How We Hatched: Bo Jiang, CEO of Lithic

Tim Winkler: 00:00:05

Welcome to the PAIR program from hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad,

Bo Jiang: 00:00:15

and I'm your other host, Mike Gruin.

Tim Winkler: 00:00:17

Join us each episode as we bring together. Two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth. Uh, I'm excited to chat with you, so we'll jump into it. Um, bro, thank you for joining us on the Pair Program. Um, this is another bonus episode of a mini-series that we call How We Hatched. Uh, so this will be a fun discussion to hear a little bit more about your unique career journey, you know, where you kind of came from, uh, how you arrived at this current point in your seat today as a c e, and co-founder of Lithic. Uh, so I always like to start by having you provide the listeners with a, a quick overview of lithic and, and the problems that you all are solving.

Bo Jiang: 00:01:04

Awesome. Yeah. Uh, Tim, thanks for having me. Uh, excited to be here. So, r really quick, uh, lithic. We were founded in 2014, uh, and basically, uh, we've built, we built infrastructure that makes it easy for, uh, developers, uh, FinTech companies, software companies to issue debit and credit cards. So you think about like, The, the, uh, cards that you carry around in your wallet. We build technology that makes it easier for companies to, to produce those, um, not, not the, not the actual plastic manufacturing, but the technology that powers, you know, en routes the transactions and helps, you know, settle, settle those, uh, those transactions.

Tim Winkler: 00:01:41

Like the behind the scenes people. Yeah. People are quick to swipe, but they don't know what's going on. Uh, you know, but through, through the different layers and systems of, of whatnot.

Bo Jiang: 00:01:49

So Exactly. We, we build the plumbing, the infrastructure, uh, you know, all that stuff that powers kind of the, the movement of the money.

Tim Winkler: 00:01:57

Love it. Love it. Well, it's certainly an important area that you're tackling. Um, let's, let's flashback, you know, let's talk a little bit about your journey and, and start from the roots, you know, where, where did you grow up and, and what got you into the world of tech? Yeah,

Bo Jiang: 00:02:11

absolutely. Um, so, so I grew up in Kansas. Um, and I, I always say I, in many ways, I kind of got tricked into the world of startups. Uh, and what I mean by that is like I, so I started building websites in high school with my co-founder, Jason and David, and, you know, at the time this was like, this is in the, uh, it's around 2005, 2006. Um, it was relatively easy to build websites or like few, there's like less competition, you know, ad spend. Uh, CPMs were not less optimized and so, uh, we built this early cloud, uh, file hosting company, uh, kind of an early box competitor back, back when, back when Box was still a consumer product. And, um, got pretty fortunate in that. Like it just kind of took off and. We sold the company before we went off to college and we were like, gee, like startups are like really easy. Like you just build it and people come and we're just like high school kids, right? So, um, after, after college, um, I, uh, joined this incubator, uh, called Hatch. It's basically an incubator within this larger company called ic, and we incubated like 10 companies and. Uh, so maybe it was like eight, eight or nine 10 some something on that order. It was a handful and, um, pretty much all of them died except for one. Uh, and that one company was Tinder. And so, uh, that was like a really interesting kind of firsthand experience into like the world of tech, like, you know, venture back startups. Um, and, uh, you know, basically in around 2014, uh, Jason, David and I teamed up and we had this idea for building a easier and safer way to shop online. And we launched what became privacy.com. And from there we actually took the infrastructure that we built from PRI Built for Privacy, and, uh, decided to kind of productize it for, for other, uh, c. All right. So a

Tim Winkler: 00:04:04

couple of couple of quick things. One, um, you know, we're not in Kansas anymore. How many times have you heard that, uh, from, from folks that, that you they're coming from Kansas and then coming to you went to m mit, right? Uh, that's right. Uh, yeah. And now, now you're in New York, so quite a, quite a change of pace. Um, you met your other two co-founders when in they lived with you in

Bo Jiang: 00:04:25

Kansas. Yeah, so the story actually is, uh, Jason and I grew up down the street from each other. So we were, we were neighbors. We went to high school together. Cool. Uh, Jason ac uh, David actually, uh, grew up in the UK and we met on the internet. And so, um, at the time, you know, I think we were like, uh, like 13, 14 and, uh, we got introed by, uh, a mutual friend who we met. We both met online in a chat room, and so we were. He was like, I think 12. And so it was sort of this like, you know, business intro brokered by a 12 year old between like a 13 and 14 year old. That's incredible.

