Irina: [00:00:00] this is the whole kind of cycle of things. People, we get business from open source because people use, use it and trust us and reach out. But also we open source, uh, things we came up with for solving client problems.
Andrew: Hey, before we get started , I'd like to remind you, the full episode is only available to our paid subscribers. The current platforms, you can subscribe to us on our Patrion, Spotify, and apple podcasts In the full version of this episode, we talked to Irene about leading a team of open-source superstars and of course, all of our tooltips for the week. And with that, let's get onto the episode.
Andrew: Hello, welcome to the Dev tools FM podcast. This is a podcast about developer tools and the people who make 'em. I'm Andrew Lisowski, and this is my cohost Justin.
Justin: Hi everyone. Um, today we are very [00:01:00] excited to have Irina, uh, Nazarova. So Irina is the, uh, CEO of Evil Martians, um, which is, uh, a consultancy, but largely just this great great source in the open source space in particular. So if you've used tools like post css, you've used their work, um, and I'm so excited to have you on or, uh, really excited to sort of dig into some of these things.
But before we, uh, get started, would you like to tell our audience a little bit more about yourself?
[00:01:33] Irina's Background
Irina: Yeah. Thanks guys. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. I'm the CEO O of Ians and. I actually tried many different things. Um, so before, before that, uh, and I can't say that I have a single profession, you know, that is, that I've been doing my whole life. Um, so like coming from different things, I worked for [00:02:00] JP Morgan Investment Bank at some point.
Uh, before that I worked as a C++ engineer. Um, after that I started a startup and then I learned ruby on rails and, uh, like there are many things and that worked as a studio photographer as well. Um, so was just, I think trying out different things. But then eventually it all, um, I think came together at Evil Martians where, um, I am.
I enjoy working with engineers and building developer tools and building open source, um, but also working with startups and businesses and, uh, this side of things. Yep.
Andrew: Yeah. So early in your career, it seemed like you'd bounced between a lot of domains. You've, like, I was looking at your LinkedIn and you, like, you're developing here, you did JP Morgan, you, you started a few startups. Uh, so I, I just wanna dig into that a little bit before we go [00:03:00] on. Uh, so like, what did you do at JP Morgan?
Like what, like led you there? I just find it interesting that you worked at a bank. It's not usual that our guests have done that.
Irina: Yeah, I guess it's, uh, I was okay. I was young and, um, I was, um, interested in this whole, you know, um, fancy, uh, investment banking stuff. Um, and that's, uh, so I went to intern at the investment bank itself, and then I went on to become a, an equity research analyst. So this is where you can forecast, uh, what's happening with companies, public companies, and it's actually a useful skill if you think about it from the entrepreneurship kind of perspective, because you want to be able to forecast some, some scenarios and some things.
So it's, it was useful I'd say, but, um, clearly, [00:04:00] uh, I was, I think Ron thinking of myself as an investment banker, um, uh, of, of the, like thinking that I would be motivated enough I think, to, to stay. Um, and because I'm motivated by building things much more than by looking at things, analyzing things.
Justin: That's, uh, it's a cool story, so. Something that I would like to, to just sort of ask about. So you said, you know, at Evil Martians now you're, you're, you're obviously this, the leader of this organization, sort of helping, you know, foster and grow this company. Um, but you're also really interested in building, you know, you're a driven creator.
Um, those can be two different hats, you know, figuring out like, you know, how, how much time do I spend just like trying to help this organization survive
and how much time do I, like, give myself to express some sort of creative outlet? So how do you, how do you sort of balance those two roles?
Irina: [00:05:00] That's true. That's so true. All right. Um, you could say there are more hats, um, even, uh, but. Okay, I have this. So the same thing happens with the other sort of leaders in this company. Like I have head of backend, head of front end. They are all, all amazing builders and creators. And my, um, the idea is this, this organization is, uh, kind of benefits from leaders that are builders themselves so much.
And this helps us, uh, you know, continue solving sometimes problems that maybe we don't really want to be solving, you know, different organizational level, um, obstacles and, uh, stuff like that. But, uh, I think we are coming up [00:06:00] with something that is better than, um, Knowing that we are also building things in parallel.
We are also launching different things. We're also supporting each other. So I like, actually, I like this kind of, um, the ideas that we are wearing both of those hats and contributing to this organization that is not so large. Right? We are like 50 people, but, uh, it's important. It's an important one. So we want to make it, uh, you know, successful, resilient, and make people who work here at the s uh, like happy and fulfilled, I think.
[00:06:48] Stepping into Leadership
Andrew: So, uh, just a little bit more on the, the early career. What was your first step into leadership and, uh, how, how did that experience form you in, uh, your experiences going into [00:07:00] your evil martians?
