Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Today's interview is with the founder of a product design and development company which is focused on connecting digital environments and the physical world.
The firm has developed smart home, mobile and web products for major brands and it has a history of developing social impact projects.
For example, in 2011, my guest and his team developed an open data initiative to help residents of Japan report and understand the levels of radiation following the earthquake and nuclear disaster over there.
We talk about how my guest made the leap from being a full time employee to the CEO of a startup.
And we talk about how he's grown that business and built an impressive client base.
So here are three reasons why I think you should listen to this episode.
Firstly, there are some great lessons in this episode on how to build a successful services business.
Many of you are already currently running a services business and maybe you want to transition to a product business full time and I think you'll get some good insights on just generally how you can be more successful on the services side and get more clients and, you know, just do a better job.
Secondly, we talk about innovation and creating a culture where innovation is encouraged.
And my guest has some great examples of what he's done to to create that type of culture in his company and how that's resulted in some amazing new ideas and products.
And thirdly, I always believe that looking outside of our own world we've used, we can find inspiration, new ideas and better ways of doing business.
So although this isn't a conversation about SaaS or a software product, I think it may give you some great out of the box thinking that you can take and apply to your own SaaS or software business.
Okay.
Today's guest is the co founder and CEO of Uncorked Studios, a rapidly growing design and engineering firm that builds connected products for both digital and the physical world, ranging from an app or website to a wearable device or smart home technology.
The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Portland, Oregon.
Its clients include companies such as Google, Adidas, intel and Lego.
So today I'd like to welcome Marcelino Alvarez.
Marcelino, welcome to the show.
Marcelino Alvarez (02:57.820)
Thank you so much for having me honored.
Omer (03:00.220)
So I always like to start by asking my guests for a quote or just what gets them, what drives them to do what they do.
So what gets you out of bed Sure.
Marcelino Alvarez (03:10.620)
I think the most memorable quote for me that kind of gets me out of bed every morning actually came from the old ad agency I used to work at.
They had it kind of emblazoned on a wall with push pins.
And it was this really large kind of emblazoned fancy script word that said fail harder.
And I think that idea of failing harder, you know, certainly failure isn't something that people aspire to do, but the willingness to accept that failure might be an outcome that we can learn from and kind of build upon better the next day is certainly something that drives me.
So I've always looked at that as less of a negative thing, but really an opportunity.
Just kind of get up and, you know, how can we not be afraid to take risks?
Use that as a motivation to kind of push forward and learn from the mistakes that we inevitably make every day.
Omer (03:54.770)
So tell the audience a little bit more about Uncorked Studios.
What kind of projects are you guys working on beyond what a firm like yours might be doing in terms of app development or whatever?
Are there any interesting things that you sort of want to call out?
Marcelino Alvarez (04:15.730)
Sure, absolutely.
So a little bit about Uncorked.
We're a product design company, and one of the things that we're really super focused on is the intersection of the digital products that people use and the physical environments that they use them within.
And, you know, early in our history that that was best quantified by mobile applications.
It was really easy to explain that, you know, a mobile app that allows you to check into a coffee shop is really, you know, the intersection of physical and digital.
Over the last few years, we've really moved into the hardware and connected device space and have really kind of built, you know, a variety of products in that space, whether it's, you know, helping R and D teams understand kind of the role of the smart kitchen or the connected home, or helping your aging populations understand how technology can make their life easier, or building technology products to kind of document the experiences of Arab populations in the Middle east through the lens of Arab photographers.
The thing that I love the most about Uncorked is that there's very little connective thread in the types of products that we build, but that we have a passion for building things that have a purpose and for really putting our expertise and knowledge into designing solutions, whether they be visual or brand design or technical and system design to solve real world problems.
Omer (05:34.420)
What were you doing before you started Uncorked?
Marcelino Alvarez (05:38.020)
So I used to work for an advertising agency here in Portland called White Kennedy.
Tremendous Agency most well known for their work with Nike and Old Spice and Coca Cola over the years.
My role over there was executive interactive producer, and I was tasked with, you know, building a production team, but also bringing in the knowledge and expertise of digital work in house.
And was always interested in the role that software and digital products could play in helping to communicate a brand story that culminated for me in a project that I worked on in 2009 in conjunction with Nike and the Livestrong foundation called the Nike Chalkbot.
And that was a product that we built for the 2009 tour, which you might remember was Lance Armstrong's return to cycling.
And we wanted to create a mechanism for fans of cycling and people in the US who were inspired by the Livestrong brand to communicate messages of hope and inspiration for those who had survived cancer or in honor of those who had passed on the Tour de France.
And so we literally built a street printing machine called the chalkbot that built on the history of people kind of writing messages of.
Of hope for the cyclists in chalk.
Well, we mechanized that, and we built this large street printer that we pretty much graffitied the entire French countryside in 2009.
And I remember being out there on the tour in 2009 and realizing that this is the first thing I'd ever worked on, that I didn't have to explain the technology to my parents or to someone who may not have known how it was built.
It was immediately relatable.
It was the most human piece of inhuman technology that I think I'd ever worked on.