Tim Winkler: 00:05:01

Co co-founders meeting in in their early teens. That's, that's wild. Yeah. Um. Cool. And so then, uh, you know, the transition from, well, what'd you, what'd you study at m i t now? What was your, what, what was you

Bo Jiang: 00:05:15

about? I studied, I studied math at m i t. Um, and the, the thing with math at m mit is, is actually the most flexible major. Um, so you can kind of, uh, there, there's a fair number of like classes that you can, you know, take and there there's a pretty broad diversity of like, experiences. It doesn't have to just be math. It has kind. Fairly loose requirements and, um, that, that kind of was what drew me, uh, to the major.

Tim Winkler: 00:05:42

And so you're, um, you're, you're studying at m i t you, you graduate and you, uh, stumble into the, the incubator opportunity with Hatch. Um, would you say that that. you know, you pursued that or somebody recruit you into Hatch. You know, I'm, I'm thinking back to your startup, you know, that you created, you know, in your early days, is that something that stuck with you and you said you wanted to kind of keep in the startup ecosystem?

Bo Jiang: 00:06:11

Yeah, I was. So after a college, I actually wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and um, so I was visiting New York and a friend of. From college was, uh, was at Hatch and was like, Hey, like, you know, this is pretty cool. Um, you know, it's startups, you get to, you know, work within a bigger company. It's like interesting exposure. Um, and I kind of just picked it based on, you know, that it was like, Hey, like, you know, there's a fit here and it seems pretty interesting. And, um, I think just the opportunity to kind of. See a bunch of companies being built. Mm-hmm. was, was really pretty unique. Um, I, I had always known that I wanted to do something, uh, in startups and tech and product and. um, it was kind of a natural fit in that sense. Would

Tim Winkler: 00:07:04

you say that the incubator also gave you a little bit more insight into, you know, maybe what kind of verticals were interesting to you? Um, you obviously are, you know, you, you went into the FinTech space. Um, was FinTech something that you felt was of interest to you or did it just kind of fall into your lap?

Bo Jiang: 00:07:24

Yeah, so I would say the. the incubator more gave me like exposure to like different, you know, ways of building an early stage company. Um, cuz one of the cool things is like, they brought in a lot of like entrepreneurs, like repeat entrepreneurs and um, serial founders. And, um, it was really cool to be able to kind of see their different styles up close in terms of like FinTech in particular, um, I've actually, I've been always interested in FinTech, uh, have had my share of experiences with, uh, poor experiences with PayPal and, uh, specifically and, uh, in, in, uh, in, um, my early days and. So I, it'd always been kind of interesting to me, like, you know, how, like how money moved and why these systems worked the way they did and, you know, why it was hard to like scale, like stuff like fraud systems and, um, you know, ju just generally, if you think about it, like we're talking to each, to each other on what are effectively supercomputers, uh, if you, you know, think back to like 15 years ago, like why is it that we still, uh, when you wanna buy something online, you're pulling out a piece of plastic. Static, 16 digit numbers etched onto it and, you know, punching it into your supercomputer. Right. Um, so the industry's always been kind of fascinating to me.

Tim Winkler: 00:08:45

So you're kind of scratching your own niche here, uh, it sounds like. Um, and incubators in general too. I think that experience at Hatch is also very fascinating. The ability to, you know, see how companies are built in early stages, you probably got a little bit of exposure into. venture capital at this point too, of just like, you know, how to, how to build on a budget. Um, you know, when when's the right time to maybe take, take money and, and, and, and not need it at certain points. Um, would you say that, um, you know, some of the connections that you made at Hatch were folks that followed you, uh, into the early days with privacy dot.

