For the 70th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Nate Walkingshaw, Chief Experience Officer for Pluralsight.

Nate is widely known as a pioneer in technology product development and his Directed Discovery methodology. He is a master in the craft of building and designing amazing products, to the point where he actually co-authored a book on the subject called Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams.

Pluralsight is an enterprise technology learning platform that delivers a unified end-to-end learning experience for businesses across the globe. The company went public just last year and was recently recognized as one of the 2019 Best Workplaces in Technology by Fortune and Great Place to Work.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics like:

• Nate’s background starting out as an EMT, what that taught him about empathy, and how that translates into building successful products.
• How this experience took him down the path of entrepreneurship and starting a company that invented the most recognizable hospital evacuation sled called the Paraslyde.
• His transition into the tech industry and his work as a startup advisor and founder of Tanner Labs.
• All the details behind Pluralsight, their mission and products, plus the company’s social impact.
• What the team is working on in the Boston office and future growth plans for this location.
• What he looks for when hiring and advice for pursuing a career in product management.
• Plus, a lot more.

Just in case you didn’t know, Pluralsight is aggressively growing their office in Boston. The company is looking to hire across multiple function areas like marketing, product, engineering, data science & analytics. Go to venturefizz.com/pluralsight to check out all of their openings.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

This past long snowy weekend had me largely holed up in my house with my kids. A storm had hit our area fairly hard, so we took advantage of the quiet time to study for midterms (them) and catch up some way overdue work (me).  Though they actually got out of the house and saw their friends, the amount of time they were technically connected to their people was remarkable. As I looked up from the sea of laptops, iPhones and tablets sprinkled all over our kitchen, it started me thinking: are all these devices bringing us closer together, or farther apart?

In our growing and very distributed company, finding ways to collaborate so we can maximize the skills and ideas of all of our holistic teams is one of the biggest challenges we face in our work environment.  The ability to do this - to reach out and make connections that we all benefit from - is a huge factor in hiring and promotion decisions.  The need to connect and collaborate is huge; and yet we increasingly are working with a population of people who default so heavily on technology, I started considering how we might be poisoning our ability to do this through an over-reliance on technology.  The ying and the yang of technology and collaboration, if you will.

First, a reality check:

There may be no right or wrong answer here.  My parents took a look at how reliant I was on my phone during a recent visit, and I was shocked.  Compared to my kids, I feel like I’m not nearly as tech-obsessed.  And yet, there is a reality that we all socialize differently. While my parents might not understand that I think it’s amazing to be able to catch up with high school friends on Facebook, I can’t get my head around why Gen Z takes thousands of selfies and shares them via Snapchat with each other.  In other words, just like any other social change, we all experience and engage with it differently.  How you view those might be largely influenced by your generation or a variety of other factors.

CONS & PROS:

CON: Tech distractions can affect productivity. With a huge upcoming biology midterm, I was helping my daughter study with Quizlet (why didn’t this exist when I was in high school?!).  In the twenty minutes it took to get through the flashcards on her laptop, the number of times she received text alerts was astounding.  It was compounded by the flashing pop up ads we couldn’t get rid of,  and were completely distracting. With so much coming at us all at once, it’s no wonder we get distracted. At work, we need to set intentional boundaries for ourselves so we don’t get completely distracted from our work by the slew of personal texts, social media and the like when we are needing to be focused on the work at hand. Sure, we might start by sitting down at our computers to do legitimate work, but only to get completely distracted by something that appears on our machine and we proceed to spend time on something completely unrelated to work. Identifying - and sticking to - good technology work habits aids us in being more productive and focused.

PRO: Tech can increase productivity. As mentioned above, technology and the information it supports can result in some serious unfocused behavior, it can also do wonders to aid us in our ability to get our tasks accomplished in a more efficient and engaged manner. From automating simple tasks to the way we manage our workload and share information, it’s been a complete game changer in terms of our own ability to get stuff done. That is, of course, if we stay focused.

CON: Tech can take a toll on our interaction opportunities. When we rely so heavily on technology, we give up those simple activities that allow us to further a connection.  It’s one thing to tweet to your network about your excitement about the upcoming series finale of Game of Thrones.  It’s a missed opportunity, however,  to chat about it in the office kitchen with your colleagues as you pour yourself a glass of Kombucha. It’s been an amazing advance in partnering to have tools that allow us to connect virtually, no matter where we are. However, relying on them to the extent that you are constantly Slacking your teammate rather than spinning your chair around to collaborate with them in person is just a missed opportunity to strengthen a relationship.