Irina: Yeah, it's a cool question. Um, I think starting a startup was how I learned, uh, this leadership track because you could say nobody, nobody can maybe make you a leader, right? Uh, so you risk yourself, something like that. Um, and well probably there, there is a path where, okay, you started in a company as an analyst, then you go on to con become, and then like eight years later you are what, like a director at JP Morgan?
Uh, boring. Yeah. Um, no, like lo loads of money. But anyways, um, uh, I just, uh, left and started a startup and, um, well, [00:08:00] It, I, I'd say it was like an like MBA for, for myself where my, like your, my first startup and my first angel investors were essentially, uh, like paying for my education, you could say. Because, um, like, well, to be honest, it was, it was a good one.
I mean, we had some amazing results, but still, um, I shut it down. I shut it down eventually, but, uh, I think I learned, um, a lot there. That's what, this was the first, uh, the first step. And, uh, but I grew into CEO Evil Martians um, within the company. Uh, so I think it was four years since I joined till I became the ceo.
And it was probably a different process because this organization is much larger than the startups I had. And it's, you could say it's [00:09:00] an, it, it's also 16 years old, uh, now. So it's on a different, um, stage, um, like of a sort of business, you know, life cycle. And this means being the CEO here is a much, it's a different role than being the early stage, like early days of a startup CEO and founder.
But, um, yeah, I could maybe, you know, tell just a little bit about, um, some of those kind of revelations. Um, for example, well assertive as a manager, working with clients and as a manager, I dunno, um, like you are constantly sort of bombarded with different tasks. So, I mean, there's so many tasks and like, you want to be helpful, right?
You want to be helpful here and there and everywhere. And you end up running those sort of, even like errands. [00:10:00] Someone's, uh, someone's, uh, requests all day long. And this is at some point you realize that this is all you do. And, and then you start sort of reflecting and thinking, is it the best work? Is it the best thing?
Is it the most important? Um, and kind of highest, you know, value whatever thing that I could do, right? Because if you think about this, some of those requests are relatively random cuz someone just thought about something and that's cute and it doesn't have to be highest priority, it's just that. You know, someone ask you something, that's it.
And so you have to, so I started taking sort of control over that. You know, started thinking what is the highest priority? And then maybe there is something that is high priority that is not mentioned anywhere, cuz it's, and it's not even discussed anywhere. And why? Because, uh, it is so deep or the problem is so [00:11:00] large that people are not ready to discuss it.
Something like that. So this is how I think you become a more of a leader of at least your own work. In your own work, right? When you start thinking about, like, your approach is in the context of the company, right? Of like mutual, mutual interest, um, shared interest. And then, um, and then you start, um, thinking.
In terms of the group, maybe the project, right? How, what are the problems that we should discuss and like as a team, like what are they, what could be for us as a team better, uh, you know, for our shared, uh, goals and for everyone's, uh, wellbeing, whatever. So this is, uh, this is, this is how it kinda, uh, grew into something of our sea level position at the company.
Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, your viewpoint has to change a lot. When you go from individual [00:12:00] contributor to ceo, like you
you, you have to focus in on a much, a much different level of detail.
Justin: Yeah.
Irina: Hmm.
Justin: I think that, I think that leadership is so understated, even, even for people who are building tools, right? Because there's no, uh, by and large the, the notion of just like an individual contributor who's someone who's, I just like sit down and write code is, is almost a myth in itself, right? Because you're leading in ideas if nothing else or in patterns.
And, and leadership is such a fundamental part of everything because one of my sort of favorite sayings is like all software systems or human systems and you know, the sooner that people sort of accept that, embrace it, you like start to learn that, you know, one of the really important parts of anything that we're building is the people who are using it.
The people who are helping build it, the people who you know, it's impacting. And like taking that all into account and trying to balance decisions starts really quickly [00:13:00] turning into like leadership responsibilities. And then obviously the, the more leverage you have or the higher up, you know, your decision making process goes, then the different. Flavors of leadership come in,
Irina: Y Yeah. And, and I, I realize there is a conflicting notions, different conflicting notions of leadership. So some people think that leadership is you making all the decisions you want for everyone and sort of single-handedly, while first of all, I think it should be super kind of egoless with if you really wanna be a leader of the organization, not just, you know, someone.
I dunno, uh, trying to prove something, whatever. So it's not like most of the time you, you are, you are forgetting about your own, uh, whatever desires really And you, you, you are [00:14:00] trying to think what's best for this group, for this team. So this is leadership for me, like trying to talk to like, get the information, disclose the information.