Bo Jiang: 00:09:27

Um, no. So not, not really. Um, the team at Hatch was pretty small, um, and kind of had pretty divergent interests. Um, we've kept in touch over the years mm-hmm. and, um, some, some of them are my, my closest friends. And so that's, that's been, um, that's, it was really formative experience, but no, like we, we, we didn't end up, uh, working together. Having Got it. Uh, so what, what year did you start privacy? We started privacy in 2014. Uh, I think it was, uh, I wanna say we incorporated in July of 2014. And it's you

Tim Winkler: 00:10:06

and your two

Bo Jiang: 00:10:07

co-founders. Yeah, that's right. We, we had this idea, uh, virtual cards made really easy, so I think kind of like last password, one password except, yeah, except for your card info. So anytime you go to checkout page, you have our browser extension installed, you click a button and boom, you get a brand new. Yeah, I,

Tim Winkler: 00:10:23

I was researching, I think it's a really creative idea. Um, is, is privacy still around or is that something that you kind of sunsetted after

Bo Jiang: 00:10:32

It? Is it? It is. And so, um, pri privacy today is like one of the leading, uh, providers of virtual cards for consumers, uh, in the us. And the way to think about it is like, you know, it's, it's one corporate entity, but effectively privacy is a customer of lithic. Hmm.

Tim Winkler: 00:10:50

So privacy is, this is b2, you know, b2c, um, lithic is b2b. Uh, when, when did you make this, I guess when did you have this kind of aha moment of, you know, let's, let's make this pivot. Let's maybe ma focus a little bit more into building lithic for, you know, from a B2B perspective.

Bo Jiang: 00:11:10

Yeah. You know, it was a little, it was a little accidental. Um, or there wasn't like sort of a, a binary moment where we were like, oh, this is the way to go. Mm-hmm. um, it was, it was, it was gradual. So, um, we launched privacy on a, uh, legacy, uh, card issuing processing platform. And, um, over the years, you know, I think it was probably over like two or three years as we scaled privacy. Um, we, we basically like continuously ran into issues with our legacy partner and ended up having to build our own processing. Um, and in the pro in the process of doing that, um, we ba we basically developed this point of view on like kind of what the market needed and so, Um, the two things that we, we, we realized were, uh, first like, it's way too expensive and way too painful to launch. And second, like, you know, even as you scale, like these, like issues start, continue to crop up, we're reconciliation, transaction processing. Things go down. They, they're, they change their APIs on the fly. Um, it just becomes very painful to scale. And so, um, we, we built this like kind of modern solution for ourselves and we had customers actually that were uh, basically reverse engineering our mobile APIs to get access to, um, our, our APIs. And, um, we were like, Hey, like look, we're already kind of doing this, um, for, for folks because they're reverse engineering our APIs. Why not see if there's like, you know, uh, a bigger opportunity here, uh, in, in terms of, uh, unlocking this for more folks.

Tim Winkler: 00:12:56

So this, uh, you know, so what, what year was it that lithic kind of really started

Bo Jiang: 00:13:04

to gain steam? I'd say we opened it up in 2018 or 2019 and it really started to take off in 2020. And so the, the team

Tim Winkler: 00:13:17

that you had built at privacy, um, were they all the team that was kind of working towards lithic or did you bring in at outside folks or A little bit curious on how this transition happens, uh uh, between the privacy to the lithic kind

