01:38 Hey, welcome back to the show. And today I'm super stoked because we've got not only a tech but a service provider doing some amazing things. Projjall, would you please tell us who you are and what do you do?

01:46 Cool. I guess at this point, I'm a father and a husband above all else, but I'm also a tech CEO, a CEO coach and an angel investor who commutes between Singapore and the Bay Area and is very focused on helping knowledge workers find their full potential.

02:07 I love it. I mean, I hear the commute from Singapore to the Bay Area is about the same as going from South Bay to Sacramento. Is that about right?

02:16 There you go. There you go. Different modes of travel, but about the same time.

02:22 That's awesome. All right, so talk to me. So you do a lot of work in the Bay Area. You're in that tech hub. You're doing a lot of stuff. What are you doing? Who are you servicing and what do you do?

02:34 Yeah. Yeah. So I run a company called Onloop. And today we work largely with venture and private equity back tech companies and creative agencies to help their businesses sort of get the most out of their people. And a large part of that is sort of giving managers both a framework as well as a product that allows them to do all the things a manager should be doing. in a frictionless manner. So the way that sort of health got revolutionized by fitness apps and I see the Apple Watch and the ordering, I think what those products have done is that it's helped break, held down into diet, sleep, exercise, and help people build micro habits. And we do the same thing for managers because ultimately being a manager is managing motivation, managing someone's goals doing in our feedback and helping them grow. And it's not rocket science. And a lot of consultants and gurus have tried to complexify leadership and management to sell consulting work, no offense Todd. But we try and demystify that and make that as simple as possible so that every manager can do it and maybe potentially in the future, maybe I can do it and we'll need fewer managers.

03:54 So I'm totally with you. I gotta tell you, the most common theme I've ever dealt with on this podcast that I hear from people is their biggest challenge to growing and scaling their business is their people. And when you're talking about working with mid -level managers, and I love your analogy and your parallel to health and nutrition, we are watching our metrics, we are watching our steps, we're watching all these things. But what are we doing to improve our managerial health? I love this.

04:26 No, thank you. And listen, I think that, you know, I came at this from a problem, right? Like, and so I've never worked in HR a day in my life, but I've sort of grown and scaled teams in a variety of contexts. I spent three and a half years at Uber before I started Onloop and sort of saw that company sort of go through a lot, good, bad, good, bad, and ugly. And I was just constantly frustrated as to why sort of, you know, our communication tools and project management tools got a ton better, but I had to sit in workday and reflective and fill up forms every few months. And I'm like, this is the dumbest thing ever. And, and, and there has to be a better way of doing this. And that's how Onloop was born.

05:17 I love it, I love it. Now I have equally seen this inside of the inner workings of Google and their inefficiencies and managers not really knowing how to motivate, how to increase their productivity, let alone lead a team to being productive. There's not really a lot of incentive to be productive sometimes in these large organizations. How do you solve that?

05:38 I don't think it's an incentive problem. I think it's a process problem. I think it's a process problem at first. And I'm sorry to say this, but OKRs have been one of the bans of businesses for the last 20 years. And OKRs were built to help businesses streamline what they achieve. But then they got gerrymandered into being used for individual goals. And actually, most of our customers have tried and failed OKRs. And that's because the work of a knowledge worker cannot be fit into neatly OKRs at the beginning of a quarter. And so we define goals as targets, projects, and skills. Those are the foundations of what each person is doing. And every person can articulate what targets, projects, and skills they're working on. They can't articulate what OKRs they're working on. And the lack of individual level goal clarity is what sort of has led to the lack of productive organizations, not the lack of incentives. And the fact that most incentive processes are largely a eloquent popularity contest and who screams the loudest in a calibration room and doesn't actually quantify and measure work. And so I think the reason why this is sort of an unsolved problem is I think we focus in the wrong place. And that's because no one actually built products with managers and teams in mind. They've built it for functional orgs. And we saw what happened when people build products for IT, right? Google Slides was born not because someone was trying to pitch Google Slides to CIOs. Google Slides was born because people started building slide making tools that work for the end user. And so why have we been building feedback and goals tools for bureaucratic HR management and that's what it's broken. And so it's not like, it's not rocket science as to why it's broken, but you need audacity to go solve it for the right person.