I think information transparency is super important. So for example, for pretty often in projects you see that engineers, uh, the engineering team that is built in the product doesn't know any, you know, results for example. Any, any effect like how the, those kind of last features affected like anything they don't like, there's no connection to the results of the work and it's so kind of demotivating and they think it's also their decisions are. Well can be sub-optimal if they don't understand, right? Like they end goals and stuff like that. And then they end the results of their work. So sometimes it's just, uh, providing transparency. Um, this is also leadership because you trust leadership means trust [00:15:00] in your team, understanding your team really well, and, and giving them all the tools, all the information and all the support, you know, infrastructure they need to, uh, to do their best work.
So something like that.
[00:15:17] Who are Evil Martians?
Justin: Yeah, it's such a great topic and so important. Um, so while we're talking about sort of leadership and your transition into Evil Martians, maybe it'd be good for us to just step back and introduce Evil Martians to people who might not have heard of it. Like, um, what, you know, how would you describe the company to someone who, who's just like coming across it for the first time and, uh, yeah, what's
your, what's your pitch?
Irina: sure. Uh, so Evil Martians is a product, product development consultant company. And so we help mostly early stage venture backed startups, build products without. So we bring tools and best [00:16:00] practice and documentation, other things that, with the goal of making sure this company can grow further without us, you know, when we finish this.
So, um, we build a ton of open source and content based on our work for startups. So you could say our business model is open source and content centric. Um, and you can talk more about that, but for, uh, originally Evil Martians started as. Yeah, like this consulting company for startups. The second pillar was improving our work.
Like we're, we're looking for people who could improve, who could be passionate about improving their work continuously. This is where open source is you. Okay. The, uh, stemming from, so you build your own tools, you open source them, you improve them, or you improve [00:17:00] the tools that are already out there that you use in open source.
So you improve it through open source. And then, um, we, we were also, you know, remote, distributed, uh, global. Uh, so we have offices in Japan, in Portugal, and in the United States. And people scared, uh, across different time zones. Um, and at the beginning the company was focusing on Ruby on Rails. Yeah,
Andrew: Yeah, I, I, I find the way that you guys work kind of inspiring, like, uh, not many other consulting agencies like bet on open source like you guys do. Uh, it seems like such a good way to, to do, as you said, like carry your work fold forward. You guys have such a unique opportunity of working with all of these different people and being able to see into all of these different problems, and it just feels so natural that from that [00:18:00] knowledge you'd produce a lot of great open source tooling.
Irina: true. That's, that's, um, I will say it also super tightly, um, kind of coupled with our business. So it's not open source, it's not air, uh, It's super close to our business to how we are getting business, to be honest. Right? So let's just be super open about it. So, um, op like you said, we work with multiple startups, so we have the perspective of how 20 to 30 teams work every year, not just, um, you know, when you sit within, when you work within one large organization, like a big tech for example, you understand which tools are needed in this, you know, large, huge organization or whatever.
But we see startups, so this is a different perspective, right? Um, [00:19:00] and we like startups because it's so easy to start working with them. It's just less in efficiency, I think, in the process. Um, and then we notice, okay, we can open source this because, uh, this can help several uh, projects at least Um, but, but I, well to be honest, We have, um, a culture where engineers by default, open source things, it's not that every time it has to be like super conscious, super thoughtful, and kind of thinking, oh, this is gonna be popular.
No, no, no, no. Most of them are not popular at all. And you know, it's just the have it You could say the approach, right? Where you think, oh, I could open source it, you know, maybe it makes sense, maybe not. I'll, I'll see. Right? It's not a such a big deal. Um, the clients already, because they know we already do it.
Uh, sometimes if it's more, if it's closer to, you know, something client specific, we'll definitely discuss it with them and gonna get their approval. [00:20:00] Um, but if it's just, uh, some kind, something completely, you know, um, uh, not related to the client, it's uh, easy to open source and, uh, this is just a byproduct, right?
And then maybe then some of them grow because we see. How we use them between different products than how our clients use our instruments, right? And our tools between different products. Then, uh, we share those tools. People use them. People reach out to Evil Martains when they've already used our tools, so they have some trust, I think in, in the team, right?
Understand that we, we are really focused on, um, doing something good, doing something, uh, pretty high quality. I mean, we will balance, like for a startup, it's not that you always need everything, it's like, uh, super high quality in detail, whatever, whatever. But for [00:21:00] the tools, we are trying to, um, maybe, yeah, I'd say we are a bit more geeky and a bit more connect.
Uh, detailed with a bit more detailed approach. So this is interesting and I think it's, uh, fun. It's a lot of fun. Right. Um, so, um, yeah, they, um, this is how, this is the whole kind of cycle of things. People, we get business from open source because people use, use it and trust us and reach out. But also we open source, uh, things we came up with for solving client problems.
So it's like a cycle.
Justin: I think there's so much, there's so much to be said for open source and business. Um, so when I worked at Artsy, artsy had an engineering principle of open source by default.
So we actually had a bot that would like open an issue. Anytime you created a private re repo it, open an issue and say, why is this private?
