeah. And justthinking about, with productivity tools, I feel like it's, it's difficult interms of the, the where to make money, essentially, where the pricing modelcomes from. Mm-hmm. and, and where essentially how you, how you can offer themaximum amount of features and capability to really kind of, Have a user synctheir teeth in and, and have it implemented into the process.

But, avoid, say the pitfalls of like thefreemium model, which I think we all kind of mm-hmm. it, it, it's tough becausewe all, enjoy the, the free features, but once we hit that, that, barrier, it'shard to make a decision. So how did you think about. For your tool forBoomerang how did you think about pricing and, and where did you end up landingand was it, was it the same the whole time?

Aye: It's been the same thewhole time. Wow. We have raised pricing recently mainly because of, just tokeep up with inflation and everything else that's going on. Sure, sure. . Westarted out with free trial and freemium on top of each other. Right. I thinkthey now have a new name called Reverse Trial.

That's the new . New bangle , yeah.Yeah. Name in the start of land for something we've been doing for 12 years.Yeah. Which is, you come in, you get the, all the features as a Pearl userwithout credit card, without anything. You just install and you are able. , seethe full value of the product. Mm-hmm. , and it's a very self-serve.

Nobody has to approve you. You just goahead. You don't need to go do a demo to be able to try it. Mm-hmm. you installit two minutes later is already ready for you to take full advantage of thefull suite of the product. Yeah. And we were thinking about in a way that kindof. partly. Mainly it's like we want to be part of your user daily workflow.

Yeah. And once you become like a part oftheir daily workflow, you don't have to worry about retention. You don't haveto worry about proving your value. Right. And so we basically decided thatlet's give them the free trial period with full features and then they're gonnastart using and they're gonna get used.

Living life with Boomerang in theiremail. Right? Yeah. And then at some point we cut them off . Yeah, yeah, yeah.And then they hit the paywall. And even then you, if you are like a light user,you don't really need to use, I think we have a lot of like students and peoplewho use it casually in their personal email.

And for those people, we want them to beable to use it without a problem. Yeah. And then people who are actuallygetting business value out of. , they will hit the paywall. And even thatpaywall is very gentle nudges. We don't just like cut you off right away. Wesay, Hey, you already used this much. Sure. Do you like to upgrade?

Or like, and we progressively get alittle bit more annoying until they get cut off. Yeah. And that has beenworking really well, mainly because we've been, putting ourself in the user'sshoes and I being, if I am the user, if I try out a productivity, How would Ilike to be reminded that I'm getting the value and then be asked to pay?

Yeah. So we have this very empathy, wekind of move through our payment process and pricing and the whole way we askpeople to pay with empathy and humor. And that's been kind of like a part ofcompany identity. Yeah. And people actually love it, like, yeah. And I. it ispart of why our, like conversion rate is pretty good, is Yeah.

It doesn't have to be, super businessand super strict about like, Hey, you need to pay.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andthink, thinking about, I guess my curiosity is being that you, you've done thisfor so long with Boomerang, how has the product evolved over the years andwhat's the traction now and what are you excited about in terms of the nextkind of stage of growth for Boomerang?

Aye: Yeah. I think when wefirst started, right, it was literally two buttons in Gina. One is ability tomove the email out and bring it back later. So it's now known as news, right?Yeah. And then the other one is send later, which is you schedule it, you go itout later, right? And then we kept evolving from mostly customer guidance.

People are asking for. , you do this,but you don't do this. Can you add this? Right? Mm-hmm. , and partly because weare users of our own CU like product and 30 to 40% of our team are former usersor customer joining the team. Yeah. So we have this very user as the North Starand what they need as a company, product roadmap, guidance.

Mm-hmm. . And, but there are other timeswhere we. Try something because technology was the right time for us to build asolution that people need. So we, yeah. An example would be when we buildRespondable, which is a AI assistant tool for. getting your email to be moreresponsible, right? Mm-hmm. , so we're sending something, we are analyzing itreal time and helping you make it more respondable so that you are more likelyto get a response.

Mm-hmm. , and that part didn't come fromcustomer because. , we kind of realized that technology was there for us to actuallybuild it and be Yeah. Useful for the customers. So we introduced it and likethe response was just tremendous. Yeah. So there are times where, the users arejust like banging down our door and like build this.

And then there are times where we foundthe innovation is there and the users would appreciate it and introduce it.Yeah. We have added, and then there are parts where kind of the market and likethe society kind of got there. Mm-hmm. . So recently, well it's probably lastthree to five years people have been starting to talk about the right todisconnect, right?