07:46  You know, take a step back here because what you said is still like ringing loud in my ears here with, you said target projects and skills. Okay, I, you know, honestly, I had a debate about this literally about three weeks ago. I was in a workshop with about 24 CEOs of small businesses and we were discussing vision mission values. And I see what you're doing with this because, I had this huge debate and I had people read mission statements and I was like, that is not a mission. That is like some vague ambiguous place you're trying to bring your business to. Let's be very like economically focused in what is your objective with the mission. And I think that's exactly what you're trying to say is that there's targets, right? I mean, you're essentially reshaping that terminology instead of saying this broad vision, and these broad mission statements that don't really drive you to action. And then values, they are skills. They are what do you need to be actively doing to hit your targets with projects, right?08:56 Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. So actually, we do think that actually, when we work with a business, they typically have OKRs, right? So and actually, you can come up with OKRs for a business. So what we will do is take those and convert them to target products and skills and then help the rest of the organization come up with their own target product skills and link that back to sort of company level target product skills. And so, and I think work around values or operating principles and mission and mission is more around inspiring purpose, right? Which is about how do you develop leadership in an organization and then targets, products and skills are about how do you then manage that to get to the same level? And people also use those words interchangeably, right? And vision, mission and values are much more in service of leadership and defining targets, products and skills are much more in service of management.

09:57 Right, right. I love it. I think what you've done here is awesome. I think that honestly, the debate that I was having, it almost got confrontational. I'm just kidding. But it was actually very funny because we were dealing with people who felt like, hey, I've done a good job of building a mission statement or putting my team on a mission. But in actuality, they had, they did set a good vision. But when it comes to fulfilling projects, a good manager, cannot be a great manager unless they are project centered and they are fulfilling and hitting objectives. And what does your app do? And how are you making this happen? And how are you helping that facilitate that?

10:43 Yeah, I think the thing that's been most broken about other products that have tried to solve this problem is that the input layer is a complete nightmare, right? So people absolutely hate spending any time with it. So it's like taking an obese population, tell them to work out, and then like actually the only gym in town is like full of mold and dusty and like, but go work out there. Cause it's like good people like no, I hate this. And so right from the start, we were like, listen, Onloop needs to be mobile native. It needs to be beautiful. And it needs to be something that we want to spend time in. That's number one. I think the second is that applied AI is a game changer. And the reason why applied AI is a game changer is that we can take people sort of unstructured thoughts, observations, and conversations, and then convert that into structure that serves management. And so we came up with our own framework that we call collaborative team development around the core hierarchies of what a manager needs to manage. So at the base of it is each team member's energy. The next layer is goals, targets, products, and skills. Then two layers of feedback. So celebrate feedback and improve feedback to identify superpowers and blind spots. And then finally, continuous learning and growth. Right? And then we make sure every manager and team member is providing inputs along those five layers and doing that in a hierarchical manner and when there are gaps, sort of nudging them to carry on. And so with that process, you can then run that on autopilot. We sort of take inspiration from the readiness score and the recovery score to come up with a clarity score. So sort of what clarity is your team operating in and what sort of next steps can you take to increase the clarity. And then when you want to run a performance review or development conversation, we sort of convert all of that into what we call a prism summary that then replaces the manual performance review. So what we aspire to do is like back to 10,000 steps, right? Like if you're doing the right micro things the right way, then technology can take care of the rest. And we can focus on the things that we're good at and technology be the right aid for it.

13:09 Interesting. So when you're talking about readiness scores, clarity scores, I've heard you mention a few different elements there. Where are you getting these scores from? How are you developing a readiness score, for example?

