Discussing the Cheat Code to Software Development with iiimpact.io

GM GM. Welcome to what's going to be another great episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every Friday, allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between an opportunity to come on the show and showcase their product. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Makoto Kern, who's the founder of Impact.io. So if you didn't know, Impact helps companies co-create efficient, structured, and strategic software development processes that make targets, optimize internal productivity, and improve your bottom line and operational management. If you stick around for today's episode, you'll see Makoto give us an engaging talk around software development, perhaps some spicy takes on AI and crypto, and also tell us how his firm is a cheat code for your success. All right, let's get into it.

GM GM. Welcome to the show, Makoto. Thank you so much for, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Excited to be here.

Yeah, yeah, excited to have you on. I know you were telling me you have quite the tenure in the software development space spanning crypto, AI, and traditional software development. So, really excited to kind of get your perspective on the industry as a whole and yeah, just learn a little bit more about Impact and the work you do there. But I guess before we get into all that awesome stuff, did you just want to give a brief introduction about yourself?

Yeah, definitely. I am the principal consultant, product strategy and UX design consultant, and the founder of Impact. We've been consulting for the past like 20 plus years. Mostly started off as a UX design firm, but really grown ourselves into kind of a full holistic product strategy. Basically, our key terminology is from boardroom to code. And so we've helped enterprise software companies, startups, everything to really become more user-center focused versus feature-center focused. And we've been on the Inc 5000 three years in a row. We've experienced awesome growth. Started the business in Chicago and its headquarters in Austin, Texas right now. And so yeah, we've helped out almost every company in every industry, primarily enterprise, but also conversion B2C applications as well.

That's amazing. That's quite the repertoire of industries you guys support. And I guess just curious, how did you find yourself in tech? Like, what was the driving force of you coming into this industry and ending up founding a consulting company?

Definitely. You know, my background's always been kind of a nerd at engineering. My dad was a science teacher, so I always wanted to be an astronaut. So I always read his astronomy books, his high school astronomy books, when I was in the little grade school kid and knew everything about the stars. But yeah, I got into electrical engineering and robotics, got my bachelor's in electrical engineering, my master's in robotics, and did that for about a decade. Got a lot into manufacturing and lean manufacturing because that's kind of where all the automation was at that time. And yeah, it was where I think I got the bug, the UX bug, of where I had to really optimize software for people on the manufacturing floor versus basically the software was designed by engineers for engineers, but people on the manufacturing floor aren't that technical. So if they're shipping a thousand widgets and they miss something on the screen, you've got to rework those widgets. So my job was to really optimize and make sure they saw things and it was really helpful or easy for them to use. And so that kind of naturally progressed me into like really thinking about okay, what's the user experience when they're actually working with software? And you know, I've always had the entrepreneurial bug in me. I've always read the magazines and everything since I was in college and loved everybody's story. I don't care if you're a chef or a plumber or whatever, just I love hearing like startup stories. And yeah, it got to a point where it was the dot-com boom at that time and I was doing websites on the side. I was going to Craigslist. I was finding jobs. I found one of my biggest jobs, my first biggest jobs there with a company called Turtle Wax. People probably know them. They supply different oil and stuff. And they have a sister company where we actually created a flash website of this interactive garage. Really cool stuff that I think they had it on there for like eight years or something like that. But I remember just like hustling every day. I was driving through Chicago traffic for a couple hours and just making phone calls to people talking about their website and seeing what we can do. And yeah, I was doing SEO. Just just the full gamut to a point where you know, I was able to quit my job. I got a big consulting role and was doing still a lot of work on the side, just building my company up. And then just you know, once I got to Austin, that's kind of where it really blew up. Got you know, got one of my biggest clients, who are still our client to this day for over a decade. They're an energy company. And you know, we've been really focused on we like I said, the journey of not just being a UX design firm handing off pretty wireframes, but actually like trying to solve from the top level up, the product strategy piece. Um, so yeah, that's kind of how the journey started and where we're at.