Mm-hmm. , it started in Europe startingto spread to North America. So Canada has started to put in some of the laws aswell where the employees should have the right. disconnect from work duringtheir personal time. Mm-hmm. , and we understand that. We understand the casainterruption it has on people's productivity.

So we started building the tools that acompany can say, Hey, all our employees can actually not have to respond andanswer emails in their personal time. Right. Yeah. And they are. Differentcompanies starting to, even the American companies too, starting to understandand realize that wellness of the employee is a business benefit to them too.

Yeah. So there are parts where we seethe trend and what we need and and always guided by our mission of makingpeople more productive. So sometimes things are like what user asks, there'sparts where technology is the one that's driving. Or kind of the market forcesand like yeah. Where everybody is in terms of thinking about productivity, kindof build us out like what we need to do next.

Yeah. Yeah. So the last frontier for us,for your question, where we are looking to move is I think we are adding to themeeting scheduling space. . So far, all the meeting scheduling tools areeither, you do all the work, right? Look up all the times, type it into anemail, which is manual is not fun, or you can send a link to the other personand kind of shift the work of scheduling to the other person and like go findthe time.

Yeah. Which kind of signal a little bitlike. I don't wanna do the work. So here is a link that is convenient to me,but you do the work and find the time, right? Yeah. So we thought about whatcan we do with technology that we have now where it's still as easy for thesender. You're just sending with two clicks, but for the recipient it'sactually so much easier.

Yeah. So we are actually changing theway people schedule meetings by. , right In the email there's a live,interactive image. Mm-hmm. of all the times I'm available so that Julian, youdon't have to go click open multiple browsers and 20 things. Yeah. And thentype in all the, this is Julian and this is Julian email address.

Right, right. You don't have to do allthat. All you get is an image. You click it, the system know this is Julian.Everything is booked. It's in both our calendar. and I think this is howmeeting scheduling should be going forward. Yeah. So that's our next frontier.I love that. Taking away people schedule meetings.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It'samazing the intricate, but also such necessary changes you're making. And I lovethe piece about not only, a lot of founders will go to their user and buildaround that. They, they go get feedback, go through user experiences and demos,but it's, it's, it's even more impressive and I think it's a little bit morechallenging.

See where the innovation is and take achance on, on testing something that is gonna be, that you feel it would behelpful and being right. I, I would feel like that's the best part about thatexperience. I'm always curious, being that there's so many external factorsthat founders have to, manage and handle what, what are some of the biggestchallenges that you face today?

Aye: I think we areadjusting to being remote and adding new people that we haven't met to theteam. I think it's not a unique challenge to us. Sure. I think every founder iskind of like learning the new way of how do we, how do we do this? Yeah. Theother one is, we have always been a profitable company, right?

We grow with our own revenue and I thinkit's. now become more on trend, right? Mm-hmm. , tech companies with thefunding is not as easy anymore. People are starting to see the things that theway we do, which is kind of like actually a great thing for us. Like it wasactually super challenging to operate a company the way we did, where we careabout how much we spend.

We have very thoughtful, thinking abouthow to deploy our investment dollars. Yeah. And this has been the way weoperate all the time. And now everybody is seeing it this way. So I am actuallyfinding it. The current situation and how people have changed their thinkingYeah. Is actually more, more in line with how we have always been.

So I'm like, Hey, now I don't have toconvince people this is, this is a good way to do business. Yeah. . I don'tknow.  

Julian: Yeah, that's what,what? What was that? I guess just, just staying on that point, what was the. .Where, where did you come up with that thought? Because a lot of ti, you builtBoomerang during the time where, funding dollars were, were pretty pretty available.

E e everybody was trying to find a newunicorn to invest in. And, and then companies and, and leaders were making kindof outrageous growth, kind of whether it was predictions or investment intocertain parts of the business. I was talking to another founder the other dayand they. One, one hard reality about fundraising is that sometimes you don'tknow what that money is used for.

So then when you receive it, you startbuying everything. You buy all these tools, hiring all these people, and not necessarily,evaluating the impact of each decision. How are you ahead of your time at thatpoint? And I truly mean ahead of your time as, as is. Being a profitablecompany nowadays is not only necessary, but it was not common as most companieswere, were, working with debt or limited runway and always having to fundraise.Where did that come from?

Aye: I think it was alwaysabout like this need to kind of control our destiny. Mm-hmm. and having. do itin a sustainable way. Yeah. Like we do not want chaos in the sense that youare. Right. Like founders would raise money and then the expectation is you'regonna spend it in the next 24 months.