And it really put this idea forward that sometimes the product that we build can have a purpose that's way bigger than that which we intended to do.
And I remember coming back from that and realizing, a, that's the coolest thing I will ever do in advertising, and B, I need to leave right now on a high note and really kind of focus on this.
Leave all your head.
But I was really interested in what the role of an R and D department or an R and D agency could be to help build technologies on timelines that are realistic to clients.
And so the initial kind of genesis of this was like, well, clients never have more than eight weeks to build a thing.
How can we have just a repertoire of technology that when a client comes to us and says, hey, can you build this in eight weeks?
The answer is like, no.
But we have this, and this maybe gets us 60% of the way there, helps us kind of illustrate what's possible.
And I think that was a pretty naive way to look at technology.
But I think it was at the same time an inspiration for a lot of the way that we approach work, which is to say, let's try to achieve as much as possible using a combination of things that we know exist, things that we have expertise in and really get comfortable with.
Looks like feels like prototypes to help communicate the vision of a product, while in parallel, really doing research on who is this for?
Why would anyone use this piece of tech, what are the underlying principles, or go to market strategies for any piece of tech that we build, whether it's for a startup or a large brand.
So that was kind of the genesis of Unquorked was really this idea of connecting physical and digital worlds.
Omer (09:03.290)
Okay, so you worked on this important and memorable project, you came back, you decided that you wanted to kind of go and do your own thing.
A lot of people have been there, a lot of people have those ideas, and then they do nothing.
But you did.
So what happened next?
How did you go about launching this business?
Marcelino Alvarez (09:25.700)
Sure.
So I remember the moment where I was like, I need to do this thing.
And at the time, Wieden had just launched PI, the Portland Incubator experiment, which is now an incubator, but at the time was really just a desk chair.
And it was conveniently located on the first floor of Wieden's offices.
And so I thought maybe a way of kind of half quitting my job would be to say, hey, I quit, but I want to go downstairs to this really cool thing that you guys are incubating down here.
And so talked to Rennie Gleason and Rick Tarozzi, two of the principal architects of pie, and said, hey, I would like to build a company that builds products at the intersection of physical and digital worlds downstairs here, and I want to quit my job.
You know, I think in typical white end fashion, not only did they, you know, were they amenable to it, they said, hey, here's, here's a project.
Can you build an interactive installation for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver?
And oh, by the way, you've got, you know, you've got eight weeks, which, which is a great way to start.
And also just to kind of, you know, it was, it was our seed funding for sure.
Omer (10:27.190)
Okay, so was that the first project that you worked on?
Marcelino Alvarez (10:30.790)
That was, that was the first project that we worked on.
You know, admittedly, the, the, the precursor to, I guess is there's a, there's a precursor to this in that between Wyden and Uncorked, we tried the business model under Kind of a different name with some partners.
And we learned quite a bit from that.
And happy to share insights from that.
But yes, it was basically the first project post Wieden.
We worked on a few things over the subsequent nine months.
We had a brilliant crash in the middle of that.
And then from the ashes of that crash, uncorked, was Shirley Born.
Omer (11:03.930)
Yeah.
Let's talk about your first attempt at the business.
What was that?
How did you find these partners or co founders?
Marcelino Alvarez (11:14.620)
Sure.
So the first version of this was actually a company called Gorlocks G O R L O C H S and the idea was kind of this spunky group of design and technologists again building physical products in the digital world.
And at the time I had two partners who still had day jobs and it was myself and an engineer who were focused full time on the business.
In addition to doing the client work, we were working on a mobile application that was kind of a hybrid between Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter that put pins on a map and photos appended to Foursquare.
And it predated Instagram by a few months.
And remember getting an email from Dennis Crowley once and thinking, wow, we've made it.
This is the coolest thing ever.
And then we crashed gloriously.
Because we all didn't have the same stakes in the game.
And while we had set up the company for everything to be equal, we had just a different view of where things were going.
For those that had a day job, this was a side project.
And for those of us that this was the day job, it was really difficult to look at decisions that were clearly being made from the purview of a side project objectively.
And that led to a bit of conflict.
And so my advice and lesson from that is when you're starting a company, make sure that everyone has a clear sense of what the stakes are in the game.
And if you're bootstrapping your startup, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone needs to quit their job on day one, but have a clear plan for if you're the one who's doing this full time, when does your partner number one quit their job and partner number two quit their job and partner number three and so forth.
So that when you hit the milestones, and those could be business related, or they could be product related, or they could be a combination of the two, that there's an expectation that we pass through this gate now, this action occurs and we were all friends and hit some bumpy roads and are now friends again.
But I think in hindsight, being clear about expectations of what it is to start a company and what the expectations are of contributors to that company over time is really important to do.
Again, super obvious in hindsight, but back then we're just like, we're all in this together, let's do it.
That's not a viable business plan.
Omer (13:37.370)
How long were you working on this business?
Marcelino Alvarez (13:39.690)
It was probably around eight months or so.
So the Chalkbot came back for a second iteration that summer of 2010, and then shortly thereafter that we kind of realized we weren't all aligned.