PRO: Tech can help foster a team environment.  Of course, it’s critical to build relationships to foster strong and productive work environments.  Creative work spaces that are tech-enabled (we have one that feels like you are in a cool living room) allows people to gather and connect in a more intimate, collegial setting.  This can lead to a stronger team atmosphere. In other words, use technology to help strengthen the team dynamic, not just as a transactional tool.

CON: Tech can negatively impact the mojo of a team. No team can receive outstanding results unless it collaborates well together. Technology and tools have enabled people to work together around a virtual whiteboard, or share ideas from wherever they sit around the world.  However, as reliant as we have become on these tech enablers, it’s just as important to build actual relationships.  If collaboration and real teaming is vital to the success of a team, engagement, passion and feeling like you are adding impact are the elements that fuel that success. Taking the time to actually build human relationships in addition to the tech ones allow a far greater change for long term success.

PRO: Tech can aid us in building strong relationships. Technology provides us countless ways to build and maintain relationships, join communities, and express ourselves in a way that might be slightly less intimidating than the doing so in the “real world.” While we sometimes see people hide behind their screens to engage with others, consider all the IRL connections that have been made because people had the benefit of an online start. For those colleagues you don’t see often, balancing a tech connection (Slack, text, etc) with real human contact can bring you even closer.

In contemplating the pluses and minuses of how and why technology can be both a help and a hindrance to collaboration, my mind started spinning with numerous other examples.  From helping/hurting us in taking responsibility for our actions to sharing information to community building, technology is changing our worlds in countless ways. And as we build businesses in today’s environment, the use of technology - especially collaboration technology - is a necessity. A goal of our company is to understand and consider a variety of different perspectives to arrive at the right solution. There is no doubt to me that technology is creating a whole lot of good when it comes to aiding us in fostering collaboration.  However, like just about anything at work, nothing can replace good old fashioned human relationships when it comes to fostering collaboration.  A little balance is a good strategy with just about everything.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

There is a tremendous amount of speculation and hype surrounding blockchain and its potential impact on business.  A lot of venture capital is funding startups from Boston to Silicon Valley (as well as abroad) hoping to capitalize on this technology that portends to disrupt business as usual. Despite all of the hype, finding someone that actually understands what blockchain is seems oddly difficult.  You can spend a couple of hours watching YouTube videos on the subject and come away more confused than informed. This has led me to try to piece together a Blockchain 101. Fundamentals are important and this topic is amazingly complex.

Blockchain Origins

In 1991 Stuart Harber and Scott Stornetta published work in the Journal of Cryptography on how to time stamp a digital asset. That is widely considered the origin of the idea of blockchain - although that term was not used at the time. It wasn’t until October 2008 that blockchain, in its current incarnation, was introduced to the world. A person (or group of people) that identified themselves as Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper on a cryptography mailing list called "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".  On January 9, 2009, Nakamoto released the first version of Bitcoin and with it created the world's first blockchain database. To this date, no one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

Blockchain is not Bitcoin

Bitcoin requires blockchain to operate.  However, blockchain doesn’t require Bitcoin - or any cryptocurrency for that matter.  There seems to be much confusion around that.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger system that utilizes cryptography, a complex mathematical transaction verification system and a peer to peer network to ensure the integrity of the data in the ledger.  It is a ledger without a central authority.

It can be utilized for currency but also for a host of other applications such as smart contracts - pretty much anything that utilizes a ledger.

How Blockchain Works - A - B - C

1. A “block” contains 3 data elements

1. Data related to a transaction of a blockchain enabled application such as Bitcoin or Ethereum (buyer, seller, amount, timestamp, etc)

2. A cryptographic hash (a digital fingerprint unique to the block)

3. The cryptographic hash of the previous block (to ensure proper transaction sequencing) - the “chain”

2. Each new block goes through a process called “Proof of Work” in order to be added to the blockchain.  This is a process where the proposed new block is vetted for being added to the chain via a mathematical challenge that requires immense computing power to solve. People that allocate the computing power to solve these challenges are referred to as “miners”.  The person / entity that successfully solves the challenge and subsequently elevates the new block to the blockchain is rewarded in some fashion (typically coins or transaction fees). This process is incredibly complex as the blockchain continues to grow the computing power required to solve these challenges grows. There is a competing approach to Proof of Work that is emerging called “Proof of Stake” which eliminates the computing power requirement and replaces it with a miner’s stake in solving the challenge - a stake meaning what they are willing to tie up currency for a period of time in order to solve the challenge.