If you're not spending it, your VCs andinvestors are yelling at you. What are you doing? Not deploying the investmentfast enough. Right? Yeah. And we do not have that problem. Cause we weregrowing with our own customer revenue. , the whole team, the whole DNA of thecompany is every dollar we spend, what's the impact?

Is it actually necessary? Are we losingmore money than, there are a lot of marketing. Yeah. Startup marketing landwhere they're like, oh, I grow, a hundred percent and 200% and yeah, a thousandpercent. And their ROI was less than one. Yeah. And like it's. Definitely a loteasier to spend $3 to make $1.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. So we didn'treally mean to choose it the hard way on purpose. Sure. We were just, this isjust the resources that we had, and we really didn't want this like growth forthe sake of growth. Right. Yeah. We wanted to have this. thoughtful addition tothe team, and we wanted to be very mindful of how the team and the culture isevolving as we grow.

Yeah. So that kind of limited the way westand, the way we add people, the ma everything that we do kind of grow fromthere. It's like, is this sustainable? Is this sensible? Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. And what do you,what do you think the biggest I don't wanna say, I don't wanna say wa, waste ofcapital, but I guess the.

Inappropriate way to use capital thatmost founders use. I what, what, what are some things that they're not?Necessarily that they're investing too much money into that, that you've seenfounders  

Aye: make that mistake. Ithink you're kind of seeing the market correction now, right? Yeah. I thinkfounders tend to have this kind of, competitiveness with headcounts, right?

Right. If you go and talk to a newfounder, or you are at a start of event, they're like, oh, how big is yourcompany? Well, first, how much did they raise? Or like, how much did you raiseand who did you raise it from? And usually my answer is like, Right. And then,and then they're like, oh, how big is your team?

And I'll be like, I don't know. We have,like we, we've grown very slowly, right? Yeah. We only added when we reallyneeded to. So I think there's this like default assumption of like, if yourcompany has more people as a founder, you are more successful. . Mm-hmm. . Andthere was less talk about like, how much revenue did you make?

Right. Right. And is that revenueprofitable? How much margin do you have? Like, how productive are youremployees? Yeah. Those conversations were not common. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No,no. You start to, people are starting to think about, oh, like every employee,every hack count that you had, is that a net positive or net negative to thecompany?

They weren't thinking about it. Yeah. Ithink, boat press, boat VCs, just like typical startup environment, people willfocus on the round measure of success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they, theyrespect a founder who raised 10 million more than. The founder who has a 10million arr. Yeah. Even though having 10 million AR is a lot more valuable tothe company and the shareholders, right?

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Onefounder said that VCs will often invest in. Like users in, in activity andprivate equity are the companies that will buy or invest in startups with anactual profitable arr. And I thought that was such an interesting, I guess likejuxtaposition be because we value this PC investment so much more than thisother investment or other investment vehicles.

But I mean, I'm in the same boat. Themore employees that we. The more stressed I get about how to manage and how tomake sure people are busy versus enabling people and optimizing processes and,and making them really maximizing. And not, not people's I guess, energy oranything like that, but maximizing the, the amount of things that they can dowith as little input as possible.

Which is, which is a fascinating thingto me as a founder because yeah, as you said, it just, it's in line with, withwhat's most important, which is the profitability, profitability of thecompany. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess if everything goes, what, what's the longterm vision for Boomerang?  

Aye: I think we willcontinue to build the things that we would like the world to have.

Right. That is the fundamental point ofBoomerang. Yeah. Is to help people have extra time for things that matter intheir lives. Yeah. So we have customers in. Various segments of the industryand everything that they do, we are making sure that they will have more mentalenergy by offloading all their, things that they have to keep track of.

Yeah. Making so that things are moreefficient for them. So yeah, if you are astronaut, you have time to actually godesign your spaceship, and if you're architect, you have time to design yourmasterpiece. Like all the things that we think as busy work, they still need tohappen, right? Sure. The collaboration, the communication.

How do we make it so that people can doit without so much like energy mm-hmm. and time. Mm-hmm. .  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I alwayslike this next question and I'm gonna hit you with some rapid fire questions. Icall 'em my founder FAQs. And so let's, let's see where we get. So, firstquestion is, what's hard about your day?