You know,
it's like, try [00:22:00] to like,
give you your justification
for like what is the, what is the business case for making something private versus what is. Why should we make something public? So, um, I always loved that and there was like some interesting properties that fell out of it. So one of the things is like so many of our jobs are just sort of a black hole to all this work that we do.
So we put in all this life energy into this company, and then when we leave, we had the story of things that we did, but like often the artifacts, the like actual outcomes of that is lost
or it's lost to us anyway.
Whereas like when you get to do a lot of open source in your day-to-day work, you can just like point people to like PRS and issues and repos and projects and, and you know, you have this story around how you spent your time.
I think that's more
tangible and compelling.
Irina: absolutely. And this, I, I, I won't say all the, most of the open source. That evil like that martians build, it's in their private, it's in their, uh, personal accounts. Right. It's, we we are not saying like we should, [00:23:00] you should, you can open source it, but keep it an evil Tian account. No, not at all. I mean, we actually have, um, something in evil martians account, but for example, last, but it's, it's more about something where we had multiple maintainers and we are sort of maintaining consciously this tool, but um, Um, mostly it's just your, we have account and like you said, right, just in your history or your tools and your, even you could say career, uh, as an engineer.
It like something you show to your, uh, but also how people, mm, I dunno. It's just sad if some, if you're building something that is closed source all the time and nobody knows anything about the things you work on, uh, it's also kinda a bit sad, right?
Andrew: Yeah, you, you, you can't contribute to the conversation.
Like, [00:24:00] uh, I've learned so much just by going through other people's code and I'm sure if I went through some of the evil Martians code bases, I'd learn a lot and closing that off is, is kind of sad.
Irina: Yeah. And, uh, something, uh, Justin, you said if. Um, yeah, but open source as a continuation of your work. And I'm, I'm thinking about this by the way. So, so we have this commercial open source companies, right, where there's an open source, an open core, right? Uh, an open source core, and, and, a paid offering can in different forms.
So like the hope, the, let's say the hope is that if, if, if this commercial company goes kind of bankrupt or changes priorities, pivots, whatever, right? The, the, the work that is an open source is still there and there is no legal [00:25:00] restriction for any other company to use it, right? So this work is not lost and maybe some of the employees will decide, or we wanna start a startup and will use this open source to turn it into something new or.
Isn't it cool? Right, because otherwise it, it'd be just, you know, just lost, just wasted. Yeah.
Justin: We talk a lot about mon, like the relationship with open source and monetization or like, you know, the realities of like living in a capitalistic society and having to provide for your employees and also wanting to engage in this sort of like free exchange of ideas.
Um, open core is a great one. The thing that I like about, you know, things like what Evil Martians is doing and sort of what Artsy was doing.
So artsy was, you know, they had a SaaS product and, and they in no way were like, Hey, this is, we're not trying to make our product open source, but like all the stuff that we do around the edges, it's not. [00:26:00] Meaningful to our organizations. Like there's no reason to have these things private. The thing that I really like about this and the evil marons approach is cuz like sometimes this, you get a lot of satisfaction from like having an idea, you know, putting it, like actually creating it, really forming it and then shipping it out and then having this like, packaged up product thing.
You're just like, yeah, this is like, you know, this has my sort of intellectual DNA all over it. I, I'll like, really enjoyed this problem. And it can be really hard to like detangle that from like, oh, well I'm working on an open source database and like, actually I kind of worked on this one little module.
But like, the, the story there is a little bit less clear.
But if it's like, you know, you have someone on your team, it's like, yeah, they, they, this person wrote post CSS or whatever. Then it's like you, it's, it's a little bit easier to sort of package up that story. And I feel like there's a lot of, uh, You, you were talking earlier about like one of the jobs and leaderships and one of the jobs that you take on is like trying to make people feel [00:27:00] fulfilled in their
work.
And I think this is a really important part for creators is like to be able to just build something and ship it out and like, you know, have it tightly packaged up and when it's smaller, more discreet things. I think at least in my personal experience, that satisfaction's a lot higher because it's just like, you know, there's a beginning and an end and you have this thing that you can think about and talk about.
Irina: Yeah, that's, it's so cool that we have in the ecosystem, many small tools actually are super meaningful, right? It's not just a huge whatever, frameworks or huge platform as a service or whatever that you use and like value and like treasure and love, right? It's often, uh, sometimes it's a tiny library that you love.
Um, uh, like we have for example, Nana, um, uh, n stores and like different, um, uh, like a whole bunch of libraries in small size [00:28:00] for front end, uh, which are like the. This smaller versions of like existing large things. Um, and sometimes this approach is just, um, you might fall in love with it. Um, and it's just one person who built it.