3. Blockchain was designed to exist on a peer to peer network - meaning no central control or authority.  So for example - with Bitcoin everyone that utilizes Bitcoin by downloading the application also gets a copy of the entire Bitcoin blockchain.  That means everyone gets a copy of every Bitcoin transaction, since it’s beginning, and that blockchain is modified everytime a Proof of Work is successfully completed - on every peer system.  This is an important component of the system - as it guarantees that the blockchain is decentralized. There are some negatives associated with this approach - performance and reliability being the most obvious. This approach does open up the possibility that if someone can gain control of 51% of the nodes on the network - they can control that blockchain.

As of 2018 the Bitcoin mining pools were extremely concentrated - which means a few groups of people control the vast majority of the currency - specifically in China.

Bitcoin Mining Pools by Country - 2018

Bitcoin Mining Pools by Organization - 2018

Blockchain Innovation

There is a lot of investment around utilizing blockchain in private industry.  From smart contracts to global banking, etc. However, these innovations are largely private blockchain systems - with a central authority - which essentially is the opposite of what blockchain started out as. Perhaps these innovations will be quite successful and useful, however, they will not be peer to peer solutions - and thus it can be argued that they aren’t blockchain at all - just distributed networks and applications that borrow from blockchain’s cryptography roots.

PredictiveHR’s SaaS platform utilizes machine learning to gain insight into how a company’s HR team is operating on a day-by-day basis.

The company's Co-Founder and VP of Business Development and Marketing Strategy Scott Santoro spoke with us to talk about the team’s experience in the HR space and how it gives them an advantage working in the HRtech space. Santoro also went into detail on how their software works and how they are constantly updating it to assist organizations that need it.

Scott Santoro [SS]: Our founder, Jamie Troiano and I had worked together for 10+ years in different organizations.  Each time we moved to a new company, the same issues around reporting, the quality of the data, timeliness of being able to report on the data and data integrity were always consistent issues.  In addition, combining our HR data with Finance data was always a challenge; HR and Finance Headcount data never the same which brought up question the integrity of the data. Trying to map this data to external market and industry trends was equally challenging. Jamie and our CTO Charlie Occhinio took upon themselves to build a solution to this problem, which is now our proprietary AI tool AIEr, and Executive Lens reporting suite.

CB: Similar to other industries, the human resources space has an abundance of problems within it. What are some of the problems that PredictiveHR is looking to solve?

SS: People Analytics, Predictive Headcount Modeling, and Cross-Functional Reporting. The quality, timeliness, and structure of people analytics that supports decision-making. The cost of staff is usually the highest cost within any organization. In addition, those people also have a major impact on a company’s productivity, product or its overall health. The ability to utilize the data that HR “sits on” in a more effective, timely way is what we set out to improve.

Our reporting capability is system agnostic and includes data from outside of HR including Finance systems as well as data from third-party organizations outside of the company.  All of this data in a real-time dashboard can be very impactful. PHRs AI tool has the capability to also utilize the information to build predictive models of staffing, talent, retention, succession, etc. into our suite of dashboards visualizations.

CB: Pretend that I am a new user of the PredictiveHR platform, could you please explain to me how it works?  

SS: PHR is a SaaS platform that enables people analytics by utilizing machine learning to predict talent trends and their financial impacts to business outcomes. The PHR Platform aggregates people analytics, predictive workforce planning solutions and HR systems expertise in a comprehensive data set with a real-time dashboard with rich data visualizations.

CB: Who are some of the clients of PredictiveHR? Are there any use cases that have stood out to you?

SS: Being a newly created startup, we have beta customers that we are continually learning from.  Each has brought an interesting view of how their unique situation can utilize our product and tools.  This has been tremendously helpful for us as we approach the market and fine-tune our messaging. We started with the approach of being a customized solution for our clients, so we value the partnership. For example, one client was interested in learning where and what the skills were of their international employee base.  The information we were able to provided included the cost of staff, location, skill sets, performance, gender, retention, and training of each employee. With this data, they were able to model out a future workforce plan based on their business plan. The results also helped to identify staff that required additional training, utilizing staff that had desired skills and the optimal location based on available resources and market trends that would best service and optimize their business.

