Coffey & Code Podcast Interview with Jonathan Anderson

10:50PM Jun 15, 2022

Speakers:

Ashley Coffey

Keywords:

jonathan

create

code

problem

product

building

website

idea

ventures

work

solve

apps

world

people

good

coding

fun

point

happening

happy

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Coffey and Code! I'm excited to have a guest on the show today. His name is Jonathan Anderson. Jonathan is the co founder and CEO at can do. He loves technology but can't write a line of code. He has a dog named Ronnie a cat named Winslow and a husband named Luke. Jonathan is passionate about product lead selling. He has launched services, strategy, operations and analytics teams adventure back to sit shs startups, including insight squared and LaunchDarkly.

Prior to startups, Jonathan worked at Bain and Company. Jonathan has an incredible background of experience and our paths just somehow crossed in this virtual world. But welcome to the show. Jonathan. I'm glad to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me, Ashley.

And before we kind of dive in, I would like to take a moment just to hear a little bit more about yourself. I love your bio here. It's it's not the traditional bio, which is why I like it so much. So thank you for sharing that. But tell us a little bit more about yourself, Jonathan?

i Yeah, I'm a big I'm a big believer in a more interesting bio. I think I missed the unfortunately, the dating profile phase. I met my husband before the apps were a big deal. i This is my guess my opportunity to get creative under pressure. No, yeah, I yeah, I'm part of the reason I'm so interested in kind of can do is it's part of the no code space, which is basically for those of us who can't actually code but want to be involved in technology. And a big thing. I'm a big believer in kind of creating things, I've always really enjoyed doing that. And for me, creating a startup I can do is really about will making a startup but also making really a UI design tool. So kind of giving the power of creation to a bunch of other folks. So I think for me, it's really, I guess, I'm kind of who I am. It's like, I like making stuff. And so this is really an opportunity to do that.

Amazing. And it's really important to constantly be creating and looking for what's the next new innovation and utilizing the skill set that you have to create something new. So can you tell us a little bit more about can do?

Yeah, happy to? Yeah, so can do is actually a UI Builder, which is a fancy way of saying that we help you create little widgets or and beds that you can basically use to improve the user experience of a web app or website. If you think about it, like websites, basically, or web app is kind of like a house. We're kind of like we make furniture. So it's like stuff you can put in your house that will improve, you know, how, what it looks like, what it feels like, and really just improve the user experience. And what's been kind of fun is that we kind of take this traditionally, like developer run activity of like building components or HTML blocks. And we give it over to really non technical folks. So people like me who are in product or marketing are on the customer team, who have a lot of really good ideas for how we can improve the user experience, but don't actually have the technical chops to like, make any of that stuff happen. And so we're trying to wait make it so easy that like a kid can create a component themselves. Yeah. And then use it to improve user experience.

I love that you are empowering others with the tools they need to get from point A to point B, which is really exciting. And I want to kind of dig into how you create a can do I know, you founded in 2018? So can you talk us through a little bit more about the creation of can do and what that looks like?

Yeah, it's a winding A winding path, as it were, I think the insight for candy really came out of actually, not something work related, it was actually building my wedding website with with Wix. It's just, it's just such an easy platform to use. And it's, you know, you take a button and you drag it onto the canvas. It's just a really great way to build something and really looking at that like kind of WYSIWYG technology, or was it make sense for what you see is what you get, as you get to create the GUI, the graphical user interface. And I was like, hold on. This is so easy. Why in the world, do we have this at work? Like why am I going through engineering and product decisions and design? When really I'm just trying to, you know, change an announcement bar on the page. And so that was kind of the original insight. And then of course, there's the whole work of finding a technical co founder who's outstanding to work with and getting funding and hiring a team and all that jazz but, but really the the core idea was why And then we have when we apply some of this technology, and that's kind of existed in a consumer space and bring it over to really the, how does it fit into the enterprise?

Wow, that's incredible. And what a great time to be in this space, too. I mean, I read a McKinsey report recently and talks about how, what happened in three months when the pandemic hurt would have otherwise taken seven years. And like the normal timeline, which is just wild, conceptually to think about,

yeah, we're, I think we're at the kind of the I say, like a, we were kind of, I think, lucky, in a sense. And that, I guess, you know, luck is trying to be at the right space at the right time, right. But yeah, we thankfully were part of this, like no code, I guess rebirth or kind of this willingness for development teams to kind of give away some of their Legos as it were to non technical teams. And at the same time, we're at there's another trend that's happening in the world, which is we call it like product, lead growth or product lead selling. And it's really just that consumers, like all of us have such high expectations for how products should work based on, you know, Netflix apps, and Tik Tok and all these other things. And we expect more from the apps that we use for work. And so we're kind of lucky in that we're kind of at the Kennedy was kind of at the at the focal point of kind of these two trends in the market. Wow,

wow. And I noticed that you have a very interesting kind of like background that led you here. But I'm curious, did you ever have that aha moment where you're like, I know this exam, this is exactly what I want to do, or kind of what was taught me through that.

Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, to be honest, starting company is such a crazy thing. I really understood how much work it would be. Like how stressful it'd be. When I first got involved. I think I, I grew up in Silicon Valley, and kind of marinated in that the ethos of that seemed like a normal thing to do. It is not. But I think I was kind of one of those people who was like, Okay, I think I want to be a founder, I think I really enjoy it, I would really enjoy it. And then I kind of worked looking for an idea. And actually did something where I kind of came up with an idea a day for a year, what I could do, which is a really crazy thing to do, and also like not actually that helpful, because if you think about it, I think the best ideas come out of actually things that you were doing at work or in your life where you're like, Oh, this is the problem I want to solve. But it was kind of fun to just kind of be in that generative mind space for a long time. Even if that's not really where the idea ultimately came from. I tried a bunch of travel ideas of which I had no, I have no business being in the travel business. But that's where my that's where my mind goes, at least in a brainstorm. So that's the truth.

Wow. That's amazing that you did idea a day for an entire year. That takes some true discipline.

Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, I think there's people who meditate every day, that seems much harder to me than just coming up with a crazy idea day. But you know, each row, you know, so

true, true, I am one of those people, I will use the column app, it's super, not an endorsement or a paid advertisement. But it's a great option keeps me consistent for the most part.

So good. It's so good. I haven't tried and failed to regular basis a lot of times, but you know, hey, it started as launch. So you know, at least that part worked?

Yeah. And also I will, I will close the loop there with adding that there's no such thing as a wrong meditation, showing up for yourself, there we go. deepening my practice. Well, let's go back to the low code, no code. So we kind of dipped our toe a little bit into that. But can you kind of dive in a little bit more and give your best description. For listeners who might be might not be familiar, I like the analogy that you used as like the Legos. That was really good, but kind of like, you can talk through the under the hood, what's happening there?

Yeah, I'm happy to so so no coding locode are basically movements that really are. The concept is basically a job that's done traditionally, through development, like a technical requires sort of code is given to someone who cannot. So low code actually implies that there's, it's basically a developer, for lack of a better term like, way to kind of speed up the work that they're doing. We can automate a portion of it or we have reusable blocks that are going to use part of it, we still need a little bit of code to kind of make the thing work as a job. No code implies that the developer is kind of written out of the equation, that they're no longer involved, that they've been giving you the keys to the car and you can someone else can drive it is the idea. And really, I think no code and low code, come out of this idea that once you've solved the problem a bunch of times it's no longer requires someone really smart and technical to think to think about it anymore. Like we can let the other rest of us come in and configure it. Right. And that's, I think, a big, big difference. And I think we have a term for it. But we've actually been doing this type of activity for a long time. I mean, there was a time for example, when like writing an email, or sorry, creating an email required code, right? Yeah. And now that's in completely abstracted into this world where, you know, none of no one hopefully is coding up emails at this point. And so I think the low code, no code, I guess, activities wrapping for a long time, but now we have kind of a more appropriately before it.

Yes, yes, that's, that's a really good description. And I want to also reference, something that someone might people might be familiar with the audience is code.org, I used to facilitate these co.org coding boot camps on the National Day of coding when I worked at Apple. And the curriculum there is basically like, no code, which is great, because you're teaching kids concepts of, of coding of Okay, move forward, turn left, or like, just kind of putting the building blocks there. So it's not as overwhelming when you're learning on the on the baseline or just maybe to have zero technical knowledge?

Yeah, yeah, that's great. It's actually I think, low code, and no code are probably the best ways to teach someone how to code actually, yeah. Because you learn like the how the thing works, and then slowly, you get deeper and deeper until eventually, you're dealing with memory storage, and that's, you've gotten way too far.

Yeah. And more approachable, right, for sure. get intimidated and to say, like, you know, I'm not a coder, or like, I'm not technical. I hear those terms a lot. But yeah, it really is. Like, it's more about having just the comfortability of learning something new. It's okay. There's no, there's no, there's no dumb question. For this role. We're learning.

Yep. 100%. Yeah.

Well, with can do at spend exploding, I recently saw that you recently had a $5 million in seed funding, raised by two sigma ventures. So can we talk more about the process of, you know, raising that that's very stressful position to be and as a founder, building and scaling a product, but also working with funding at the same time? So for those entrepreneurs that are maybe listening to the audience, what is something that you would give as a piece of advice going through this journey?