Bo Jiang: 00:13:33

of. Yeah, it's a great question. So I always say, uh, we've been at this for, uh, eight years, going on nine years now, and, um, kind of had had two, two startup experiences in one. Uh, and like the first couple years, uh, we were like almost like a boost drive company. We hadn't raised that much money, raised like less than $10 million. Like the team was like around 20 people. Like really literally sort of like small company, tight knit. Um, it's not like we're like huge now, but. You know, over the past couple years, like, you know, we had to sort of really tight knit team as we went into infrastructure for other companies. We really kind of brought in more folks and had to scale up the team in order to kind of invest in the reliability, the consistency, uh, the go-to market motion, all that. And so we've, we've scaled the team pretty substantially, uh, in terms of like, you know, sort of the, the decision to go into processing for other companies. One of the nice things was, everyone on our small team of 20 or so people at privacy were like, had this like firsthand experience of like working with the legacy provider. And you know, there's nothing like kind of that firsthand experience to give you kind of the confidence that, hey, like this is something that the world needs. Like, you know, the thing that we realize is like, the reason why most of the financial system works, you know, the way it does everything from consumer banking to B2B payments to lending. Um, the, the reason why it kind of works in this way isn't because like people don't have good ideas. Uh, it's in large part because like, The underlying systems and infrastructure was largely kind of built before the internet or mobile phones were really kind of mainstream. Uh, you think about these companies, they're really profitable and like, you know, big public companies, but they're, they're like, you know, still built on systems from like the eighties and nineties.

Tim Winkler: 00:15:26

It's an interesting, um, opportunity. I think that presents itself too. I mean, I, I'd see it as a time where you as leaders, right? Um, for, you know, you said about 20 folks at this point that you had been, that have been building with you at privacy, um, to get them really motivated and excited for, for the future as well. Um, did you give folks the option of staying a little bit more. At privacy versus fully jumping into the lithic world or, or was it something that was. You know,

Bo Jiang: 00:15:58

optional. Yeah. I mean we, yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, it's, it's sort of a work on what you're interested in and it mm-hmm. generally, both of them broadly align with kind of what we wanna do long term as a company. Uh, if you think about it, working on the infrastructure of lithic is, you know, indirectly helping privacy anyway, uh, as, as sort of a customer of lithic. And, um, so yeah, it, there we. I'd say it shook out pretty well in terms of what people wanted to work on and what we needed, uh, as a company from a

Tim Winkler: 00:16:33

culture perspective, you know, obviously things sounds like things started to change and change fairly rapidly for you. Um, once. The pivot until Lithic came about. Um, from a growth perspective, right, from a numbers perspective, funding's coming in at this point and you're, you're being tasked to kind of scale a little bit aggressively. What are some of the things that you miss from those earlier days when you were. Growing those, you know, five to 20 folks. Um, and are those, are those things that you still try to capture and keep in your culture as you get to this point where you're at now? Which is what, what, what's your current kind of headcount?

Bo Jiang: 00:17:17

Yeah, we're about 130 right now. Okay. And I would say, All things equal. Um, if you can keep the company small like that is, that's better. Um, just in terms of like, you think about like as you hire more people, uh, you end up with more overhead, more communication challenges. Um, you start to really need to think more about like organizational structure and like in general you, it's sort of a inevitable fact that like comp as your company becomes more successful, you need to grow headcount. Uh, but, but there, there is sort of a real organizational cost there. Um, that, that I don't think. Maybe in like, maybe this year folks will think more about it as the economy has changed and, and shifted. But like, uh, in general, I think during like growth, growth, growth phases, uh, people don't really think enough about like the the efficiency loss that you get when you hire a bunch of people. um, in terms of like the culture, um, early on, like, I'd say like the things that we really valued and I, I, I liked and we still, you know, aim to maintain is like sort of this high trust and like high context culture and we've really tried to encode that in our values. And I know like values are kind of hokey, but when you think about like what they are, They're really sort of this like shared vocabulary, uh, to talk about like the things that you care about and are important at a company. Uh, and, and if you don't have values or articulated values, it's very hard to influence, um, and, and to sort of shape the, the type of culture that you wanna build at the company. Yeah. Yeah. It was

Tim Winkler: 00:18:57

actually a, a talking point that I, I wrote down here. I wanted to, to discuss with you because I thought that you had really interesting values, uh, company values, the. Some of that stood out to me was, you know, be a, be a good neighbor, um, build a great neighborhood. Um, when coming up with your, your company values, uh, is this something that you, uh, looked across, you know, the company and kind of crowdsourced or, uh, was it something that you and the founders kind of came to the table with? You know, over a couple of long nights and, and kind of figuring out what, what is it that we, we represent and then run it by the teams. Uh, how did you come up with that? What kind of exercise was that?