CB: How big is the team and are there any other positions that you are looking to hire in the next few months?  

SS: Our team is made up of individuals with years in HR and HR systems.  Each of us has held senior-level roles in Human Resources, HRIS, and Talent Management for companies across the IT, Healthcare, Education, Hospitality and Education industries. Combined with our technology platform, the team brings a unique understanding of the HR industry to our customers. Currently, PHR is made up of 11 people. We are adding to our Product Development and our Talent Acquisition team.  

CB: What is the company culture like at PredictiveHR? Is the company involved with any Meetup groups?

SS: We are all HR and talent specialists. We try to participate across the HR spectrum. This year we participated in NEHRA, SHRM, Boston TA and TO groups as well as HRLF. We are trying to get our company name into the market; we think we have a product that can really help the industry. We are very much a startup cultural!

CB: There seem to be more HRtech startups coming out of stealth mode or starting out. Could you share some advice to aspiring startups who want to get involved with human resources?

SS: Stick with it, believe in your product and leverage your networks! It takes passion and the idea that based on your experience your product and services can elevate the function.

CB: It’s always interesting hearing how a startup came up with its name. How did PredictiveHR come up with its name?

SS: The Predictive capability of our platform is what we thought really differentiate PHR so we wanted to include that in the name somehow.  Yes, there are many that say we can do attrition or hiring calculations “on the back of a napkin approach”, but have all the impacts and trends at your fingertips o model out scenarios is impactful and empowering for HR leaders.

CB: Any other additional comments you’d like to make?

SS: Having been in HR leadership roles is a real differentiator of the PHR team. We have been there and understand the pressures that HR is facing around Talent and Talent Management in this day and market.  People analytics, and really being able to put that data to actionable insights will be an effective tool for managing and keeping talent and increasing a company’s overall productivity. We see the same challenges in each of our customers, lot’s of good data spread across multiple systems, multiple spreadsheets and the HR operations team trying to pull it all together. There has to be a better way and we think we have that to offer.

Throughout the most recent years of my career, I’ve helped transform tech teams from some form of Waterfall process to Agile. A challenge I always seem to run into is the team over committing to work. Whether you’re on a tech team or are managing your personal life, many people struggle with saying “no” or “not right now” to work they had not planned for. Despite all your best intentions, not being able to say no leads to overcommitting.  Overcommitting doesn’t come without its issues, in fact, this can affect your productivity, quality, and deadlines in the end.

We all want to make our customers (whoever they are) happy, but sometimes when we’re not vigilant, we can find ourselves in a position of overpromising (or being overcommitted). Here’s how and why we fall into that trap, how to get out, and why we MUST say no to ensure long term success.  

Although many of the solutions I will describe are processes of Scrum and/or Kanban -- two incarnations of Agile –I’m purposefully trying to stay away from directly pushing an Agile methodology because, frankly, this is about managing your demand, and the processes I’ll describe can fit into almost any work management process.

How and why this happens

How long ya got? Maybe a friend in another team didn’t realize they needed you/your team to do some work on one of their critical projects. Or perhaps a new initiative came about as part of an organizational change. The reasons are many. And so you or your team is now faced with disappointing a friend or taking on work they really don’t have room for.

Overcommitting can be explicit, in that you or your team may say you can get something done at a requested time even if they aren’t sure when or how exactly to do the work. It also can be implicit if the culture at your work is such that it’s ok to send someone work and the expectation is they will complete it on time.

How to free yourself from the trap:

1. Create a visible backlog

It’s important to display all the work you’ve been tasked with and ensure you can tie it back to the organization’s strategic initiative. This is especially critical if your environment is particularly political – tie the request to its sponsor. Whether or not people want to believe it, they do compete for your time. It’s helpful for them to see who they’re competing with.

2. Track your throughput

For you to say you don’t have the capacity to do the requested work, you’ll need to know how much work you do. Start by tracking the number of completed “widgets” your team produces over a period of time. The units of measure are not terribly important but need to be something that resonates with your user community, such as environments built, user stories, features developed, sandwiches made. You get my point.

I should note I have mostly worked on Operational teams who are tasked with “keeping the lights on,” therefore, they may struggle with how much Project work they do vs. Operational work.  This is a question that’s really more of a distraction. If the organization sees fit to have one group perform both types of work, then it’s more about tracking what you actually do. If these numbers drive the organization to invest in your team, then that’s an added bonus. Focus on tracking project work you complete.