And that was kind of where the developer and I took the resources that we had been working on, working with over that summer on products and said, let's, let's form uncorked from this.
And so that was really kind of the moment where uncorked was really born.
So it was, I guess, fall of 2010.
Omer (14:12.710)
Okay, so when you started cork, who was with you?
Marcelino Alvarez (14:16.390)
Titles have since changed because people have kind of grown up.
But our chief operating officer, John Furukawa, our chief Creative officer David Ewald, and we had two other engineers that were part of the original kind of founding five.
That was kind of the genesis of it.
And John and David are still with us and we've kind of built, built a team around that over the years.
Omer (14:37.810)
Okay, so you've got, you, you guys have got this business up and running.
You get to work on this, this, this interactive experience for the Olympics, was that the main thing that you, most of your time was spent on, or was a lot of it also spent on trying to figure, I mean, was that kind of keeping the business going or did you have to spend a lot of time in parallel trying to figure out how to get more clients?
Marcelino Alvarez (15:06.020)
I think we had to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get more clients.
And one of the things that really benefited us, especially in that, I would say first two years or so, was working with contacts within the ad agency business that we had worked with previously to help establish connections, build relationships, and really kind of increase awareness of what we were doing.
And one of the companies that was really instrumental from a partnership standpoint is a company called ara, run by a good friend of mine, James o'.
Brien.
Their business model is really great.
James is a people person and he has looked for talent and companies that are doing interesting things in the digital space and finds really strategic and well tuned ways to connect those companies with brands and ad agencies that are looking for talent that's capable of building, you know, the most far flung ideas.
And in 2000, well I guess it would have been 2011.
You know, that meant bringing to us a project that was unfortunately killed.
But it was a project that we worked on for three months, and we ramped up our company, which at the time was, you know, five people, to 23 for an entire summer.
On the.
I think it was a product that probably tasked every freelancer available in Portland that summer to work on this.
It was for a good cause.
It was a brand that was behind it.
It was for, you know, a big event.
And at the last moment, a CMO and a CEO that was basically at the company that our agency client had hired pulled the plug on it for reasons not at all related to our product.
And it was a tremendous, tremendous letdown.
But many of those people that freelanced with us in the summer of 2011 are now part of UNQORK Studios, either as colleagues of ours or as partners in the business.
And it was a tremendous, tremendous learning experience.
Again, you know, at five people, we could have never imagined what being 23 looked like.
And now that we're well past that number, you know, we can look back at that preview and kind of chuckle a little bit, but also kind of, you know, take pride in the relationships that we built and how we handled, you know, something that was very, very large, you know, crashing very, very quickly in a way that I think, you know, built up our brand as a company that, you know, takes care of its people and those that contribute to our work.
Omer (17:26.240)
So you made an interesting point about tapping into your network to help you find clients and to grow the business.
And not everybody is good at doing that or feels comfortable doing that.
So maybe get to get a little bit more kind of specific.
Maybe you can kind of walk us through what were some of the things you did to make that happen.
Was it, you know, hey, I'm going to send an email out to, like, everybody I know saying, I've got this business.
Or were you trying to follow up with a few specific people and kind of meet, meet, meet over coffee and tell them about what you were doing?
So what were some of the things that you were doing, which, looking back, were really helpful in growing the business by tapping into your network?
Marcelino Alvarez (18:22.840)
Sure, absolutely.
And there were certainly a few.
And I think there are things that anybody can do, whether you're an introvert and don't enjoy necessarily going to networking events, or if you're an extrovert, and that's the thing you enjoy doing the most.
I think it's really about balancing various types of things.
I think from my perspective, one of the things that I always tell people is I love grabbing coffees.
And so I will grab a coffee with anyone that wants to meet up.
And so if anyone reaches out to me, either at an event or thinks I say, I'd love to grab a coffee and poke your brain about something, I'll set it up and we'll grab a coffee and we'll learn it.
And whether that is someone that I can help immediately by offering them a job or connecting them with a client, or maybe it's someone that I can make an introduction to that helps them out at some point in time.
I don't think you're ever too big to be able to grab a coffee with someone.
So I think that's the simplest act that you can do just to meet people, understand what motivates them, what they're doing.
And at some point in the future, your paths may cross either as a colleague, a client, or a collaborator on a cool project.
But I think there's certainly things that you can do beyond that.
And one of the things that I think we kind of got sucked into, we weren't seeking it, but it was working with the Portland Development Commission.
And again, we were probably six people at the time.
We had just moved into our current office building, and our landlord, Brad Malson, connected us with a few folks at the Portland Development Commission and said, hey, you should talk to these guys at Uncorked.
They're doing some interesting things in the neighborhood.
I think we were both shocked and had no idea why.
We're like, look, we're six people.
We don't really have a voice.
What can we do?
And the pdc, for those that don't know, it's similar to New York's kind of Economic Development Commission, their activ.
I think it's EDC in New York, PDC in Portland, they're focused on using tools for economic development to build neighborhoods and communities and in particular kind of sectors, whether it's an urban renewal area, such as the neighborhood that we're in, or helping recruit technology and creative companies into neighborhoods, or helping to really kind of develop retail stores or disadvantaged communities through their startup efforts.