Bo Jiang: 00:19:37

Yeah, it was a, it was definitely an iterative process. Uh, you know, when, when, whenever I think about decision making, right? Like you can, uh, make decisions by yourself and, uh, move relatively quickly, uh, but you just get, generally get less buy-in on those, right? Like, and, and sometimes it's important to make those decisions not in a committee setting. On the other hand, like, you know, if you make decisions in a committee setting, it's gonna be a lot slower. Um, but you're gonna come up with like a much more perspective and you're gonna come up with much more buy-in. And values are one of these things where like, values are just words on a wall unless like people are bought in and really believe in, in the values. And so in terms of the process, I think, uh, I forget which, which, there, there, there, there are a couple, like pretty good guides out there online in terms of like running a process. Um, but basically the idea is like, you know, your values are really like work that like, you know, you should, you should spend like a good amount of time soliciting input, getting ideas, wordsmithing with folks so that people really feel bought in on them. And I, I actually think that, um, as companies grow, it makes sense to kind of continually re-audit your values and revise them. Um, we haven't done that yet, but it is something where it's like, look, like when we came up with our values, we were something around 30 people. And it wasn't that we didn't have values before. It was just like, you know, these were kind of implicit. And, you know, now that we're 130, like, you know, we've. A hundred people that have joined since the, you know, war didn't have a, you know, say in the values per se, they joined the company. And, you know, that's, that's one component of it. So, um, yeah, like I, I think, um, it, for us it was definitely an, an iterative process. Yeah, I like that

Tim Winkler: 00:21:27

too. It's, it's the type of thing. So we're, you know, we're a small company, we're about 22, and, um, you know, we, we put our values in place when we were. Eight. And I would say even, you know, just that, that small amount of growth, right? You know, it's something that, you know, you want, you want that next wave of folks to feel like they're a part of something. Um, and I think values gives them some say and, and a part of the business that's. You know, it's not just about transactions and revenue, which is, this is the core of, of who we are as a, as a, as a team. Um, so I agree with you. I think it's a, it's a really interesting thing to kinda look at those and, uh, audit them and, and, uh, have them evolve as the company evolves. Um, something I, I, I tracked on yours, uh, kind of social media. Was, um, a company retreat that you all did last year. Um, really cool picture by the way. Looks like you got a, a healthy crew together. Uh, tell me about that. You know, what, what went into it? Where, where'd you go? And, and what, what do you think were some of those standouts that, you know, the strengthened the team

Bo Jiang: 00:22:33

as a result? yeah. Uh, yeah, the retreat. So, I mean, we're a, we're a remote first company. We have a, a office here in New York, but, uh, Flexon work, um, pretty much anywhere around the country. Um, and as part of that, like I, I think doing retreats, uh, doing one company wide retreat a year is, is important for building that connection in person. And so for us with this retreat, what we've really focused on, we did it in la mm-hmm. um, and we've, we focused on just building connectivity with folks, um, not just on their teams. Right. Because like you've got folks that work with each other day in, day out and know each other. But like, you know, it's this idea of like, how do you give people more context on like the company? How do you give people more context on like different functions? Um, how do you, we flew in. Uh, one of our customers and did a customer panel. Um, and that was like, really good. She's like, how do you, how do you expose people like to, um, as much of that as possible. Um, you know, the, the other thing was really like, you know, there's a lot of things that you can do, uh, remotely and over zoom, but like, what are the things that, like you can. Do and do unless like you're in person, right? And it's like, you know, brainstorming sessions or like, you know, uh, you know, just things like that where like, you know, you, you kind of get a lot of value from, from, uh, being in person.

Tim Winkler: 00:24:02

Was it kind of like a hotel that you all stayed in or, um, cuz thinking about that many people, it's tough to get everybody under one roof. So I was curious to hear like, uh, the level of immersion, like where people were staying in hotels.

