Jake Joraanstad, CEO, (then-Myriad Mobile) Bushel, talks about the future of Apps and what kind of learning curve people experience with new technologies in the workplace.
Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Jake Joraanstad
This is jake ceo at, where are you
Jason Spiess
from originally
Jake Joraanstad
from? North Dakota, North Dakota. 10 miles from Canada. Canada.
Jason Spiess
Yeah. And so that's, you know, you kind of got a small town upbringing. Did you go to N. D. S. U. North Dakota State University?
Jake Joraanstad
Yes, sir. We went in 2008 for computer engineering and uh, ended up getting done. ...
Jason Spiess
Did you go on and start a company right away or did you go work for somebody?
Jake Joraanstad
Well, I never had, I never had a full time job during college. I was, I was doing, um, part time where I was an R. A. For a couple of years. Residents assistant, uh, at N. D. S. U. Um, had a couple part time deals and eventually, um, basically my into my sophomore year, going into my junior year, we sort of started this company originally called Myriad devices now married mobile of course.
And uh, we just kind of went for it. And I think the, I got laid off, uh, from interim role, there's a bunch of issues that the company and they laid off about 20% of the company. And uh, I had about three months worth of Runway and uh, my, my own and decided I'd go full time. I had this company that we're creating ourselves and see if we can make it work and it worked.
And a couple of year and a half later we graduated, I graduated along with marrying my wife and at the same semester along with 15 part time people on the team and uh, went from there and built this company over the last five years now.
Jason Spiess
Um, well, first of all, how's how's it going?
Jake Joraanstad
Good. We are doing well. We've got about just about 40 people on the team today full time. Um, we've, we get to do some pretty awesome work every day of the week with all kinds of interesting and fun customers from bobcat and Cargill to uh, interesting fun startups from the area and around the country. Uh, and doing some incredible technology work. We're doing everything from building apps for your watch and for your car. The new Honda Civic for example, we've got an app for
Minnesota public radio in the car. You can listen to it on the, you can pull up your phone and basically it'll open the app up on the dash in front of you and you can go through the streaming radio of Minnesota public radio. You've got uh, interesting things we're doing with virtual reality and Oculus rift for not just doing mobile phones and tablets, but really we're expanding into some of the newer technologies as well.
Jason Spiess
Well, that leads me into, I guess two part question one is, um, you know, kind of get into a little bit what it is you guys are doing and maybe you start from the beginning because it sounds like either you've added some services products or you've um, uh, just branched out. I guess. So, so kind of maybe a little bit of an infomercial for your company, but maybe somewhat chronological too.
Jake Joraanstad
Sure. So in 2011, while Ryan and I were both in school, got the company off the ground. We started with some failed ideas and eventually landed on the idea of building mobile apps for businesses. That was our original concept was can we build apps and get paid to build apps for businesses? And so I started off on android and then on iPhone eventually.
And um what really got us off the ground was we built an app for the 2011 flood that happened in Fargo and bismarck and Minot called H 20 Fargo, H 20 mina and bismarck. And it basically gave all the details that people are looking for on the internet at the time around where the flood level is going to be, what it was. Currently any news or road closures or anything like that in one app.
And we got on, we gave away for free and we got on the news with the forum here in Fargo and that sparked uh people calling us and saying, hey, we'd like to get an app built and helped us get our business off the ground from our first customers were here in Fargo, um FM spotlight, which is now Fargo monthly magazine and others N. D. S. U. Was one of our first customers bobcat as well.
So that was the starting of the company, we started building apps for these different groups and kind of going into 2012 Ryan Ryan. Finally my co founder Ryan Mongoose finally graduated himself and I was still in school but kind of stopped going to class is often and was focusing more on this company we're building and we had about eight or 10, You know up to 15 part time people from Andy Stum Stum Concordia kind of on the team, mostly students and we're building this company, doing
all kinds of different projects for companies and ended up in 2012. Right and I both got married that that fall we had 15 part time people like I mentioned and uh and then uh we also both I finally graduated got my degree and uh computer engineering with a 2.7 G. P. A. Pretty proud of that and uh went from there and so once we once we were both full time and focused and no longer doing anything in college that really helped the company grow and we grew doubled and tripled the first couple
three years. Um And uh actually this year we just one we're number two in North Dakota for fastest growing companies in the country on the 5000 list at number 667 out of 5000 companies in the United States that are on the list were number 667. So I'm pretty proud of that on the growth side and again doing mobile and doing software development we're building software for but expanding that offering beyond just the mobile phone but also focusing on in just a few industries.
We're working with agriculture as our number one financial services and education, those three industries that we've really been focusing in on and doing well in those industries. So
Jason Spiess
a couple of years ago and it was three years ago, um, carry frank was on our program. She's the ceo of comply 3 60 she figured out an app for the airline industry and basically allowed pilots no longer to carry this £90 black box for an ipad. Um, I'm kind of going through some of the, I guess conversation I had with her. How much of your apps are, I guess logistical things when it comes to compliance or forms and how much is navigation through, say like a website or, or something like that.