And this is not a, I dunno, super experienced whatever, like a open source star or, right. Um, so I think I'm really enjoying in this whole community of developer tools, building, uh, tools for engineers and open source. Uh, the idea is that everyone is a creator, almost like, like that, right? So we, it's a community of creators and when we talk, it's not about like me, you being a consumer, you being a producer or whatever, right.
It's us being both creators and we exchange [00:29:00] ideas. I can contribute to your product or you can contribute to mine, or we build something together, whatever. So, um, this is, this is the, uh, such a Nice part of what web looks like right now. Right? Because if you think about, well I started as a well C++ engineer, or even before that I started.net and, and, uh, you, you can't think of, I, I think they open sourced a lot of stuff like, uh, Microsoft, openSource, they whole, um, uh, a bunch of stuff, but it still feels so enterprisey and you don't feel that like you as individual creator could meaningfully contribute.
Uh, whilst and in like web stacks would, would do this all the time, right?
Andrew: Yeah. Uh, web web is so different that like, NPM [00:30:00] packages everywhere, you got a problem, let's
make a package, let's fix your problem. Whereas like in other ecosystems, it's like you have these large monolithic things that everybody kind of uses, and then for the small things you're just kind of left to your own devices.
So like the fact that we can like share our innovation and our creativity in such an easy and portable way is just awesome.
Irina: True, true. Love it.
[00:30:22] Commercial Open Sourc e
Andrew: You mentioned that you have some internal startups now, so that's like. Kind of, uh, a, a foreign concept and it goes along with commercial open source really well. So, uh, can you explain like, like what that is? Like how, how did you guys come to the situation where you're like, oh, we should create a product for this.
It should be internal to this company and kind of like our own thing.
Irina: Yeah, this, um, again, so we have, we already have large open source tools like right? It's, uh, [00:31:00] people use it, millions of, maybe millions of people use it. Um, but as a dependency for sure. Uh, like can tailwind for example, through some of those more modern, um, css, uh, things. But, um, I think two years ago, maybe three, it was the first time we started discussing if we can commercialize, commercialize open source products.
So that's something different I think. So if you think about there's some, some something. Um, some difference between a technology, which can be an open source, right? And the product. So, and by product that means something, especially when you want people to pay for it. Um, so products are normally expected to solve someone's problem, uh, super easily.[00:32:00]
And, um, that's different from open source sometimes because an open source, sometimes it's just, uh, look, th those are the tools for super smart guys. Uh, I mean, if you're able to use it, you are, uh, one of those, uh, amazing experienced, advanced engineers, whatever. Sometimes it's, sometimes there is this kinda approach, um, with open source.
I'm not saying that what's better, by the way, sometimes, Building tools for experts is also meaningful because not everything has to be for like, for a wide audience, right? Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't have to be that way. Uh, but yeah. But, uh, sorry. Um, a couple of years ago we decided to try and commercialize Image Proxy.
Image Proxy was a, it is an on the fly image optimization [00:33:00] server. So it runs on premise on your infrastructure, something, uh, that you run on your infrastructure. And it is the most efficient, most, uh, kind of memory efficient and resource efficient, otherwise, um, tool for that. So we had, we built it for eBay.
Uh, by the way, eBay was, it's not a startup, right? Most of our clients are startups, but yeah. Sorry, startups and eBay. Yeah. That, that, that was the thing. Um, Yeah, it's a bit, yeah, but we actually, we built internal, uh, like side projects within anybody. Uh, so it was more like a startup. Um, and so they needed to, we needed a tool to optimize images, and not just some images, but like millions of e product images that come from eBay in a resource efficient way.
And also to protect [00:34:00] from, from image bombs and stuff like that. So, uh, like three Alexandro, which are backend engineer built this. And what I liked about Image proxy is that he wanted to make it simple. So you just, you run it as a docker, uh, container on your infrastructure, and you just serve it a URL of your image and it, it, it, and, and, and.
And some parameters, like for example, the size, the format, if you want to use, we can also do kind of smart crop, for example. You would crop it, but, but the kind, the face is, is in this so that the faces in the center or whatever, something. Yep. And I also like this smart quality because, um, you, what do you, you want the, the image to be sort of good quality, but you don't [00:35:00] know what the good quality is. And it's, uh, uh, yeah, there, there are kind of some, uh, smart ways to optimize quality as well. So, um, uh, you survey those parameters and it returns this optimized, uh, image for, um, for your smart for smartphone. Um, For a mobile app, for your mobile website, for your large screen website, whatever, right? It's what you get, what you need, norm.
Normally it gets served from cache, but um, when it's not in cache, it's just regenerate, regenerated on the fly. So if you think about it, uh, you, if you even compare the cost of storage with the cost of cache, cach is so much cheaper that you save here already. Um, and you also, you don't generate what you don't need.[00:36:00]
So if something is not never requested, it's not generated. It's not stored. So, yeah, so that's, that's, uh, that was, and we, um, so we started selling licenses for this product. Uh, and we have, um, companies like Substack Medium and Dribble using Image Proxy, inbox Pro. Um, and the pro has some advanced features. Yep.