Bo Jiang: 00:24:14

Yeah, so we got a, we got a block block of rooms in a hotel and. You know, the nice thing of doing it in a hotel is like you also get like space, conference space as well. Mm-hmm. and, um, they're used to helping take care of like, you know, food amenities and, and all that stuff. So For sure. Um, yeah. Cool. So

Tim Winkler: 00:24:34

the, the company, you know, you all have, have, uh, gone, you know, gotten funding as well from some, some pretty reputable VCs like Bessemer Ventures, you know, curious to hear, um, you know, from your point of view of, you know, why, why do you think these comp, these, these VCs invested in

Bo Jiang: 00:24:53

lithic. Yeah, definitely. Uh, that's, that's a good question. Um, I

Tim Winkler: 00:24:59

mean, you know, I know that yeah, everybody has their stories of, you know, pitching, you know, to tons and tons of VCs, right? And so, you know, I'm always curious to hear what it is that, you know, what do they believe in?

Bo Jiang: 00:25:09

Yeah. So I think if you, I'll start with like sort of, um, Really the opportunity, if you think about like the anatomy of a credit card transaction, um, there's two sides, right? There's a side that helps merchants accept cards, merchant acquiring, and there's issuing side, you know, card issuing processing, which is what we work on. Um, and. The stripes, the add-ins, the, you know, uh, squares, the checkouts of the world. Um, they've approached acquiring in this way that abstracted a way, um, a lot of complexity and made it super product and developer focused. And in doing so, um, they actually like dramatically expanded what the world of acquiring looks like. Um, you square did it for SMBs, uh, Stripe did it for developers and you know, online e-commerce, um, the list goes on. Right. And it wasn't like they actually, like were taking market share from any of these legacy guys. Like they, they were actually like sort of expanding in the pie and. That's kind of what I think about what we're doing on the issuing side. Like, you know, there's, there's this element of like kind of lowering the barrier to entry and, uh, you effectively become this sort of bet on developer creativity or human ingenuity. And what's exciting about that also is like from a end user and like individual perspective, like, you know, I think about it, what we're doing is like kind of doing our part in terms of enabling builders to. The financial system and you know, financial products like substantially.

Tim Winkler: 00:26:50

Yeah, this is, uh, this is an interesting space. I'm, I'm curious on, on, um, on your end in terms of, you know, we're kicking off a new year here in 2023. Um, what do you think from, from Lithics perspective, you know, what, what can folks get really excited about with what you all are building this year?

Bo Jiang: 00:27:09

Yeah, so I think that, so we're a financial infrastructure company and so, uh, the development cycles for us are like pretty, are pretty substantial. You know, we're, we're, um, you know, we're fast and moving, we're nimble, but like it does take time to, you know, really kind of make these investments and build infrastructure. And so 2022 for us was really kind of this year where we had this like baseline infrastructure, but we spent a lot of time, a lot of energy in terms of investing in sort of up-leveling this infrastructure. And so 2023 is really about like kind of this like increasing commercialization of the infrastructure, productizing and commercializing. This inf this infrastructure that, you know, we invested in over the past couple years. Um, we're gonna continue investing in infrastructure, but it's really kind of like focusing on specific verticals, specific segments, uh, and kind of, you know, in terms of feedback loop, like, you know, there's, there's sort of this like tighter customer feedback loop that. That we're looking to have in 2023. And so, um, that's really exciting to me. Um, on the flip side, you know, we are still continuing to make these really interesting infrastructure bets and so, um, there's also like no shortage of like interesting info problems to, to, to solve.

Tim Winkler: 00:28:30

Let's dissect some of that, uh, tech technology that you all are building with. What's some of the tech stack that, you know, uh, lithic building with.

Bo Jiang: 00:28:39

Yeah. So, you know, we use, we use a mix of languages. We use Python, we use, uh, c plus plus on the backend. Uh, we use Rust, uh, in, in parts of the stack. Um, in terms of the front end, um, we use a lot of JavaScript, um, like, like, like most folks. Mm-hmm. Um, so it's a pretty diverse stack. I'd say. Um, you know, we. Largely on aws. Um, what's interesting is also because we're doing transaction processing, um, there is actually an on-prem component when it comes to interfacing with the networks. So there's some like interesting, uh, tech challenges there as well. Neat.