3. Have an open and public time/forum for selecting work

It’s time to train your dragons…err…stakeholders.  

Before the meeting, work with your stakeholders offline to prepare them for this process and advise them to stack rank their requests. I’ve seen many stakeholders try to have priority rankings of ones (aka needs immediate attention/most important) and twos, and so on. This isn’t good enough, however, you may not be able to get them out of that approach. To set expectations, be clear that they will likely not be able to get all of their ones completed in the first go around, so they had best be prepared to select which ones they want first.

Make sure your team takes the time to estimate the size of the requests in advance using the benchmark metrics you established when you documented your throughput.

When officially meeting, I like to go around the room -- not unlike a fantasy football draft -- and let people select their top request. You can track who goes first, then switch it up. I’ve heard of (not seen personally) groups having fun when coming up with a “draft order.” One of the things Agile has taught me is that if you can make a new process fun and engaging, it will diffuse some resistance (note: some resistance).  What’s amazing is over time the stakeholders will begin to “horse trade” or manage themselves. They will say things like, “Well, I don’t need this in February. It can wait until xxx date, and you can take my spot this time around.”  

Why you must say no to succeed

Plainly, when everything is the priority, nothing is. If you allow everyone to foist work upon your team, you will either work 80+ hours per week, which will drive burnout and team defection. Or you will disappoint many stakeholders, damaging your team’s image and credibility. You need your organization to believe in your word: when you say something will get done, that needs to be perceived as set in stone. For that to happen, you have to have been very close to hitting all your commitments all of the time. For that reason, you must get comfortable with saying no so you don’t overcommit.

It’s amazing when the team begins to “get it.” When they’re vigilant with their commitments -- and in fact when we tell someone no, or not right now -- it demonstrates that we are committed to the overall success of our organization. And that’s a goal we can all get behind.

For the 68th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Pat Kinsel, Founder and CEO at Notarize.

You know, some of the most successful tech companies have triumphed not only because they have a great technical solution, but also because they had to totally disrupt an antiqued industry. I’m referring to really hard things like changing laws or regulations. Think of what companies like Airbnb and Uber went through in their earlier days.

Notarize, which has raised $31M in funding, has been in a similar situation, where they are taking the centuries-old process of notarizing documents into the modern, digital era by allowing any person or business to get their documents legally notarized online. It is a massive market opportunity, as over 1 billion documents are notarized every year.

Pat Kinsel is a serial entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. His prior company Spindle was acquired by Twitter, and after the acquisition, he joined Polaris Partners as an investor where he has led rounds of funding in companies like Drizly and Lob.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics like:

• Pat’s background growing up on the West Coast and why he moved East.
• His experience working at Microsoft’s FUSE Labs in Cambridge and how that experience set the stage for his next company.
• How Spindle raised capital from top investors on both coasts for their social discovery app and the details behind the acquisition.
• His experience joining Polaris as an EIR and eventually becoming an investor.
• The story of a critical mistake that led him down the path of exploring the world of notaries and ultimately starting a company to disrupt this industry.
• Advice for entrepreneurs looking to raise capital.
• Practical advice for purchasing domain names.
• Plus, a lot more.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

Last week I wrote about the power of one word, and how even in its brevity, just one singular word has the power to be extraordinarily impactful. When I used to write a personal blog, I would often reach out to friends and colleagues and ask them to share one word with me - with no context as to why they shared it. I would riff on that word and my interpretation of it and then circle back with the individual who shared it.  Not only did it offer me a fantastic creative challenge, but also allowed me the opportunity to connect with my friends by sharing our own perspectives on what the word meant to each of us.

Last week, after reading that post, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with responded by reminding me of a word he had shared years ago during one of those exercises. And then he selected a new word as his mantra for the year: sustainability. While I will be sure to connect with him after this post to gain a better understanding of his thoughts on sustainability, here is what struck me when I read that.

First, my mind went to the conventional definition. These days, sustainability often refers to the focus of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of our future generations.  It often encompasses economic, environmental and/or social aspects. Sustainability is also a key factor in today’s business ethics, as much of the public has responded with intolerance about long term damage caused by short term profits. And while those may be elements most associated with this word, it’s not what I tend to think of. Rather, my mind went to my own personal sustainability and replacing it the two words, ‘’never done.”