13:23 Yeah. So listen, I think around those five layers, you just break that down into proportion, right? So we assign 20 % weightage to having your battery in a good place, right? So if you're like, think about this as a person, as an iPhone, right? Like you can operate at 30 % battery, but if you don't charge it fast enough, that's going to die. And so that plays a role and that's 20%. The next 40 % is goals. And do you have enough goal clarity? and you have the right number and the right variety of goals, then 30 % is feedback and then the remaining 10 % is continuous growth. And then we have an algorithm around sort of where we want each of those layers to be. And then the more foundationally things are broken, the more sort of next actions are focused on the bottom layers of the pyramid. But sort of if you're doing really well on how you're tracking on motivation and productivity, then we focus on driving continuous growth and sort of recognizing that every individual is in a different place on that hierarchy in terms of what their needs are. And that can change week on week, month on month. That's not necessarily static either.

14:37  I love it. I love it. I love it. This is so aligned with me right now because we just built a growth readiness assessment that we're using to just analyze what businesses are missing the gap somewhere in their business and it keeps them stuck at certain revenue numbers. And what I love about what you're doing is you're really helping larger organizations structure their mid -level managers in a way that they can now benchmark and identify. Are my goals ambiguous? Are they really focused? Do I have clarity of what I'm actually trying to do and why I'm trying to do it? And I love it. I mean, you're literally dialed into, you're 20 steps ahead of me, man. This is cool.

15:19 No, I mean, and you know, it's really starting to come together. So, you know, one of our customers is a company called Seeknow that's out in the Midwest and it's an insure tech company that's ventured back to about 300 odd people. And, you know, we sort of met their VP operations and they were like, we have no idea how to make sure stuff trickles down to the org, right? Like we know what the high level goals are and where we want to go, but we can't sort of see how that fits into the org. end to end and you know we'll talk about growth in a second but one of the things I've absolutely loved is you're sort of growing our business through outbound because when you meet strangers they have no incentive to help you out or do anything because they're a friend so you either solve their problem or don't and so when you take complete strangers and solve their problem successfully then you know you're on to something but we have a lot of us who've who've worked in tech, we have, we're friends. And so when people put together, design advisors or sort of design partners and, VCs take 10 friends in Figma and Ocean and like, we're building with them, you don't actually know what you're doing. And often getting out of the sort of, the sort of cloud of the barrier and going into. Places like the Midwest often gives you better insight into how to build better products because sometimes people you know will not tell you what really matters.

16:54 captainscouncil.com

18:37 Yeah, no, very fair statement. And having worked in both parts of the country, I can tell you definitely, you're gonna get a lot of different feedback from the Bay Area than you are from the Midwest. And there's a lot of different people, people -ness, you know, human nature is the same, but sometimes it's shielded in different ways or there's different layers in the cities and the, I'd say the majority of the country or majority of the world, right?

19:00 We love our Midwest customers. We want more of them.

19:02 Right, I love it. So talk to me here, because the way that you've organized your business, now we've talked about what you do and who you're serving. Talk to me about your structure, because most of the time when I see a product like this, it is a tool, and you're saying that you are a tool and a service. Talk to me about that decision and why you opt to do that versus just, hey, we want to help facilitate other people doing these things with our tool versus you doing the whole thing.