Aye: What's hard about myday? Knowing what to be done. Mm-hmm. immediately. So prioritization Yeah. Isa, every founder's problem. Yeah. We have so many things to do and yeah.Knowing this must be done today and what can wait and actually making time forlonger term. Right. The Eisenhower Matrix, urgent versus important, thenon-urgent, important things, getting breathing room and really, Gettingyourself into that flow state.

creating and making things that have alonger term impact. Yeah, that's hard.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I've readsomething impressive on your profile, which was that the majority of your teamwas, was actually women and, and especially a, a significant portion, if not, Ithink close to half was. Was on the engineering team as, as well.

And I think companies cha are always sochallenged with hiring diversity, just meaning having, actual representation ontheir team of, of reality, which is how I take it. But how, how do you gothrough that hiring process and, and for founders who are struggling withhiring, diverse or hiring a diverse team with different perspectives,backgrounds, and experience that all can contribute, what advice would you givethem and what, what made you successful in your hiring?

That allowed you to get to I think a morerepresentative team. I don't wanna say diverse cause I just think there's toomuch connotation with that word, but I think a more representative team is, isa little bit more accurate.  

Aye: Okay. So I think I'llanswer your first questions. Mm-hmm. is, how do we do it? We reverse engineerthe hiring process. So a lot of our hiring process try to look for the actualevidence of doing the work. Mm-hmm. rather. whether you are more confident andput at interviewing, right? Mm-hmm. , there are a lot of tech hiring processthat really focus on people who are confident with the bravado and they justhave present Well, yeah.

Right? And we try to make this interviewprocess really beneficial and like really shine the spotlight on how you wouldactually do. and figured out what would an introvert, , how would an introvertfeel about this interview process? Right. And kind of design around that. So alot of our interview process, we don't have whiteboard coding questions.

We try to actually, like one tech interviewquestion that we have is literally our CTO walking you through Auto code base.Yeah. And, and people are like, how is that an interview? And. , you will seewhat they ask, what they focus on. Yeah, what like what type of personality andcollaborativeness they have.

Just by walking them through our co,like existing code base. Yeah. We do pair programming. We actually have a proproblem and write the solution with them together. Yeah. So a lot of ourinterview process. Thinking about what do you need to do this function? So ifit's marketing, we figured out what is the sexercise that we are going to do.

Mm-hmm. , we pay the candidate to do thesexercise if it's a take home, and then we just treat them as our coworker.Yeah. And we try to simulate the day in the life off. So they come in and weare like, Hey, we have this project. , let's talk about how we are going toexecute it. Yeah. And then basically go through and just pretend they are acoworker for a day.

Wow. That's how we were able to havethe, diversity that we have. Speaking of that, that was pre pandemic. Mm-hmm. ,We don't have the same ratio anymore. Mm-hmm. , there was some changes and, newhire over time, so we will get back there. Yeah. I, I believe that we justhaven't, we haven't hired that much recently.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. AndI mean, with market fluctuating and, and the challenges of hiring, but it'sawesome to hear about yeah. The sharing the, the, the code base was interestingbecause I myself like, what is the engagement? But you, you can probablyimagine it and thinking through it now, it's, it's, it's about the, thecommunication piece and, and what they're asking you exactly.

And how they're, the questions Yeah.And, and what they're diving into. And maybe even like, oh, why do you use.Versus this other technology. Mm-hmm. , this other infrastructure. That's, I,that's way more illuminating than asking questions and, and evaluating answers,because answers are just hard to, to, to, to quantify if there's not, or qualifyif there's not something you can quantify.

Right. You can't measure it. That's sofascinating. Back back to the FAQs. I love that point you made. If you were towave a magic wand what's one thing you would wish for your company to haveright now?  

Aye: Huh. Probably a salesteam. We've been getting to that point. So, we don't know how to do enterprisesales.

Yeah. Because we grew all our revenueand, throughout company history with all direct to. Self-serve customers and wehave some enterprise customer that grown themself from, individual user growinginto team, growing into the new company, but we don't have a enterprise salesprocess.

Yeah. So we are learning, I'm learningmyself right now. So yeah, if that's just. Matt, we have a magic wand and Ihave a functional, excellent sales team already billed tomorrow. That would begreat.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I lovethat. I love that. What do you do as a founder to decompress or, or re-energizeyourself at going through the ups and downs of, of being a founder, running astartup and dealing with these external pressures?

What do you do? To, to, torecharge.  