Jake Joraanstad
Um, I'd say half of them are logistical sort of business oriented apps or helping organizations, you know, with tools that they might need to make themselves more efficient or better serving their customers. And then the other half is kind of direct consumer apps.
So let's say, um, you know, Minnesota public radio for example, they needed a way for people to stream their radio stations on their phone. So we helped build that product and so we're doing a lot of product development for different organizations as well.
Jason Spiess
Okay,
Jake Joraanstad
sure,
Jason Spiess
sure. And the business apps, they'd be more of like a like an intranet back in my day is what we called it, where we were the only person that could go on the internet for the specific site. So that's kind of what you guys are doing, building internets for the phones and things.
Jake Joraanstad
That's an example of a few different things from sales tools to internet to um you know, streamlining processes and things for from going from paper, anything that's paper today in your organization. If you've got paper and paper processes were able to at least fix that and make you more efficient if not totally revolutionized the way you're doing it today. So that's an example,
Jason Spiess
how's the learning curve for some of those business oriented apps, you know, you come into an organization um you got some different varieties of ages for example, you've got some different varieties of computer pedigree. Um how's the learning curve on something like that? You guys are building
Jake Joraanstad
one of the things that any good software company needs to pride themselves in is my opinion, is a user interface that's super, super simple to understand to get started that self, self explanatory, everything from an app that might have some tips on how to get started to um an app that literally has a walk through before you ever use it. So you totally understand the features before you have to dive in and use it. Uh those are things that we do to try to lower that barrier of entry for
people to learn but what we're finding out is the the general workforce today is very adept at um you know mobile technology, everybody's using their phones for different things and it's really natural for them to just use that for business as well. So we don't see a lot of pushback in that regard. I think that's only going to get better. That's a pretty that problem will solve itself over time I think.
Jason Spiess
Oh I think you're right I think um you know I mean like I got I got a cell phone in 1997 I got rid of my T. T. V. In 2007. So I've been an early adapter to a lot of this stuff and it takes people all five years later to really kind of come accepted. But then it seems like those people that had the learning curve, they start digesting it a lot more than the average person. So I think I think you're absolutely right. Um What was the other question I had for you?
Um In regards to excuse me? Uh startups and um entrepreneur type talk. I I I've seen you speak a couple of times and one was, well in fact I'll start with this one. First of all bacon. Are you guys doing any business out in the bacon? Are you are you have any energy companies? Um And then I'm going to transition into startups next, but just do you guys have any baking experience at all?
Jake Joraanstad
We, you know, we um, it was never big for us, it never was something that we definitely saw opportunity, but for some reason we just weren't able to maybe grasp the opportunity that was ahead of us or maybe be introduced to the right people. And so we didn't do a lot of business necessarily in the bacon, we're doing business with companies who definitely have either benefited or working in the baking in some way, but not not directly with any energy companies other than the ethanol
groups. Um, but we're, you know, we're doing work for everything from companies like bobcat who obviously have machinery out there to um, some of the construction companies who have benefited from some of the activity out there, but not any direct energy related companies. Just, just the ancillary services that have been provided out there, we've been working with those kind of companies.
Jason Spiess
Sure, okay. How about startups, entrepreneur? Um, I was just talking with, uh, Jeffrey wearing, he's the director for, uh, entrepreneurship out at the Black Hills state and we were just talking about how, um, a lot of these prestigious universities and um, some of the old guard, so to speak, kids aren't really looking at them anymore. They're, they're looking at places like the Black Hills and some places with without population and Doug Burgum and I have talked about bike
paths and just really thrown out quality of life and uh outdoor rec and um just you know, kind of whatever suits their fancy or whatever their pleasure is, you're in a technology based industry, are you finding that um that's, that's kind of the future of of the next generation of workers is that, you know, they're not going to get caught up with, you know, maybe you know the old, you know, has to be new york or Chicago.
I mean like when I was, when I was growing up, there was like six cities that if you got a job and you were set for life, I don't, I don't see that anymore is what I'm kind of getting at.