19:35 Yeah, it's a very fair point. And actually, we started as a software company and raised millions of dollars very early in our process. And when you raise venture money, services is like the most bad word you can ever use in a meeting, right? So like, it has to be all software and anything that even smells of humans is terrible. But what you realize is if you're driving organizational change or culture change or any of those pieces, there is a journey you got to take companies on. And actually, one of the dirty secrets of enterprise SaaS is people signing 100K contracts early on, sort of calling it software, but it's actually a lot of hidden services sort of built in as quote unquote software. So everybody's actually doing software plus services from day zero. The question is, what you call it and sort of how you go about it. And sort of we accidentally built a framework because we just spent so much time with our customers to truly understand what is gonna help solve the problem. Because it wasn't about let's build a better mousetrap and then sell it. It's about, look, feedback and goals has been a very broken problem for a very long time and it's not a new problem. A lot of people have tried to fix it and failed. So why are we going to be successful? Now, part of it is we got timing right with applied AI and the shift to distributed work that sort of made the pain greater and gave us a new toolkit to solve it. But I think part of it also is that a lot of people told us, go be performance management, go sell to HR. And we were like, no, we're not going to. So yes, it's an existing category. So sure, we could grow revenue faster in the short run, but we're not gonna solve the problem. And if you're not gonna solve the problem, then I have no desire to build this business. And I think what the problem with sort of 0% interest rates and a lot of lose money did is that becoming a founder became cool, right? And becoming a founder is the worst career decision anybody can make. Right? So, no, but for all people, the sort of probability adjusted return on that decision is terrible. And so the only reason to do it is if you care or if you want to actually solve something. But sort of cheap capital made being a founder cool. And that meant that people wanted to build it by the mousetrap and then sell it to whoever bought it. And that's, you know, I'm an old school kind of guy and that's not the reason why I started the company I did. And it was very much about solving a problem. And then if you're focused on solving a problem, then you don't care whether it's software or services or hardware. It's about how do you solve the problem? And then you make it more efficient over time because whether it's software or services, the factor of my P&L, it shouldn't matter to the customer and so we don't shy away from solving it. Our customers come and tell us is that either they have no clarity on goals across the org or they don't have a feedback culture in the org or they don't have good managers who can really run their teams effectively or they hate the admin of performance reviews and then we solve those problems. And ideally we solve it entirely by software, but if we don't, we'll sit in their offices and get it solved, right? And that's not my customer's problem. It's my problem to figure out how that gets solved.

23:28 Right, right. But your customer, just to be clear, your customer are the businesses, not necessarily other consultants going in to help facilitate those solutions. Gotcha, gotcha.

23:39 And that over time might become a distribution strategy. So like a company called EOS that a bunch of our customers like, and actually a bunch of customers have told us that the way we think about the world and have implemented Onloop is quite aligned with how EOS works. And EOS grew and OKRs grew as methodologies through a large bunch of consultants. And there might be CTD consultants in the future that implement our approach. And that might be a viable growth strategy. But right now, we're quite focused on solving customer problems directly.

24:20 Interesting, interesting, very cool. Well, I love the methodology, I love the reasons, I love the model, and like I said, I learned early on in doing this podcast that generally speaking, most challenges with growth in companies has to do with people, processes, and tools, and it sounds like you're trying to solve all three with the same solution.

24:46 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I was lucky to see on see uber scale from 9000 27000 people and so a lot of work actually building our regional and global operating models and and you know people process tools is an operating model and and and ultimately organizational effectiveness is operating models and and and organizational effectiveness is not HR. But but people confuse the two, right? So yes, I think ultimately we see ourselves as an organizational effectiveness company and we believe in the power of applied AI and technology to do that well.

25:30 Love it, love it. Wow, what a fun conversation this has been. Before we wrap things up, I really wanna know, as you look back at your own business's growth, you've talked a lot about some of the strategy behind why you're doing things in specific ways, but what were some of the big surprises that you hit that were challenges you had to overcome to really achieve the growth you're on right now?

25:54 Yeah, I think I think one of the things that is hard and a lot of founders are divergent people but when order to Really tackle big markets you have to sometimes go very narrow before you go abroad and and And I think the one the biggest mistake people make is they talk about times and how large times matter It's garbage. Right, and you're much better off narrowing that and then going and building white hot centers in an in an age and manner. So, you know, I tell people our favorite companies are VC and private equity backed impact tech companies in the Midwest. And they're like, wow, that's specific. I'm like, I wish I was more specific, actually. And that's and that's almost not specific enough. And I think that often founders get you know, carried away in the wrong direction with investors who like go off to large markets or go off to large Tams, but actually, you know, find a very small market and make sure that the adjacencies exist and you can horizontalize over time, but find a big problem and then a very finite white -hot center to then expand from. And I wish I'd done that earlier.

27:16 I love it, I love it. that's such good advice. And we talk about this quite a bit in growth strategy sessions that we run is very much, you know, understanding who your ICP is, and then really diving in to make it more narrow and before you get large, because it's just so, it is such a valid point. You know, when you're speaking so broadly, the people aren't hearing you correctly. And yet when you speak very focused, people are like, yeah, that's my problem. I hear you.