Tim Winkler: 00:29:15

Are, are you all, uh, hiring, uh, you know, going into this year are what, what kind of, uh, positions or, or roles are you hiring for this.

Bo Jiang: 00:29:25

Yeah. So I would say, uh, yeah, we, we are hiring, um, like most companies, uh, we're being pretty measured and pretty thoughtful on the hiring front. Um, you know, we have a, uh, pretty robust team and, um, uh, the, the, uh, the economic climate's obviously, uh, pretty uncertain right now. So we are selectively hiring, um, across engineering, um, and, and, and other key functions. So,

Tim Winkler: 00:29:54

So when you hire, do you, would you say that you tend to hire for like a general skillset or do you usually look to fill a need on a very specific team?

Bo Jiang: 00:30:04

I would say, um, on engineering in particular, we're pretty opportunistic. Um, and so there isn't necess, you know, like what we found at least is like, it's much, um, You know, specific FinTech domain expertise is useful for sure. Um, but given a trade off, like we would much rather hire a skilled engineer, uh, who has no FinTech experience and train them up and get them familiarized with, with the industry. Uh, because we've found that like, you know, smart folks can pick this stuff up pretty quickly. Interesting.

Tim Winkler: 00:30:41

What, what is the, like the general. The land of your tech teams right now, you know what, what's the size of the, of those tech teams and from a maybe engineering and, and product and, you know, data teams.

Bo Jiang: 00:30:54

Yeah, so, uh, engineering product, uh, and design and data are about, um, I'd say about 50 or so. Um, or yeah, about 50

Tim Winkler: 00:31:09

almost. A third or a little bit more than

Bo Jiang: 00:31:13

a third of the company. Yeah. It's, it's slow. More than a third of the company. Nice. Good

Tim Winkler: 00:31:18

stuff. Um, well, I'll tell you what I mean, I, it sounds like there's a, a lot on the horizon for you guys and, um, you know, I love the, I love the story. I, I, you know, You're the first person I've talked to that's met their co-founders when they're in their 12, 13, 14 year old. So I think that's a really, really interesting, uh, uh, you know, journey that you've got. Beau, um, I'd love to transition us into, uh, you know, a segment that we call the Five Second Scramble. Um, and, and in this segment what I'll do is just kind of spitball a few rapid fire questions to you, give you five seconds to answer you. Go a little bit over if you can't, if you need to, but try to keep it a as brief as possible. Uh, you ready to jump into

Bo Jiang: 00:32:00

it? Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm ready for it.

Tim Winkler: 00:32:03

All right, cool. Um, explain your product to me as if I were a, a five-year-old.

Bo Jiang: 00:32:12

Um, oh man. That is that's, that's tough. Um, that's tough for you. Yeah. So we, um, as a five year old, um, Oh man. That, that's a, that's a tough question actually. Mm-hmm. um, I'm taking more than five seconds here. That's good. Um, you know, really, we, we make it easier for people to, um, to, to make, uh, new credit cards. I think that's probably the, the, the most concise and simple explanation.

Tim Winkler: 00:32:42

Yep. See, I could digest that as a five year old. I, I can totally, totally see what you guys are doing. Um, well again, what problems are you all

Bo Jiang: 00:32:50

solving? Um, you know, we're, we're solving the, the problem we're solving really is like, kind of twofold, right? Um, and this is really informed by like our, our own experiences. Um, You know, it's, it's way too hard to launch a new credit card, uh, or a debit card. And, um, even after you get started, it's really hard to scale and innovate. Um, and so we're solving the, a twofold problem. One is the launch and the second is like kind of scaling of, of the, the offering. who are your users? Uh, our customers are, um, are really like, um, you know, brands, uh, techno software companies, uh, financial, uh, potentially financial companies, um, any, any company, any technology company that wants to, um, issue or launch a, uh, card product.

Tim Winkler: 00:33:43

What's your favorite aspect of working at li?

Bo Jiang: 00:33:49

Uh, I'd say my, my favorite aspect is, uh, spend spending time with customers, uh, spending time with, with customers, understanding their use cases, um, their, their products. Um, yeah, that, that's, I'd say that's my favorite.