Yeah, that's a really great question. I think, I think probably the most important thing, and actually, I think we already touched on, which is getting really clear on what your problem statement is. And then having a thesis that you have, that you have conviction that you actually, it's actually a thesis, it's really a belief. So for us, it was that, you know, Hey, we should know, Coach, we brought into the enterprise, we should take no code, and we should be using it in building, you know, customer great applications. And so we're our flavor is that we're no code for existing products. And we're kind of the first flavor to do that. And to some new ventures and trials were of interest to review. We're like, Hey, that's a that's a, that's something we can get behind. We want to see that. And we want to see that in the world. We think that that should exist. We have you taught us something different about how the world ought to be. And now we want to give you the funding to to bring a product to market, see if it sticks. So sorry, I'm actually describing very specifically, I think the I'd say like your first kind of institutional money, what that looks like. But yeah, I think I think the most important thing, honestly, for a founder, is to get just to get conviction in your own idea when it turns into a belief. And I'm a very, very practical, like, rational person. But when you're like, hey, it's crazy to hear this thing is not in in the world. And if we don't build it, somebody else will, that's a really good time to look for funding, because that conviction is so contagious.

100% I cannot agree more. And I would 100% agree on your statement of figuring out your problem statement. I feel like I see a lot of really excited and really passionate founders or people who want to start a business, but they have the hardest time defining what that problem is. And they maybe start the business without that clarity. And then six months later to a year or maybe like 10 They're like, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Right. Right. Right. And I think I think even to that point, a lot of people talk about this idea of pivoting, right? Hey, we start in this market, and we're gonna go over here. A pivot is actually a really painful process. Because ideally, you're working with a team at this point, you have a co founder, or you have investors or whatever, that you've convinced this is a great idea. And then you're like, actually, I was wrong. It's actually I think, maybe the values over here, but I'm not confident yet. And if you have a problem statement as your Northstar, like we're going to solve this problem. Pivoting is not hard. at all, because you're saying, hey, this isn't a new way of solving the same problem that I care about. But if you're kind of starting with the solution and not with a problem, then it feels like you're kind of going back on something. So I think that there's a lot of value in being like, you know what, I may not have found the perfect thing just yet. But I really believe that this problem needs to be solved.

Yes, it's kind of like taking two different routes to get to the same location, your two options, arrows. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And you think I think you think that the solution is like further along, because it feels further along. But it's not. Because you're because your solution, no matter how good your slides are, no matter how good your prototype is, and figma, or whatever you're building, it's just wrong. It's just wrong. And you'll learn that later, you know, as you kind of these people can start to use it.

Yeah. Well, I'm curious, what are you currently working on at KUNE? Do that you can talk about?

Oh, yeah, I'm actually well, I was just actually dogfooding. Earlier today. One of our new features, we're doing a lot of, we do a lot of onboarding pages with can do. It's a probably our most common use cases, kind of the front page of your product. And the reason it's a really good fit for us is because it's it's usually very content oriented, you know, Hey, what should users see first, and it's often just a pain to code, because you're often making different variants. Okay, you know, new users see this returning users see that. And so it's actually a really good fit for an editor like that, what we have, because it's so easy to change things as you learn what works and kind of create things for different audiences, very similar to how you might think of email, but the UI version of that, as it were. And the thing I'm really excited about is that we're launching a lot more event driven activity. So when users do things in the product, kind of outside of just the CANDU dashboard, the in real time the product will change. And so what's cool about that is it gives a sense of like, Hey, you're dealing with something that was, you know, a great looking product that was built by a developer, which obviously it wasn't, but they don't need to know that it feels very responsive to them, and very interactive. So I mean, that's the whole point of the game for us is how do we make a product feel, you know, fun to use, that you get better at the job you're trying to do by using the product? So yes,

and I want to compliment you, whenever I looked at can do the website for the first time, it was fun, and exciting. I don't may dare I use the term to just kind of browse through and kind of see like, I was quickly able to determine what exactly can do is very quickly. You know, I love the videos that you have, especially the front page video. That's the one I watched, and I was like, Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So love the approach that you cultivate, to make it fun and approachable without being intimidating.

Yeah, I think I'm so glad that you enjoy the video, a lot of fun making it It's, um, I think, ultimately, what is it? We're making HTML blocks? We make we make widgets, like that's not fun. But actually, no, it's really fun, because we're letting someone create things when they couldn't otherwise do that. And so I think selling the sizzle isn't as important when it comes to try to change the world in a small way like we are. And yeah, and also, it's really fun to build things. And so that should be part of the brand identity for sure.