So, mm. But we don't, we, we still don't have the kind of SaaS offering, but it's almost counterintuitive to have it because we sort of, uh, uh, trying to say that look at a certain size at list, you are much better, uh, running this on your infrastructure because it's just gonna be so much cheaper. Um, and it's, it's, it's, it's really, it's really like that.
So that's, [00:37:00] that's, um, we just created a license. We created a website. We started, um, doing some marketing. So the way we do it, we just write articles to demonstrate, and we, uh, sometimes those articles get picked up by some newsletters or something. And, um, we tr we also tried, experimented with different things like. Um, I think there was a launch in product home and um, and then we also tried, um, selling to specific companies, specific industries where we know that, uh, this is already used by some of the competitors, whatever. So yeah, we just tried many, many, um, different things and it's growing. Uh, I wouldn't say that we, we experience this explosive growth within much proxy.
I wouldn't say that, but it, it is super, I like that it's growing and the, the, um, the [00:38:00] churn is super low, so we, it's like the retention is over 90%. So, um, yeah, so it, it is a cool, good product I think. Uh, but um, my work was in how to incentivize the, the products team. That's the most important thing because I want them to know they are the owners, but Evil Martians Is like an early investor, the earliest investor in this thing.
So we can calculate the amount we sort of spend mostly by providing the team's time at, at the beginning. And, and, and it, it has to be, it also has to have some structure because you don't want to just spend, you know, uh, all the team's time on building something without any goals, whatever. So it was like, let's just spend 50% during several months and see if we can, um, have like the first 10 paying customers, whatever.[00:39:00]
Um, and then kind of continue going, continue going. So that, uh, now the team, um, then, then the team kind incorporated. They just did it. Uh, we didn't announce yet, by the way. Uh, but there, there's something still to finalize. Um, but they are super incentivized to, they know, they, they continue to have our support, but they also want to graduate, let's say, at this, this kinda school.
And that's, that was my goal, to make sure that we have this, um, path where if you have a, an idea of a pro, an open, so, so first of all, you, you, you start with open source. Uh, you think if, if you, you think about ways to commercialize, you think about someone who could, who would be willing to [00:40:00] pay money for this.
And then we help with, um, just kind of marketing, uh, selling, um, hopeful, accumulating knowledge of how to do this. Uh, and that's why it also helps that now we have, most of our clients are also developer tools, startups. So we learn from them and we exchange. Uh, you know, the context and the, the knowledge.
Uh, we exchange some kinda best practice. What, what, what can you try to sell, whatever. And then, then the team knows that they hire the valuation, they get on this first external round, they hire the, they, they share, they keep in this company and they still keep the majority share, right? So they, like, they, the share of Evil Martians is kinda, it's larger, it's positively correlated with the amount of money we spent, uh, we provide.
Uh, and it is [00:41:00] negatively correlated with the valuation right, of the company. So bigger valuation, less share of merchants, and it's gonna make sense for us. Uh, so it, it, I don't, I'm not sure if it's super kind of clear, but what I'm trying to say is part of my work is just trying to, uh, come up with, um, Certain, uh, agreements that will make sense.
Uh, and we want people to be able to launch new products, but we want them to have the right incentives because when you do something like that within the company, you sort of, it's a different thing, right? Uh, you are in the comfort of your employer and it's so different than running your own startup. So we wanted to be closer to, you know, uh, closer to still in the comfort of we have all the resources, all the help or support of Evil Martains, but [00:42:00] closer to, well, I should be mindful of the, um, sort of amount of support I'm receiving and I should be really focusing on getting this off the ground and, you know, uh, making sure it goes somewhere.
Because otherwise it's just gonna be put on hold, I think. And, and the, the, there is an exit path, by the way. I think if something's not working, you can just, uh, open source everything
and it's, and, uh, and it's, uh, it's there. So it's not lost.
Andrew: That's interesting. You're, you're, you're helping build the framework for making evil Martians almost into a startup incubator. You're, you're helping to find this process to make it so that it's easy for people to get on this track if they want to.
Irina: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Uh, it's not that I, I want us to be an incubator. I just find it inevitable,
uh, because this happens and after 15 years in a [00:43:00] consulting company, you, or 10 years, or five years, you might be so, uh, passionate about some tool you've built. You wanna build it, and maybe we want to be the first ones to support and invest.
Yeah.