Jake Joraanstad
Yeah. Yeah. Well I think the very simple reason is that the internet has been so prolific and allowing people to do work from anywhere in the world and that's not, not even a joke anymore, it's for real, you can do work a lot of this work can be done anywhere that now now now you have the freedom to say, well I don't have to live in a certain area where that business is, I can work from somewhere else or their software and interesting businesses being created in places that aren't just the
valley or on the East Coast as soon as that happened and people realize that nobody actually wants to live like in like the suburbs of san Francisco or like downtown Silicon Valley because it's really not a good experience. I mean it's literally cement everywhere. You have no, it's ours to go anywhere that is outside of a city feeling and not necessarily, um, the culture isn't necessarily that unique or interesting that it would draw you to stay in a place that you're not feeling
great about. So when you realize that you have options now outside of that, the whole world changes the way people look at where you can work and how you work and what your interests are. You no longer look at just the job, You're looking at the culture of the city, you're looking at the surrounding area and activities and you might think, you know, maybe from our perspective, you might, I think Fargo is not necessarily high ranked on that, but if you look at a lot of the studies that
have been coming out for entrepreneur entrepreneurial cities, cities that are attracting entrepreneurs best places to start your business in North Dakota and Fargo in particular has been top 10 on a lot of those lists and it's because the culture is great, outdoor activities are strong, especially in the summer.
Um, the work ethic is good and there's a lot of interesting companies being built here that are doing financially well, including ourselves that are able to go and hire, you know, hire good talent and and pay them well in your dollar goes a long ways in North Dakota as you guys know. So,
Jason Spiess
so what's next for you guys? I mean, you've got a pretty good bass, it sounds like you've got some customers that, uh, or have some some pretty good name recognition. You've made a list of fastest growing companies. So what's, what's next on your guys agenda?
Jake Joraanstad
We've got, we've got a 3 to 5 year vision on where we want to take the company. We've got a revenue goal of 10 million in revenue in the next 3 to 5 years. Um We've got a goal for umm, just continued growth. I think next year is gonna be one of our, you know, this year was a good year of growth and a good year of profitability, but next year it's gonna be a spike.
I think if you were to look at our timeline, next year is going to look like we took out on a rocket ship and started moving in the right direction, We're pretty excited about that. So that's growth is big. I think our focus is actually gonna become more and more narrow versus offering more and more services. We're actually gonna be more focused agriculture today.
I was gonna make a prediction agriculture might be the only industry we focus on in the next three years. Um, and specifically we might be, we are developing already some products in house that the difference between a product that we would develop and what we do normally is every time we want to grow with the team, what we do today for services for the companies we have to add more people right?
We have to add two people for every you know five or 10 customers. We might have, we have to add new team members to keep the growth and keep our capabilities there. But if we were to build a product that can scale on its own and exponentially with cloud technology, we don't have to add as many bodies to serve the customers and also to generate the revenue.
So we've been working on a couple of products and one of them specifically is going really well in the agriculture market um for elevator companies and grain companies. So it's called the scale, we call it m agree and its focus on scale tickets. So we digitalize the scale tickets solution and expanding that solution into some other parts of the farmers experience and the co ops experience or grain company.
So that's another thing that that might change our entire business model. If that was to be the number one focus for us in the next few years, that might, that might be a game changer for the whole company. We might change into a product company versus a service company and that's exciting. Just change this fund growth is fun, changes fun. We're looking forward to that.
Jason Spiess
Well it sounds like you guys have quite um you're just everything is so fluid and dynamic right now. It's, you know, going from an intangible to a tangible, um, in fact, that was a question that I had quite a bit over the last several years that, um, many economic development forms, in fact, at the Governor's Summit last year, uh, I posed this question to the four investors and um, based on what you said, I'm gonna pose it to you too, which is, it seems like we had a period of time where
johnson and johnson type companies where they actually had a tangible product, soap and shampoos and that sort of thing. And then we kind of went into the facebook era where so much of the investment was done on a computer that it really turned into an intangible type product. And, and, and so now it sounds like you guys, what would be classified as that intangible product at this point, but you're even seeing signs where you might have to Well, just that you mentioned the cloud and
that's what I always, you know, I joked at people when I went to college in, in the nineties, you know, computer science people were very few and far between not many of them. And then the internet started taking off about 1997 ish 96 maybe a little bit for people like me that were playing mud and other games that not many people have heard of. But um, I kind of chuckled at computer science guys. I'm like, you know, so you're kind of putting yourself out of a job, you know, you're
creating the code that's when a one day, you know, put yourself out of a job and they kind of looked at me and I could see it registering, but to me, what I just kind of heard from you is that you are seeing signs to where it's not as intangible in the marketplace as it used to be. It's almost where you guys are starting to have to reinvent yourself a little bit. Just expound on that a little bit because I that's a very loaded
Jake Joraanstad
question, You know? Well, first off the actual result of what you described with the computer science industry is that now we think, you know, we're short tens of thousands, if not millions of those jobs in the next 5 to 10 years, that's how many were short. So we're realizing that software is changing everything. Software is eating the world as, um, Marc Andreessen Horowitz would say software is going to change every single industry on the planet period, including itself,
including its own industry, including the soft industry. And so that, that mindset, you have to be okay with that and kind of embrace it. So we have to change just like anybody else to the changing market, right? And there's gonna be software that puts some software developers out of business, some things that aren't so necessarily complex or creative could be done by robots or artificial intelligence but there's still going to be a massive need for software programmers in the
future. And so we're excited to be in that space. Our team has a skill set that I think At least in the next 3-5 years the skill sets that our team has are very relevant for a lot of what you consider software to be. Um And if it becomes not the case we will have to adapt and learn new skill sets and take on new projects. So I'm I'm pretty excited about about the future.