To me, “never done” is about our ability to never stop learning and growing. It’s about that part of ourselves that is insatiably curious and always in search of a better solution.  When you say those two words with a passionate, sustainable lens of personal development, it can be downright energizing.  I have built a career based on the notion of “never done.” Given that I’ve been playing this role since I was in my 20s, my measure of personal growth and success has largely come by challenging myself to hold the bar (very) high on what can be accomplished each year to make the companies I work for amazing places to work. I don’t want to follow the best practice.  I want to BE the best practice.  To live this way, I embrace there will be points in time of accomplishment; but I will never, ever be done attempting to learn, grow, and develop the work I love. And to keep pace like this for years on end, one needs to find a way to make it personally sustainable.

However, if you change the tone of the phrase the other direction (as in, “Ugh!!! I’m never done!”) it takes on a negative, exhausting and just downright unsustainable connotation.

I care about our world and leaving it in a better place for my kids. I am doing what I can to take care of the planet and live sustainably in the more current, traditional sense of the word. However, I care deeply about pacing myself and holding the bar high without completely burning out. When I was at the start of my career and falling in love with the rather addictive chaos that comes with hypergrowth, I literally went to the extent of sometimes sleeping under my desk and giving up all semblance of a life outside of work in pursuit of learning and attempting to add impact. Outsiders warned me my lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. Insiders, however, fueled this behavior because we shared a similar passion and ethos.  Now zoom ahead nearly thirty years. I still feel remarkably energetic and inspired by my work. I have also evolved my understanding and embracing of the importance of having a life outside the office; I still work my butt off, but my days of sleeping in my office are long gone. I’ve found to ways to evolve making the hypergrowth needs of my company, my passion for what I do, and my need to do it in a way that is sustainable for me. Fortunately, Rapid7 provides me with an environment where I can achieve all of it.

I am looking forward to what my old friend meant when he offered up the word sustainability. I am even more interested, however, on how each of us balances the need to meet achieve our audacious goals while not completely running ourselves into the ground in the process.  My work and personal life have always had an incredibly blurry line dividing them, and I’ve never subscribed to anyone else’s definition of work|life balance.  What has worked and motivated me all these years might not work for anyone else. For me, it’s sustainable.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

As we’ve previously shown, coworking is on the rise in Boston and there is an abundance of spaces across the city. However, in the suburbs surrounding the city, there is a growing need for coworking spaces.

Out of Office is a new coworking space based in Hudson, MA founded by Fresh Tiled Soil CEO Richard Banfield. The goal of the space is to give those living outside of the city not only a place to work, but as a way to give those who don’t have access to one of the major coworking offices a chance to experience one.

We spoke with Banfield about the founding of the coworking company, what the space is all about, and what impact a coworking space can have the outlying towns of the Hub.

Colin Barry [CB]: Before we start talking about Out of Office, let’s talk about your career. Tell me a little more about your career in the Boston tech space.

Richard Banfield [RB]: During the last two decades, I have been working in the digital product space, either as a founder or a service provider to founders. My passion is for designing memorable experiences for emerging technologies. For the majority of that time I’ve been running Fresh Tilled Soil, a digital product design firm. I’m still CEO of that business. More recently my curiosity for what makes digital products successful lead me to start writing books on the subject. I’ve just completed my fourth book.

CB: Now onto your newest business venture. What was the “A-ha!” moment to start a coworking space?

RB: I was scratching an itch that we stumbled on when my UX firm, Fresh Tilled Soil, decided to give up the office and be a distributed team. As working from home became the new norm I became increasingly frustrated. The distractions at home added to the lack of human interaction prompted me to look for a coworking space near my home in the Boston suburbs. The “A-ha!” moment was when I searched for coworking spaces on Google Maps and there was this gaping void in the MetroWest area. All the coworking spaces were concentrated in the city but almost 5-million people live in the Boston suburbs. It didn’t add up. It occurred to me that there’s a huge opportunity to have a positive impact on working conditions by providing sophisticated coworking spaces close to where people actually live. This has the added benefit of getting more people out of the traffic and even reducing the daily carbon footprint of those commuters.

Things got even better when we started talking to the town leaders and organizations. They immediately saw this as a way to achieve their goals of having residents stay local and buy local. Every time a commuter leaves the ‘burbs and heads to the city, they take their coffee and lunch dollars with them. It also costs towns more when commuters drive instead of walk or ride to work.