And we got involved with them for one event that was related to our neighborhood, and that led to a second conversation and that led to a panel conversation.
And before you knew it, we were involved in various PDC events and we just met people through that.
And it seems like a counterintuitive thing when you're six people and focused about, are we going to make the Next two or three payrolls to say I'm going to volunteer for a public development commissions goals to renew a city.
But I think it's one of the smartest things that we did.
My chief creative officer taught an entire semester at the University of Oregon in Eugene, which is three hours south of here.
And he would drive down every Thursday night.
We have members of our creative department that teach at psu.
We have people that volunteer with organizations that are teaching children to code or working with women in tech.
Any one of those things which seems like, well, I shouldn't be focusing on this because I should be focusing on my business is actually a tremendous opportunity to expand your network and meet people that might be able to help out someday or that you might be able to help out someday.
So it's really easy.
It seems counterintuitive.
I would highly recommend volunteer get outside.
And then the other thing that we started doing a few years ago is an event called BCC Parties which stands for Blind Carbon Copy.
It was started in New York by Allison Mooney and some of her friends.
And the whole premise was we're going to invite people from brand tech ad to come out to a bar, just kind of hang out and chat and not really have an agenda or meet up.
Everyone gets BCC'd so you don't know who's going to show up.
Yeah, it was great for them it helped prevent asinine responses and for us it was really neat because it kind of allows us to kind of, it's almost like a speakeasy kind of an event.
And my friend Nick Parish, who works for consultancy called Contagious, he's in New York, I was visiting, he's like hey, you should come check this out tonight.
And we went out, met Alison.
I was like this is a great event.
It's nice that it's so cross disciplinary.
Portland needs something like this because Portland gets really siloed if you're in tech.
It's like well here's the Cocoa Developers meetup and here's the PHP meetup and here's the advertising meetup or if you're on Nike or Adidas, every parallel kind of meetup.
And very rarely do those groups come together in any sort of meaningful way.
And so I asked Alison, I was like hey, how can I bring this to Portland?
And she's like well you should just do it.
And so we helped them with the design of the website and we started a few years ago and just started adding folks to this list and inviting people to meet up and it's actually been really great.
We have met some fascinating people that we would have otherwise never come across.
We actually had a BCC event, an unofficial one actually, across New York, Portland and California, in Havana, Cuba, of all places.
And we realized that because of bcc, you know, the four of us were part of this larger trip.
We all got connected through this thing.
And we found ourselves in Havana last year as part of a fringe diplomatic effort put together by the Aspen Institute and the Richardson center for Diplomacy.
And so again, there's no way that you could have said two years ago, hey, what's the ROI on opening up a bar tab, inviting a bunch of people to hang out?
And that's not the reason why you do something like that.
Do it because you don't know.
Nick is now out here in Portland.
He resides with us in our offices, running Contagious from our offices.
And we run BCC maybe once a quarter now.
And it's just a great way to get a sense of what's going on in Portland and connect people who might not otherwise connect and just kind of catch up with friends and colleagues that you haven't seen in a while.
And again, low stakes, right?
You don't have to be a super networker just to say, hey, I'm going to open up a bar tab and just come hang out.
Omer (24:35.940)
So I wrote down three things.
One was having coffees with whoever asks or whoever you're interested in just, you know, chatting with.
Two, you talked about volunteering opportunities and, and how both you and members of your team have been doing that and continue to do that.
And the BCC parties and, and.
But I think none of those for me sound like, hey, let's go and do one of these things because next week that will result in a new client.
It sounds more like, let's do these things because they're kind of fun to do and maybe it will lead to something sometime in the future.
Marcelino Alvarez (25:29.400)
I think that's a way safer and more realistic way to play it.
I mean, I think if you're looking for a client next week, you're going to choose the wrong client for the wrong reasons.
I think that the best type of business development is building those relationships.
I get that in the early going, and this is maybe a mitigating factor towards growth or uncontrollable growth or unresponsible growth early on is you shouldn't be able to grow faster than you're able to land business a few months away.
I think if there are needs shorter term than that, then certainly you can reach out to colleagues and say, hey, we're doing X, Y or Z or hey, let's catch up, it's been a while and find strategic things.
But again, I think the cycles to close something within 30 days or even 45, 60 days, that's a way harder way to go around new business versus having a lot of those conversations.
And I think inevitably someone will say, I know someone who's looking for someone that does what you do.
Let me connect you with that person.
And that's a way warmer intro than you pinging someone with an ask.
So, you know, I think we've been lucky that that's the way we've been able to approach those things.
That the collective sum of the outreach, the community, the brand building efforts that we do has always led to an organic level of growth that we've been able to support.
You know, we're not a salesy kind of organization.
I'm sure that, you know, if you're building something that's just trying to acquire users or customers, then I think there's press related tactics and Twitter related tactics and social media related tactics that you can use to build awareness and drive conversion on a website.
But for the most part the work that we do is very relationship driven.
I think is evidenced by clients coming back for more work or clients that leave one company and go to another and say, hey, what are you guys up to these days?