27:46 Yeah, and actually what sells to investors is very different from what sells to customers. Very different. And often software CEOs will raise money first, right? So they sort of then take that same pitch and take it to customers. And customers like, I don't care about your vision, right? Annd where you're going to be in 10 years. All that is garbage, right? But investors love that stuff, right? But founders have to use a very different pitch for investors and a very different pitch for customers. And many founders, including me, don't always realize that early on. And because you often raise capital first, you can apply the same thing and it falls flat on its face. And so you have to also adjust how. Now that gets done.

26:40 And how did you do it? Did you raise money first and then go, or did you have a viable product? No. Okay. So how did you dance around that? How did you dance through that with your VC, with your fund?

28:55 I think we had an early app. I think one of the issues I had when I was trying to raise money is that because there's so much vitriol against anything that is HR tech, because everybody's used a terrible product that they hate the UX of, that when you talk about building something different, you had to show people what you were thinking. So we sort of had to build an early prototype to show how we were thinking about the problem, but it would be a lie to call it a product.

29:30 I get it, I get it. It was a very minimal viable product.

29:32 I think it was a very, very minimal. But I also think that when you're in a space like ours, I think it's very hard to focus on software if you don't raise money because you get dragged toward services. And if you get a If you get dragged toward services, you never end up sort of focusing on the software. And so if you were to build a tech company, I was like, there's no point in building a bootstrap tech company. You need to build a bootstrap services company and then build tech enablement or you build a tech company. And I was pretty clear we were going to try and build a tech company. And that's why we went the direction we did.

30:14  Fantastic. I love it. This is such, it has been a really, really fun conversation. I love the stories. I love the lessons that you've learned and I love the clarity with which you're trying to help other people be clear with what they're doing. Has there been somebody in your corner, somebody in your circle who's been able to impact the way that you've done this? Because this isn't very normal. And, you know, to your point, the way that you've been able to take a venture backed company and kind of do it the way you've done it isn't the most common story. So who helped to coach you through that? Or was there somebody?

30:52 I mean, there have been a lot of people, right? The way they say it takes a village to grow a child, I think the same with the company. I'll call out two people. One is a gentleman named Rob Beer, who's a CEO coach in Singapore, who I've worked with for the last couple of years. And I think what he really helped me see is what I authentically wanted to do and also sort of helped me realize the depth and uniqueness of my insight that I should go back it. Because quote unquote, I'm not a practitioner, right? Like I came at this problem as sort of a applied direction versus a theoretical direction. So, but he's been coaching folks for 25 years and he was like, listen, your level of insight around this is better and a lot of people I've met. And the second is a gentleman named Eddie Ahmed, who's an advisor of mine today, who spent most of his career in HR in Citibank and Morgan Stanley and sort of large global institutions. And he's also been incredibly validating of the contrarian approach we've taken to solving this problem. And I think that often when very credible people sort of give you the confidence that you are taking a disruptive approach that is correct. I think that's fuel for a lot of founders who are trying to be contrarian because being contrarian is hard and you get punched in the face a lot. And, you know, back to your boxing analogy, you need someone to sort of clean up the bruises between rounds. And so, you know, Rob and Eddie have been good bruise cleaners between rounds.

32:42 I love it. Rob, Eddie, thank you. Thank you for helping JJ or Prajak do what he's been able to do in this business. And I love, love, love when people share that they aren't doing this all on their own because it is so hard to do everything on your own and there's so much burden and just acknowledging that we do need people. There is a community sometimes it takes to help us be the type of leader, be the type of business owner that we want to be. So thank you for sharing that. 

33:13 No, thank you, Todd.

33:14 Well, listen, I think your time has been well spent here. And I think that for those listening, if you have interest in what he's talking about and checking out the tech, checking out what he's doing, I highly encourage you to do so. All the links are in our show notes below and make sure that you do. I know I'm going to, and I've looked a lot into the product, haven't downloaded the app yet. So I'm eager to dive in and check it out. Thank you so much for your time today, man.

33:41 Now thank you for having me. This has been a lot of fun.