Tim Winkler: 00:34:04

What aspect of your culture do you most fear losing with growth?

Bo Jiang: 00:34:13

I think one of the things that, um, I really like about our appreciate about our culture is that it's a, uh, relatively high trust culture. Um, and, uh, I think that is something that's really hard to, to scale. Hmm.

Tim Winkler: 00:34:30

What about your work keeps you up at night? Beyond the economy and everything,

Bo Jiang: 00:34:41

You know, I, I think the, the, the service that we provide our customers is really, really mission critical. Um, and so when we go down, like transactions stop getting processed, right? And so the mission criticality of that is, is uh, is a pretty, uh, heavyweight to bear.

Tim Winkler: 00:34:59

For sure. Yeah. That does sound like a, a pretty stressful burden right there. Um, what type of engineer would you say thrives at Lithic?

Bo Jiang: 00:35:10

Yeah, so I'd say we're, um, you know, we're, we're kind of this mid-stage company, right? We're not a like, you know, 10 or 20 person startup, but we're also not like a thousand or like 10,000 person company. So it's sort of, um, I think there's a mix of like, you have to be able to work well with others. Um, and there's not enough like sort of just, yeah, you have to be able to work well with others. Um, but there's also enough like kind of like. Space where if you feel strongly about a product thing or if you feel strongly about something the customer needs, like you can, you can get it done. And so it's, it's, it's a really kind of interesting, uh, uh, middle ground right now that, that we're in, um, at least from, from what I've seen.

Tim Winkler: 00:35:57

Cool. Who's a tech entrepreneur that you find fascinating.

Bo Jiang: 00:36:05

Um. I mean, I gotta, I feel like you gotta say Elon uh, just like, he's super, it's really fascinating, right? It's, it's not necessarily a style that, uh, I would emulate, but it's, it's certainly fascinating. It's super

Tim Winkler: 00:36:24

fascinating. I think he's, he's a, everybody's got a hot take on him for 2023. Like, what, what's gonna happen to Elon? Um,

Bo Jiang: 00:36:32

favorite cereal. Um, cheers.

Tim Winkler: 00:36:38

Nice. Coffee or

Bo Jiang: 00:36:40

tea? Um, coffee. What do you

Tim Winkler: 00:36:46

love the most about yourself?

Bo Jiang: 00:36:52

Ooh, that is an interesting question, Um, I'd say I'm an optimist. Uh, you know, I, I think, uh, and you kind of have to be, uh, working in startups, uh, you know, to, to get, kind of get through, uh, the hard parts.

Tim Winkler: 00:37:08

Yeah. Preach, man, we need more, we need more optimism in the world. So I, I think that's great. Do you believe that there is life on other planets?

Bo Jiang: 00:37:20

Yeah. I mean, kind of have to. Mm-hmm.

Tim Winkler: 00:37:24

favorite app on your phone today?

Bo Jiang: 00:37:28

Favorite app on my phone. Um, I've been getting into running more. Um, just outdoor, cuz I gotta say Strava. Nice.

Tim Winkler: 00:37:41

Um, and then favorite superhero.

Bo Jiang: 00:37:48

Um, Batman.

Tim Winkler: 00:37:50

Batman, yeah. The number one answer

Bo Jiang: 00:37:53

is it really, it is.

Tim Winkler: 00:37:55

Yeah. I mean, it's the right answer too. So, that's, uh, that's it, man. You, you nailed it. You did not stumble at all, except the first one was a little bit thought provoking with the five year old. Uh, Product, which is, I've heard something that like a lot of VC is gonna pitch is like, all right, you know, simplify your product for me and break it down real nice and easy. But you, you did a good job of it. And, um, uh, the, the story, uh, of, of Bo Jang and Lithic is very interesting. I'm, I'm glad you're able to come, come on and share it with our team. Uh, we're excited to see what you guys continue to build this year. And, um, thank you again for, for spending time with us, man. We appreciate

Bo Jiang: 00:38:35

it. Awesome. Thanks for having me.