Would love to catch up.
Omer (27:28.690)
Are you an extrovert?
Is it natural for you to go out and network and meet with new people?
Marcelino Alvarez (27:34.450)
And I think my colleagues and those close to me would say yes.
I think those who have known me for maybe 20, 30 plus years would probably know that there was a time where I wasn't that.
And I definitely kind of come a little bit out of my shell over the last 10, 15 years professionally.
But it wasn't always easy to kind of get out to those events and just meet people.
I'm not someone who's going to shake a million hands at an event.
I definitely like finding the conversations where I feel I can contribute to.
So I, you know, on the ENTJ scale, I probably, you know, a borderline ENTJ intj.
Even though I think probably relative to my colleagues, I'm probably way more E than a lot of folks here.
Omer (28:19.960)
And that's on the Myers Briggs scale.
For people who are not familiar with that.
Marcelino Alvarez (28:24.360)
Yes, yes.
Sorry.
Omer (28:26.680)
Cool.
And you don't have any salespeople.
Right.
So aside from finding clients through building these relationships, is there anything else that you guys are doing that helps you get new clients or new business.
Marcelino Alvarez (28:41.780)
Sure.
So, like I mentioned, ARA as a company that does active outreach and finds companies that are seeking products like the ones that we can build or technologies like the ones that we can contribute, was absolutely instrumental in our growth path.
And to this day, they have a really good sense of what we do.
And, you know, it's a very kind of narrow kind of focus of the types of, you know, projects that might come up within kind of an ad agency context.
But they still contribute, you know, work with brands and clients.
And I think that was, you know, it was way comforting to not have to open up a New York or San Francisco or Chicago office and know that we had people in those markets that were actively reaching out to potential customers and saying, hey, here's a company uncorked, here's what they do, here's what they're really good at, here's what they're not really good at.
Don't go to them for X, Y or Z, but if it's something along these lines, reach out to them.
So that was really good.
But outside of that, I would say most of our business these days is recurring customers, recurring clients, whether or not they're at the same company now that they were a year ago or they've moved on to a startup or to a different innovation group.
And so we've been able to, to sustain our growth over the last few years based on those relationships and people we know, and certainly there are people that see some of the work that we do.
We built a Lego movie maker app probably almost four years ago now.
That app has led to more inquiries, I think, than anything we've ever worked on.
And it's a very simple stop motion application.
It ties into the insight that there's people that love, love their Lego collections and will create these beautiful stop motion movies that started out as an ad agency project.
Pere and Odell in San Francisco had this idea for a project.
They contacted the folks at ARA, like, hey, who do you know that can build a mobile app?
And ARA reached out to us and we said, yeah, absolutely.
This is awesome.
A, we all love Lego.
B, gives us an excuse to buy Lego products and throw them in our office and pretend that we're actually working.
And yeah, we totally get the value.
This is definitely a product that we want to build.
And Parea and I think what is probably the most altruistic thing I've ever seen an ad agency do, they went on to win the Mattel business and they said, hey, do you want to.
You've been a really great partner for this.
Do you want to carry on with the Lego business and continue to support this product?
And we're like, yeah, absolutely.
And so we've worked with Lego off and on now for, like I said, over four years, you know, updating the product, bringing it to iPad form, and continue to make innovations based on the new product releases that they have and whatnot.
And yet that led to work with Samsung's product innovation team a few years later and another agency in New York who was looking to build something for the March of Dimes a few years later.
And I think having recognizable work that you can talk about and share, even if it leads to something that is maybe more R and D or kind of skunk work, quirky in nature, that's really great.
So having visible work you can point to, or just blogging about the technologies that you're working with in a way that allows you to share that you're doing something in a space that doesn't violate an NDA.
So talking about a lot of the Bluetooth LE work that we've been doing doesn't necessarily give away what we're doing that for, but lets folks know that we're doing a lot of hardware work.
So I think finding ways to contribute to community, whether that's in person or writing a blog post or a tweet, or engaging in a conversation on a digital community about things, I mean, that has led, I would say, probably to 95% of our work.
Omer (32:39.560)
So when I go into the iOS app store and I search for Lego Movie Maker, the first result that comes up is for the official Lego Movie Maker app.
Is that the one that you guys built?
Marcelino Alvarez (32:54.860)
Yes.
Omer (32:55.980)
Oh, man.
You know, my son loves that app.
Marcelino Alvarez (32:59.980)
That's so cool.
Omer (33:00.860)
He's built some like his mind blowing stuff, like, you know, like little scenes from Indiana Jones with just his Legos and stuff like that.
So.
Wow.
Now.
So I know who built Tiller.
Marcelino Alvarez (33:14.460)
Yeah, that was it.
Omer (33:16.700)
That's awesome.
Marcelino Alvarez (33:17.740)
My world.
Omer (33:19.420)
Yeah.
So, you know, kind of hearing the story, it sounds apart from the bumpy ride maybe you had with Gorlox and the company you started before uncorked, it sounds like pretty smooth sailing.