Aye: I have a dailyroutines. , we've, been design and tweak over the years to make sure that I'mfunctional and sane. mostly. Yeah. In the morning I actually do 20, 30 minutesof yoga before I start my workday. And that just like really get me both,center, make sure my breathing and everything is actually.

to not so stress out Yeah. Before youeven start the day. Yeah. I don't check my email before I, until I finish myyoga and like handle the hard things. Yeah. The other part is my co-founder andhusband Alex. Take a walk every day at lunch, we go around the neighborhood, soyeah. And we have a very green, like we're in the hills of Berkeley, so lovethat.

Just seeing nature and having that doseof, being in the, out in the nature and like, regardless of what the weatheris, if it's raining, Well, it's California, so it's just sometimes we ring.Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's okay rain. But most of the time it's not that hard, butlike regardless of what the weather is, we go have our daily walk to just kindof decompress, look at the trees and just kind of be out there.

And it's kind of our like foundertradition every time we have to make. Any major decision or strategic decision?All three co-founders. I have another co-founder, Mike. We will go out forwalks and just talk through things. Yeah, yeah, and that's been very helpful.Like it's, it's different from like sitting in a meeting room or even on Zoomwhere you're trying to talk through.

These long-term things that you don'tknow if it's a right decision or round decision. Yeah. Has really helped to putyourself in nature and just be moving.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Another father mentioned is a similar point where he's like, I, before I doanything, I go outside for at least 15 minutes a day and it, and it really kindof helps them recapture the energy, but, Like, it almost restarts the, themechanisms in your mindset to be able to think Yeah.

Whether it's critically or, or with,with a fresh, with a fresh mindset. I always like to ask this question to, tokind of not only get selfish advice for myself, but also for our audiencewhether it's early in your career or now, what books or people have influencedyou the most?  

Aye: I think a lot. I don'tknow. I read a lot, so it's hard for me to pick . Every, every book hasinfluenced me in some way, right? Mm-hmm. , do you want advice for whatfounders should read?  

Julian: No. Whatever. Whateveryou, whatever inspires you.  

Aye: So, I, I loveinfluenced by Cialdini. It's really helpful for thinking through. . Like justpeople's motivations.

Yeah. And how to be persuasive. Cause asfounder, our job is to convince people of one thing or another. Yeah. All daylong. Like we're the customer employee. Yeah. New hire partner. Everyinvestors, everything that we do is to be persuasive. Yeah. So influence hasbeen like basically a tool that I reread every, two to three years to.

Yeah, refresh my memory. I make surethat my new hires and anybody who's in any times of customer facingcommunication, role, product, all of them, I make sure they read it. Yeah. Whatelse? , there's a very simple UX book called, don't Make Me Think. Oh, and it'slike not that big. It's, maybe 180 pages or so.

Uhhuh . And I think you don't have to bea user experience designer to make lives easier for all your users andcustomers. Yeah. And I really highly recommend it. Like it is. It's kind of a,once you read it, things just kind of stick with you and you can kind of applythe fundamentals everywhere. What else?

I don't know. . Yeah, I, I, I read toomuch and I sometimes can't remember like, what are all the, and then the otherpart of my inspiration is from research paper, so I actually love reading.Yeah. What people are trying out, experimenting in terms of about productivity,happiness, wellbeing, and there are lots of, awesome researchers out thereworking.

the stuff, and I love actually readingthe research papers, .  

Julian: I love that. I lovethat. I love always a researcher at heart, always a scientist at heart. I, Ilove that. I feel like it, the, the research papers deal with the differentdepth, and I think what I like about it is the reflection on the research themost.

It's the things they didn't consider orthat they didn't test for, or that they could have that, that really, I guessfor me at least, like some c. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mo I know we're at theend of this show here, and I wanna make sure you get a chance to give us yourplugs. Where can we find you?

Where can we support and where can wedownload Boomerang, give us your LinkedIns, your, your websites everything to,to be a part of Boomerang and, and what you're doing. .  

Aye: Yeah. boomerangapp.comn find all our products. I'm pretty easy to find on both LinkedIn and Twitter.

My full name, a Y e m o a h is my handleon both. I think. . That's about it. .  

Julian: Amazing. Well, Mo it'sbeen such a pleasure having you on the show and, and going through your founderjourney and, and the success you've had over such long years, and I love, thethought about the thoughtfulness behind how you spend your money and, and howyou price and how you deal with your customers.

I think a lot of founders, especiallynow with external pressures of. Mean, whether it's macroeconomics or not, canlearn a lot from how you've been doing it for so long undercover and, and it'simpressive to see. And, and I really hope you enjoyed yourself and thank youagain for being on the show.

Aye: Thanks for havingme.  

‍