I think it you know there's a few other exponential technologies. Computing is one of the things that everybody pretty much can recognize as one of those technologies that's just changed the face of the planet. I mean internet is built on computing and so you've got all these game changing technologies related to computing and it's exponential and its impact.
But there's 3 to 5 new uh you know, emerging technologies that are going to be exponential in their impact. Examples are going to be artificial intelligence, robotics, things like three D. Printing and others some of these things are just changing the game. And so there's a lot of exciting opportunities for new entrepreneurs as well. And a lot of it's driven by software but also there's going to be you know three D.
Printing for example that's a new form of manufacturing that's changing the changing the game. So I'm just pretty bullish about the future on the technology aspect, it's it's exciting and I think there's more opportunities than ever to be an entrepreneur
Jason Spiess
and I think you're right on a lot of those fronts and the most important front I think you're right on is that you're excited about the future and excited to change if you if need be because like like me, you you you quickly understood how technology can change and when things change it cost your business money and it costs time and and and and all these
other things. So having a, I've found having more of a dynamic type of a business approach definitely um makes your business plan more solid. Does that make any sense at all?
Jake Joraanstad
I think it does. I think that's the, if you're trying to resist change, it's just gonna make it harder. Uh you have to figure out how to embrace it in a way that is beneficial.
Jason Spiess
And um 11 more question before I and and thanks for giving us some time here and um is the US industry, you mentioned how you're going to be kind of streamlining into agriculture and that makes a lot of sense up here in North Dakota. Um but um is are you doing any business with the U. A. S. Or is the U. S gonna fold into the egg stuff that you're working on.
Jake Joraanstad
Um both um we have opportunities for working somewhat in that space. But I'm really bullish about the concept. So you can say you a s as unmanned aerial systems as usually what that means. But I'm more bullish on the general concept of unmanned or autonomous vehicles. Generally it's piloting drone autonomously or piloting the future of agriculture and the tractors.
And we see ourselves in that space somewhere in between the hardware, the tractors and the drones and the database. And so were the interface that you're going to use to interact with these fleets of autonomous vehicles. We've seen the opportunity to be playing in that space that intersects perfectly with the culture and the future of autonomous technology.
Jason Spiess
Oh without a doubt. I mean I've they've already got combines driving by themselves and some farms and I know that um the example I always give Doug Doreen and other people when we talk about the integration of us is um the role of sunflower seeds or potatoes and get the us that flies over. It'll identify the individual pathogen or disease that's on the specific plant. It will tell the little robotic four by four down on the ground where to go with with actual pinpoint information and
which leaf and then that guy will just go out there and spray it like a thing of cologne. Just spray it on there and save a small fortune. Yeah and and so what you what you just said is that um you know most people told me no because the, the land part of it, but you're, you're actually working on some, some land us
Jake Joraanstad
stuff. We are. I'm actually part of a small group of uh sort of people from different companies that are pushing to make sure North Dakota is leader not only in us, but also ground autonomous vehicles. Um and I'm excited about that more so because I think that the immediate impact of the industry is higher in the ground vehicles and it is that drones, drones are still sort of a new business model. It's hard to make money off them. They're still really expensive. But the semi truck
industry, the long haul industry that's ripe for this kind of technology and disruption. And so I'm involved in terms of some leadership in that space. But our company I see just as an opportunity to come in and work for some of these different companies who need the software layer in the way for the person to interact with. That's that's our opportunity to help people interact with these things in a more efficient, more fun, exciting way. And that's what we're gonna be here for.
Jason Spiess
We'll give you final thoughts, final words. If you wanna, you know, give yourself a little bit of an ad kind of what you guys do and who your customer is. I always like to give the guests the final thoughts that way. It's not a question framed by me. So go ahead. You got the
Jake Joraanstad
floor. Well again, we're excited about building software. That's what we do every day. And um agriculture, financial services or education any one of those three industries. And then on top of that uh some startup companies were working with funded startups as well cos who are looking to use mobile or software to expand what their goals are as a business. So that's exciting for us.
We think we think Fargo and north Dakota in the midwest is a place to build businesses. We're excited about that. So we're supporting entrepreneurs were um involved in a lot of the different communities and organizations that are helping drive that. So um if you ever have questions about things outside of software, I'd love to talk about entrepreneurship as well. So.
Interview was conducted on September 27, 2016.
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The Crude Life Podcast: Jake Joraanstad Talks New Technologies