And the business has continued to grow and I believe right now you have what, around 25 people working there north
Marcelino Alvarez (33:45.350)
of that actually, so we're around 36 actually.
Omer (33:48.310)
You seem to grow like every.
I think the last time we talked was like a month ago.
Marcelino Alvarez (33:52.390)
And it's like, yeah, we've been on a Growth clip the last six months for sure.
Wow.
Omer (34:01.350)
So, but there must have been some challenges in growing the business.
There must have been some challenges in finding clients and meeting payroll.
And so tell me about one example of a difficult time that you've faced in the last few years in growing the business.
Marcelino Alvarez (34:16.820)
Sure.
And there were certainly there were a lot of challenges and I think it's like looking at a stock ticker symbol.
I think if you zoom in, there's volatility over a day period or a two week period.
And if you kind of zoom out, you can start seeing sort of trends.
And I would say that even though our current trend is growth, I think if you zoom in on any, any one day or two week or two month period, I mean, there's volatility in the startup world and that volatility can certainly be financial based, but it's usually just emotion based or work based or conversation based.
So it's challenging building a company and I don't want to take anything away from that because there have been struggles and challenges.
I think one of the challenges we faced probably a couple years ago, we're just making our foray into hardware and looking to build a product and we had an agency come to us with a really complex product, involved a physical device, involved a big event, big celebrity associated with it, and kind of a compressed timeline.
All the fodder for the kinds of things that seem really, really challenging and interesting, but also incredibly risky.
And that project didn't turn out the way that we had hoped.
We had some subcontractors on it on some electrical engineering aspects that didn't really pan out.
And the project, it just didn't turn out the way that we did.
I think that led to a couple of things.
I think one we questioned, hey, is this hardware thing something that we really want to be doing?
It's difficult, it's hard.
And there are sometimes things that are outside of our control from a delivery standpoint that introduced challenges that might just be too much for us to take.
There were secondary challenges, which was while we tried to resolve what we did deliver, that there was questions of whether or not we were going to get paid for the work that we did or if that was going to get challenged.
And third, I think it was a bit of a bruise to the ego.
Is this really too much for us to handle?
You know, I would say that to the credit of all of my colleagues, I think, you know, we looked at the hardware thing and said, you know what, let's, let's double down on hardware.
And it didn't come from me, which I think people would have expected me to be the one like, let's double down.
I think I was definitely a little gun shy in the immediate moments of that project.
And I think it was one of those moments where our COO and our team said, look, no, we're doing this, let's do it.
But in kind of that, that aftermath of, hey, are we going to get paid?
Are we going to make payroll?
We definitely made a few mistakes.
And the mistakes were actually ones of saying, hey, let's be more receptive to any project that comes in while we try to figure out the uncertainty of the financial situation.
So we took on projects that were still for good cause, whether it was a startup or something kind of small.
But we were trying to fill, trying to fill time and not really our capacity or desire to build upon our experiences.
And I think we ended up creating almost like two citizens of clients, like those that really could afford our services and those that were just trying to hedge ourselves against the uncertainty of what might happen from this client paying.
And that was an absolute mistake.
I think we learned quite a few things from that.
And one of them is if someone can't, you know, pay that rate that you're at, or if you're doing things at a discount or trying to cycle it in between projects, you're going to create two tiers of clients.
And that's not healthy either for your staff or for those clients that you're trying to work with.
And secondarily, it just makes it really difficult to do good work when you're just trying to stretch everybody a little bit too thin.
So I think lessons from that is how do we find clients that align to not only what we're capable of doing, but really kind of the mission of explore together.
Right?
Let's not.
Here's a PSD file.
Build this.
Those are.
Projects don't really align with us.
But hey, here's a question.
A legitimate problem that we think exists in the world.
How can we work together to find it?
And that path is a meandering path.
And there isn't always a finite deliverable or set of deliverables.
Sometimes the pathway to that involves asking way more questions in the short term.
And if you're a startup, five or ten thousand dollars to spend, that's never going to work for some of these products.
But if you have the ability to kind of walk with us for five or six months while we explore those things and prototype things and build things iteratively and understand and research potential audiences.
That ends up becoming a way more satisfying, mutually aligned product.
And I think in the aftermath of that project, we were way too eager just to fill in the time and not really fill in the mission driven projects that we wanted to.
Even in the face of adversity and kind of payroll adversity, or you're trying to find stuff for people to do, don't compromise on the values of the type of business that you want to be and make sure that you wait for the right moment.
Now that's not saying that you should sit around and wait for the right thing to come up because inevitably you will crash.
There are ways to take advantage of that downtime, whether it's getting out to more events or speaking or writing more, working on internal projects like your website, or some of the things that build a culture of innovation and might be something that helps you answer a question that a client might come up with next.
So use that downtime to explore new technologies.
Use it to kind of reset or refresh.
Someone used the phrase palate cleanser the other day as a way to.
I can't remember who it was.
A palate cleanser between client projects just to kind of refresh yourself.
And don't mistake hunger with starvation and just be prudent about the types of projects that you choose to work on.