That's right, creating, constantly creating. So that leads me into my next question, Jonathan, what drives your creative inspiration?

Yeah, what drives my creative inspiration? That's a great question. I am very much a problem solver type. So I like to like see a problem. And then I will kind of fixate on it until I figure out a way to fix it. Which is not always actually helpful for starting a company because it's I think that perfectionist streak is you really need to taper it down and do kind of solving problems first. But for me, I get such a kick out of seeing, like beautiful UX design. And I it's really just like one of those things that like I It makes me happy. I'm actually you actually brought up an amazing app, before we talked calm. They have one of the best onboarding experiences ever, right? It levels up as you go. As you said it kind of it did change your behavior in a fundamental way. Your life is different now because you were hooked in in this application is

100%. I pay the yearly fee. And I have no problem with that.

Yes, because you're getting value from it cuz it's changing your life in a meaningfully good way. And you've experienced you both you learn about the value, you've realized the value and now you're offering you're going and so I think seeing all the little finesse and the touches that for example, the column that puts into their onboarding experience. That is what I find really inspiring to see. really well thought through UI and UX design.

Yes, it plus one to that Ah, I'm curious, did you ever do like art in school? Were you ever an artist to painting or sculpture or anything? Yeah, I

think my creativity is probably more on the writing track. I really enjoy writing more than more so than other things. I wasn't, I'm definitely a doodler. And then in the working world, I worked briefly at a consulting company for a couple of years. And I made a lot of slides. And it's a very specific flavor of creativity. But it's very structured. And it's very buttoned up, but it has a flavor on it. So give me give me a Google slide, I'll make a look great.

Oh, I love it. That is a very special skill. Also, I want to just add to that I have one of my colleagues, he he he had an experienced at one at one point in his early on in his career, and he his background is in like UI UX from Georgia Tech. And one of the one of his Jobs was specifically making sure this slide decks for this company looked good and, and fun and engaging. And sometimes he teaches me new things, a little tips and tricks to make things easier. So it blows my mind how much that comes in handy. And just everyday life,

for sure, for sure. And actually, it's the the canvas layout of a slide is actually a lot of what we think about when we're creating, trying to make our editor easier to use. And so actually, there's a little bit of overlap between these, a lot of these kind of, like MIROS, big jam. And I think Google Slides or PowerPoint is supposed to do a great job with this kind of teaching us to think visually and just show things visually. And we're trying to apply that same concept into actually creating an HTML block that you can use to improve a website. So that's so cool. Yeah. Oh,

oh, well, I'm curious, Jonathan, what kinds of resources or websites would you have for those listening who want to learn more about you? Or can do?

Okay, well, they should definitely go to our website. I brought it up earlier. So I'll, I'll be happy to plug it. It's can do like you can do it. And it's c a n, d u.ai. And we have this really great Creator showcases page where you can see what other no coders have made for their businesses. And there's some really cool stuff there. And some really awesome stories that folks who have kind of created really cool things. Hopefully, there's something that's pretty interesting, at least for the Lenovo group, and then for those folks who are maybe thinking more around like founding a company and venture, I cannot claim to be an expert on that. But a couple of resources, that might be helpful, I might suggest looking at the Mom Test, which is a way to basically do customer discovery. And it's a really good time to figure out like, basically, the concept is that your mom is always will always tell you that she loves your idea. But really, she could probably never use it. It's just a good way to kind of disentangle people who want to be helpful, but won't give you the truth. That's really Yeah. I found it helpful in my journey. So maybe I'll pay it forward. For sure.

Nice, what a great tip. And I will be sure to link all of those resources and websites in the show notes for listeners to easily access. But this has been a really great conversation, Jonathan, I am blown away by your creativity and how much you've accomplished. And before we kind of depart today, is there anything else that you would like to leave us with?

Um, no. I mean, I think I think, first of all, this podcast was so fun. I think I think demystifying tech is like, it's like, it's such I do that in my own life, you know, with my, with my parents. I feel like they're doing that on a much grander scale. So like, kudos to you, actually. All. Thank you. Yeah. And I think in general, like for folks who are first getting are kind of dipping their toes into like, the technology space. I think no code is such a great thing to exist in the world. And I'm just so glad to be a part of it. It really is. Helping people who feel like they can't do stuff, to get involved and actually start to create things that are meaningful and joyful. And I just love it. So yeah, happy to be a part of that.

And that's a good note to end on. And thank you so much, again for being on the show. Thank you for all who are listening. I hope you learned something new today. Again, I'll be leaking the website to can do and the other resources that Jonathan mentioned today. And don't forget to subscribe to be notified when new episodes go live.