Justin: This is, this is so, so fascinating to me. Um, there are like a lot of different aspects of this that I find super compelling. One of the things is I, I'm very pro like cooperatives, uh, profit sharing structures or trying to find like more ethical ways of having smaller businesses where people, you know, uh, sort of get the value out of the work that they put
in. And. Those are, like, those organizational structures are non-trivial.
It's, it's a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to do well. Um, and, and, I love just hearing any idea in the space and, and having this notion of like, well, we provide a support structure, so if you do want to, if you build something and, and there's [00:44:00] value, then like, we'll help you you know, turn this into something.
And it's like this mutually beneficial relationship that I think is just awesome. Uh, I haven't heard of this model happening anywhere else, so I think it's really cool. The other thing that it lines up with is, um, I've, I've thought about like what AWS does for a long, long time. It's like they have this magical ability.
I mean, of course they have like mountains of money, but they have this magical ability to like, Take this tool that some team is working on and then suddenly it's a product, you know? And like they've turned it into this whole thing. Now they've getting like paying customers for it. And I was like figuring out how to incentivize a group of people to be able to do that.
It's like build the things that you want to internally but figure out how it can provide value. And if this is something we can turn into a product, if we can build a culture of like making it easy or easier to do that, then you know,
that's great.
And I think you've hit this really sweet spot where you're looking like kind of doing both.
You're like
building an [00:45:00] incentive structure for like, you've done all this work. We can like sort of find some value in it and like people will pay for valuable tools. And then also you're like, you've done all this work and you want to sort of own it and like we can sort of help you get there. And that's, it's just awesome.
That's fascinating.
Irina: I mean, it, it also means that sometimes, uh, you're saying no. I mean, uh, the thing is why those things I think doesn't work often, do not work often is because, first of all, because the company wants to keep a huge share in this product, and I believe this is a mistake. I like, I, uh, because in, uh, maybe in some sense, in a very plain, plain, you know, thinking, you'd think, oh, the higher than my share, the more you know of the business I own, and the better for me.
Well, if you are [00:46:00] not operating this business, this is actually worse for you to have to be a majority shareholder or whatever, because this means that the. People who are actually running this company do not feel like owners, and they will, you know, drop it to honest right when something happens. Um, so this is sort of a bit of kind of counterintuitive thing where you actually want to have a small share, even, even, um, because you want the, as a company, you know, as this incubator, whatever you want, the small share because you want the authors, the people who run it to have a large share, to own it, to be, uh, to have every chance of success as, as any other, uh, kind of good product.
So, uh, and, and also there is, uh, adverse selection happening if you do the otherwise, if you do it otherwise. Um, [00:47:00] so many, many, many kind of, um, things, but I. Still I am. For example, some, some, sometimes someone's has an idea and they internally and they reach out to me and say, can you, can you support me? And sometimes they say no.
Um, because first of all, we have limited, uh, budget for this, that's for sure. Because well, every company has limited budget on any investment. Uh, it's just, uh, maybe if you are, I dunno,
Andrew: Amazon
Irina: Amazon exactly.
Uh, by the way, this year, I don't even know, like, who feels comfortable, who feels safe, who's gonna, I don't know. Yeah. Uh, who's, who's like that. But, uh, even, even big companies, like in a, in like Ruby on Rails world, it's a Shopify, they had two layoffs, major [00:48:00] layoffs, and are experiencing problems.
Um, anyways, so I'm, uh, this doesn't mean that everyone gets what they want, it just means that there is a hopefully balanced framework where, uh, you can get what you want, if you're lucky to be honest, right? If your product gets, um, used by people, uh, and you work on it really hard, then you'll have more support and maybe higher chances of success than, uh, otherwise without the structure.
But it doesn't mean that it's some magic where everyone gets what they want, you know, magically, fortunately,
Justin: Even with the limited path though, so many. Places. Like so many places you work, you don't have that path. It's like, oh,
I worked really, really hard and I come up with this new tool and we're gonna make it a product
and
maybe I get a small raise next year. You know, it's
Irina: Ah,
Justin: you know,
[00:49:00] it's like that's the reality of like most companies or you move out, you like literally leave the company and you get investors and you do this whole thing, this like sort of gradual slope where you have, you know, if it's a proven idea and you've, and you've, you know, and the organization has resources, then you can like, support them into something and, you know, in a mutually beneficial way.
Having, just having the event horizon where that is a
possibility, I think is, is
huge
and
meaningful and probably very motivating.
Irina: Uh, and, and, and for, for the company, it's, um, it's also super useful because we work, our clients are increasingly. Um, those developer tools, startups, uh, so we have stacks, uh, building, browser based, uh, runtime and id, and we have teleport and, uh, playbook like many, many, many, many startups.
Um, and htt, I maybe you if, if you've [00:50:00] seen that tool, we built their, their app. So, um, the more we understand how those businesses are built, grown, and become successful, the better for everyone I think so we, we learn from our internal experiences. We learn from our clients. Uh, there's some exchange here and well, um, and, and, and the company will also want to have this possibility of, you know, an upside possibility to build something bigger.