Omer (40:35.460)
Okay, so you basically were in a situation where maybe there were some concerns about meeting payroll or just paying the bills or whatever term you like to use, and you started to look at clients, sort of discounting your rates for clients who normally wouldn't be the type of clients that you would work with, or taking on projects which you normally wouldn't take on because they didn't kind of really meet the bar in terms of what you guys were trying to do for the type of company you were trying to build, or the things that you guys were really good at or passionate about.
And you know, I can understand that it can be, you know, it can be kind of a difficult situation, but sort of looking back at that, do you think it would have been that easy for you just to turn all of that business down?
Or is that what you meant by the difference between hunger and starvation in terms of, you know, knowing when you really need to go out and do that versus when, when you shouldn't make those compromises and you can still find ways to push through?
Marcelino Alvarez (41:46.870)
Yeah, you know, I think the difference between hunger and starvation is that there's going to be times when it feels like you're starving for Work starving for a project or you know, if payroll isn't met, everything is going to fail.
And there are times when that that is legitimate.
You have to do it because payroll, you know, is coming up and you need to make sure that you've got a problem, a project or something lined up to keep folks busy.
But I think early in that, I think it's really easy to look at kind of the initial signs of hunger and confuse those with starvation and make a business decision or a move that is going to cost you more in the long run.
And I think what we learned from being overzealous and taking some of those smaller kind of coach class projects is that it actually we ended up getting the right types of projects lined up just a few weeks later.
And B, those smaller kind of projects ended up dragging on significantly longer than they probably should have and required way more attention than something that came to us with the type of budget or the type of project that we wanted to just way more account management, way more overhead costs needed to manage it.
Totally recognize that there's points where you need to make business decisions, but I think the big takeaway is to not confuse that initial inkling of hunger with I'm going to starve if I don't have a meal.
Omer (43:20.100)
Now you talked about this vision of building this R and D firm and continuously trying to develop new products.
So you're kind of not in that situation where a client comes along and you've got to try and build something from scratch in six to eight weeks.
I know you do.
You do things at uncorked to drive that kind of innovation, continue to kind of build that culture of just, just innovating and continually thinking about building better and more creative products.
Can you kind of share with the audience like one example of what you've done to do that?
Marcelino Alvarez (44:06.600)
Sure, absolutely.
I think one of the most popular objects in our office at this moment, I think came from one of those kinds of insights.
So we had a colleague of ours that had to drink more water, was asked by, hey, drink more water.
And he got bored with tap water and so he decided to make for himself a little bit of sparkling water to just kind of, you know, mix up the water flavors in his mouth.
And at the same time we had another colleague of ours who was really interested in, you know, putting a kegerator in the office.
And those two things came together in a very unexpected way in that one of the first tests of the kegerator was like, well, let's just run some sparkling water through It.
And voila, therein was born the sparkling water kegerator, which at the surface seems like, well, so what?
You've got a sparkling water kegerator.
But the neat thing is sort of the science and the passion behind this.
So Josh Dirico, the man behind the sparkling water kegerator, realized that the city of Portland publishes its mineral water, or just its regular tap water mineral contents every month.
And he also found someone on the Internet who publishes the chemical compositions of basically every sparkling water brand that you can buy in the world.
And we had three taps on this kegerator.
Josh figured, well, I can buy the mineral salt and I've got this carbonation tank that I can just pump CO2 in it.
I'm just going to make off brand sparkling water.
And we have this kegerator that features Topo Chico from Mexico, Castorna from somewhere else.
And he has batches and batches and batches of sparkling water.
And it's one of those things that we never intended to be kind of a cultural icon, but the minute any one of those taps goes dry, you'll hear about it on Slack.
Hey, what's up with the sparkling water?
And people come in and they've seen the blog post about it and they ask about it, and it's become a recruiting tool for colleagues.
It's become something we talk about with clients.
And certainly we actually do get paid to do work.
But here's this example of this thing that was just inspired by one person's need or passion to test something out that has allowed us to kind of showcase that we have a culture of creativity where people are kind of experimenting with technologies and things.
And while I certainly don't see us going into the sparkling water business anytime soon, I think the fact that people will come in and work on projects like that for themselves using the tools and things that we have in the office on weekends, I think is a tribute to the culture that we've built where if you are in between client projects and you're looking for something to do, like, hey, you know, take, take a new technology for a spin.
See if you can, you know, learn how to use the 3D printer and, you know, solder, you know, some components to, you know, build like a smart little kind of device that ends up gonging the entire office with a mechanical kind of arm anytime someone writes the word gong on a particular channel in Slack, or take a look at some of the, the BLE chips that are out there and see if we can build a tool that lets us understand signal strength so that if we get asked about the Texas Instruments versus the Nordic Bluetooth LE stack, we can talk more intelligently about what's out there.
So those kinds of experiments, again, it's not being driven from on high.
People just are passionate about them.
We've got one colleague of ours who has been mapping every run or every bike trip that he took all of last year just so that he can express his CSS and kind of HTML skills and again, total side project.
But he's sharing the results of his work with colleagues to get input from the design team or from other folks who are active.
And it just becomes a way to collaborate and work together to.