CB: Out of Office is in Hudson, which is a relatively far drive from Boston. Why set up shop out there? Were there always plans to be in Hudson?

RB: Hudson is smack in the middle of the MetroWest corridor and situated on I-495, which makes it a short drive for almost 500,000 people. We’re also on the Assabet River Rail Trail, a major bike path connecting Marlborough to Hudson and Stow. The location is ideal for folks who don’t want to or can’t, drive to Boston, but what closed the deal for us was the town of Hudson itself. If you were walking down Main St you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Davis Square or Somerville. Trendy spots like Medusa Brewing, Ground Effect Brewing, Rail Trail Flatbread, the Greater Than Less Than speakeasy, and the New City Microcreamery attract the kind of patron that are also our customers. Every day I meet young entrepreneurs that moved out here because Cambridge or Boston became too expensive to own a home and raise a family.

Towns like Hudson, Stow, Acton, Sudbury, Maynard, Bolton, Berlin, and the northern part of Framingham have no commuter rail. If you live in those towns, but your office is in Boston, your best hope is to be in traffic for an hour or more each way. I did that for 15 years. It’s a nightmare. Things are changing. People work remotely more often now, we have a massive sharing economy and big corporates out here need options to right-size. Within 20 mins of Hudson, we have GE Healthcare, TJX, DCU Boston Scientific, Raytheon, Vertex Biomedical, and Intel. We’re seeing a confluence of things that could be exciting.

CB: What impact can coworking bring to the suburban areas around the Boston tech scene?

RB: Our goal is to build a network of beautifully designed coworking exurban locations that are sophisticated as the downtown spaces, but each within a 15-20 minute drive of the MetroWest commuter. The entrepreneurial and tech scenes need a center of gravity out here. With 14,000 sq ft of space, dozens of offices and meeting rooms, and tons of parking we can be that place. We’ve only been open a few days and we’ve already signed up two dozen members and several events booked so I’m guessing we’re tapping into the pent-up demand.

CB: What sets Out of Office apart from the other coworking spaces out in Hudson, if there is any?

RB: Ha! There’s nothing “out there”. It’s an underserved part of the work landscape. Apart from a few sublets, there is no coworking community of any substance in the suburbs. Certainly none with the gorgeous space and amenities we have. Out Of Office is also not interested in competing with the downtown spaces either. They have their place and it’s valuable. Our biggest competitor is the commute into the city. If you’d had enough of sitting in traffic, you’re probably our customer.

CB: What are some plans going forward for Out of Office? Any events/networking opportunities?

RB: We’re currently looking at a handful of locations to expand our footprint. Ideal towns will have to be about 40 mins to an hour commute out of Boston, have a vibrant downtown and poor access to the commuter rail. We have an official launch on Feb 1st and several tech-related events in the works. One of our member organizations is Revolution Factory, an incubator with a focus on smart cities. They will be running demos and workshops starting in January 2019. All through the lens of intelligent exurb design as a tool for an improved standard of living across all these dimensions.

CB: Any other additional comments you’d like to make?

RB: We think Out Of Office has a huge advantage in this space because we’re not just seeing as a cost-plus equation. We see this as an opportunity to work with towns and exurban communities to accelerate a more sustainable work-life balance for their residents. We’re not just making good business, we’re pushing for a fundamentally different and more humanistic structure to the live/work experience.

For the 66th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Andy Cook, Co-Founder and CEO of Tettra, a knowledge management system for high-performance teams.

This could be my most transparent interview ever. When you ask most startup founders how things are going, the majority are likely going to say, “We are crushing it.” However, building a company is really hard, and growing a successful startup is rarely, if ever, a straight line.

Andy recently published a series of blog posts where he shares the intimate details on the ups and downs of building a startup, so I was really excited to chat with him about the really deep and gritty details that go into building a startup, including the depths of nearly failing, to plowing through and coming out the other end to a profitable path for Tettra.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

• Andy’s background, and how he started a rental marketplace called Rentabilities with his brother, and how they were able to convince Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot to write the first angel check.
• The aha moment behind Tettra and the current state & scale of the company.
• A ton of details on the ups and downs he’s experienced building a company from the ground up, including lots of info on fundraising, finding the right sales model, & how they got to profitability.
• The importance of staying transparent when running your business especially with employees.
• Tips for communicating with investors.
• Plus, a lot more.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!