Uh, so consulting is a very, um, I'd say more or less stable business because even in bed times you can, uh, you can adjust. I'd say you, you there, there's [00:51:00] a lot of, uh, opportunity for adjustment in consulting business because people have problems, people benefit from, um, Your expertise that is accumulated through years.
So, um, it's easier to adjust some services in consulting than people with the product, right. But, uh, there's limited possibility of, you know, of a dream, let's say, right? Uh, where okay, uh, maybe we are lucky and so the dreams come true. So this, this can only be done through some kind of co-ownership and startups, I think.
And that's what we are looking to, to have as well. That, that'd be cool. That'd be fun. I mean, that's just, to be honest, it's just a dream. And my, my role here, here is to try to make it real. Um, I can't [00:52:00] say that we are, uh, like doing millions of startups and, and, and they are all unicorns and whatever, right?
It's not that it's just starting, it's just a small thing. Uh, but if you don't have a dream, if you're not trying to, you know, build it, then it's not gonna happen anyways. So, uh, let's do our best and hope, uh, that something will, it'll go somewhere.
Justin: This is so cool. Uh, I'm, I'm super excited for y'all. You're setting a
a great model, I think, for the industry being like a really good example. So I hope
it is very successful and I hope other people try to take that up.
Irina: Yep. Yep. Exactly, exactly.
Andrew: Okay. Yeah. Uh, with that, uh, let's transition to tooltip.
[00:52:47] Tooltips
Irina: I just want to, um, mention that. So, uh, there's still word in Ukraine and if you, um, consider donating to Ukraine, it's really good cause, [00:53:00] um, because. It'll, uh, help real people. Uh, I think right now it's, uh, like my responsibility is to try to convince more people to, uh, join me in supporting, uh, this cause.
And, um, RASO for Ukraine is one of the, uh, official kind of US based nonprofits. Uh, so you have all the kinda tax, uh, benefits from that. And it's also very easy to donate too. So if you, you can just subscribe for monthly, whatever amount is comfortable. And it really goes to local initiatives on the ground, not to some like Red Cross stuff and stuff like that, um, but to multiple, uh, multiple, um, local initiatives.
So, uh, I try to find, um, the organizations that, that are true to the cause. [00:54:00] And, um, this one is one of them. I recommend it.
Justin: Yeah. Uh, definitely encourage people. I've used a few different ones. Um, I, I work with a, a coworker who used to live in Kyiv and was displaced during the war, and, you know, and it affects a lot of real people, a lot of people who build open source tools, you know, whatever. Just everyday people. So definitely, um, yeah, consider it.
Irina: Yeah. Many engineers. U Ukraine is, uh, home to solve many engineers in the open source and products. Uh, there's so many products with engineering teams, uh, in Ukraine now, you know, partly displaced or like different kind of hard situations. But, but I think it's, um, it's just a good cause, um, overall. So let's, let's do it.
Andrew: Awesome. Okay. Uh, with that, [00:55:00] that wraps up tooltip. Uh, thanks Irena for coming on. This was, uh, a different conversation than we usually have from the leadership perspective, but I think it was a great one. Like, uh, what you guys do are doing at Evil Martians is a very interesting way to run a consulting company, and I think it, it's inspiring for other people in this space.
Irina: Yeah. Thank you guys. Um, I'm so happy to be here and to have a chance to talk to you about it. And yeah, it was not, um, a, a typical conversation about engineering stuff, but, uh, hopefully some of those ideas are, uh, important for the ecosystem, you know, for making sure that open source and developer tools are both growing.
Um, Uh, having enough support, right, and getting enough resources and, um, and that there is, [00:56:00] uh, that we help each other, right? So the, the open source and collaboration, uh, in developer tools, like, like I said before, I think it's just amazing and that's one of the reasons why so many people are attracted and, um, passionate about this, is that, is that sense of community and collaboration that we have here.
So thank you for doing this podcast. I think it's, uh, definitely supports this community.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. And thanks again for coming on. Uh, Just to sort of repeat what Andrew said, I think this is like, and sort of repeat what you said, this is such an important space. We, we talk a lot about, you know, the technology side, but the, the reality is if you really enjoy building developer tools, you know, you gotta think about like how you make it into something or how do you join someone to make it into something.
And I think giving, getting these different perspectives on how to either have ways of building sustainable businesses or how other businesses work is so, so [00:57:00] incredibly important for the space. And I'm, I'm, you know, happy to have those conversations. Um, and, and I just love what Evil Martians is doing. So y'all are, y'all are great and I can't wait to see, you know, how everything goes.
Irina: Thank you guys.