To just expand our skill sets beyond just what a client is asking us to do.
And because we are routinely involved in building technologies for health or fitness or wearable or just visualizing data, that's the kind of insight that could help us land the project sometime in the near future.
And I think the fact that people are passionate about those things and the fact that people are willing to share those projects and those experiences with their colleagues is.
Is something that we're very, very proud of.
Omer (48:44.480)
Yeah, I love it.
Love it.
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and just like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
Marcelino Alvarez (48:52.880)
Okay, let's do it.
Okay.
Omer (48:54.480)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Marcelino Alvarez (48:58.320)
I think best piece of business advice is, you know, this is normal.
We've all gone through something similar to this.
And Josh Reich from Simple is.
Is the one who became a mentor to me a few years ago and has advised in a lot of the seeming growth pains that we encountered.
And it's normal.
We've all been there.
I think it just allows us to put ourselves in the context that we're not encountering something new for the first time.
Omer (49:27.060)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Marcelino Alvarez (49:31.860)
I think a book that we've found really useful as of late is a book called gamestorming.
And we use it a lot to facilitate kind of discovery processes with clients, to quickly align on understanding anything from who is the user intended audience type to how do we prioritize features in kind of a meaningful and constructive way.
And how do we just break through the monotony of just a kickoff meeting to really get people engaged and active?
And it's a really easy read.
You don't have to read it all at once.
You can just kind of go through and see that there's a series of opening exercises, series of kind of continuing exercises, and then kind of tools to kind of get closure and alignment and really phenomenal book.
Certainly targeted towards companies that are either on the product side or even services based company that kind of consult with product companies.
But a really great set of tools for anybody who needs to take divergent opinions, quickly align in kind of a fun way and use it to kind of gain insight and unblock innovation.
Or just what should I do next?
Omer (50:40.130)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Marcelino Alvarez (50:45.890)
Resilience.
You have to be able to get back up if you get knocked down or if today is really, really bad, you need to wake up tomorrow and look at it fresh.
Omer (50:55.890)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or
Marcelino Alvarez (50:59.010)
habit productivity tool right now is Google Keep.
I really like how simple of a of a tool it is.
It's, you know, simple to do list kind of tool, slash sticky tool.
And it syncs really, really nicely across my work computer, my Chromebook and my iPhone.
Omer (51:18.650)
What's a new business idea or a crazy idea that you have in your head you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Marcelino Alvarez (51:25.050)
That's a good one.
Well, all right, there's two We've been working on a smart wine cellar product for some time called Somli, and we're getting really, really close to actually having a demonstrable product.
So that's probably more in the connected device space and probably too close to our main work to count as a real answer.
The other one is we prototyped an idea for a variation of the game Jenga using ice cubes, and we 3D printed a mold and we poured silicone into it and it actually worked.
We iterated on it a couple times, and if I had enough time, I would do a Kickstarter.
I wouldn't call it Ice Jenga because I don't want to get sued by Hasbro, but I would call it Ice Tower of Tumbling Blocks or something.
And I just wish I had time to do it.
Omer (52:13.710)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Marcelino Alvarez (52:21.310)
I really enjoy underwater photography.
Obviously, being in Portland, I don't get a chance to do a lot of underwater photography, but scuba diving when I was a kid was something I really enjoyed doing.
I certainly don't get to do much of it these days, but if I could be somewhere in the Caribbean with a saltwaterproof camera, that would be great.
Omer (52:43.060)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work
Marcelino Alvarez (52:48.340)
Running, aside from being exercise, and I'll say this as a person who doesn't consider himself a runner, but getting out and just running and taking the time to listen to your footsteps and just think about problems or think about conversations or just kind of clear your head, I think it's healthy for your business, it's healthy for your personal life.
Do it with friends, do it with family, but it's without running, I think I would probably have made infinitely more poor decisions in my life than Marcelino.
Omer (53:21.900)
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for joining me today and sharing your experiences and insights with our audience.
I love the culture of innovation and learning that you've been building with Uncorked and how you've been thinking about building relationships as opposed to just going out and finding clients and, and I think it really kind of shows both of those things.
Show that you're taking a much more of a long term strategic approach to, to building your business and it's clearly paying off.
You, you're continuing to grow and I'm sure the next time we talk, you'll have probably doubled the number of people working there.
Marcelino Alvarez (54:07.670)
Don't tell anyone.
Omer (54:09.910)
And you know, next time I'm down in Portland, I'll definitely have to get you to hook me up with some of that sparkling water that you guys have.
Marcelino Alvarez (54:18.610)
Absolutely would love to give you a tasting tour.
Omer (54:22.690)
Now.
If folks want to find out more about Uncorked Studios, they can go to Uncorked Studios.com and I'll put a link in the show notes to that as well.
And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Marcelino Alvarez (54:37.410)
Sure, Absolutely.
Email is the best way to get a hold of me.
Marcelinouncortstudios.com if you want to grab a coffee or some sparkling water, let me know.
Omer (54:45.650)
Thanks again.
It's been a pleasure.
Marcelino Alvarez (54:47.250)
Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Omer (54:48.650)
Cheers.