That's amazing. That's yeah like just showing that that startup founder hustle and yeah, it's like you never know you never know what's going to happen. The key is just to stay consistent and then once,

Oh yeah, I mean the imposter the imposter syndrome that I had at that point, I mean I felt like oh there's so many designers that have been doing it went to college for it. You know, I was an engineer so I just wanted to figure things out, but I was so technical versus the design side. I didn't have the traditional like visual design piece, but I love cognitive psychology and I love the just the software, the human machine interface kind of or interaction piece and you know just got to a point where like I was just constantly trying to learn. I love reading stuff. You know, it's the kind of thing where they say follow your passion. Sure, that's easy to do but you got to make money. Um, but when you when I actually like love what I like what I did, it made it easy for me to always constantly just soak up everything like a sponge. So it was a it was a nervous grind but but I mean I god for the first 10 years I must have I mean I was probably working 7 days a week, you know, I don't know how many hours but I loved it.

Yeah, it's it's not work if you love what you do, so right and yeah, I mean it sounds like your firm helps enterprises basically get out of their own way, so to speak. Did you want to kind of go into the different types of different types of companies your firm helps with and the different types of things it helps with?

Yeah, definitely. And you know, this is where I think especially now with the day and age of AI, you know back in the dot-com boom and bust days, the push was always has always been to be feature focused. What can we build? What kind of features can we build? Once we build it, they they're going to come. It's like we're going to make millions as soon as we throw AI into here. And then that's you know that's not the case. Apple made it super like user-center focused is is the most important thing. What kind of pain points are you probably are you solving for the user? What kind of friction are you taking away from the user when they're trying to accomplish a goal or task? And so you know again I feel like we're kind of devolving back with the AI now it's like oh just throw AI into our app, everybody's going to love it, we're going to make millions and you know that's where I feel we could get into some of that that little AI bubble froth that I think is forming right now. But you know we've always like sure most companies will what when I talk to them at first, you could tell right away they're like hey just give me pretty wireframes, we'll hand it off to dev and we're done. Um we don't we don't need UX anymore. But the the problem is it's like the easiest way to think about this is like if you are building a house and you just build it first and then you ask the people to move in and you're like okay what do you think? And now they're like well we don't want a two level we want a single story, we want four bedrooms not five bedrooms, you know and you know when you start to think about that like oh my god changing it then is very expensive. It's the same with software. When I go into an organization and I see kind of what they're doing and there's features that they've launched, they've spent months creating, tons of resources and money, and they realize their users don't even use it. And this is especially like when you're when you're talking consumer facing, you know you're competing now against like five other companies that you could go to their website and buy the the product. And so if you don't if you make it if you make it really hard and and put a lot of friction into the process, they're just going to go somewhere else. Enterprise is a little different. Um, they're kind of forced to use the the software, but if you if you see how people use her enterprise software, they're going to go back to whatever habits they're used to. A lot of times people are used to their workflow, they've done it for several years, and if you introduce something brand new to them, they're going to be like oh my god what is this? And you disrupt their workflow and they actually won't like it. And so you know when we go into organizations we actually now we have a process where we understand what the the business goals and objectives, we get leadership in a room, and this is where the this is where dealing with people and egos, this is where kind of our expertise is at because it's almost like therapy for companies. And it's really hard to get through that ego when you're trying to make change from the bottom up. And so when we go into organizations we have the leadership actually get in a room because unless you're like maybe Tesla or Google or Amazon, most of the companies are so misaligned. Poor communication, they assume a lot of things like oh everybody knows what what our goals are but when you actually get them in a room to make that decision, you realize that no they don't, everybody has a different idea. And so trying to understand what are our what are our top-line business goals or objectives but then also make them user empathetic. And that's where it's like okay what are our what are our biggest personas, who are using our product, what are their pain points, what's their user journey look like? Tie that back to business goals and then what you want to do at the end is like okay now you have a like 6 to 12 month roadmap of all the features, you know what features are like we could just give it to development teams and what are the features that are kind of risky but we know they're high value. So let's let's prototype those, test those, and make sure we get them right before we spend a ton of money and energy into building them. And so once you do that that's kind of our holistic process. But it's amazing that even though we've launched hundreds of digital products over last 20 years and we kind of know all the ins and outs and the problems and the you know the issues that come with it and the scalability is a big thing. You see so many people still want to just say hey just give me the wireframes. I'm like you've only built one product, how do you know why would you want to do that? But that's just what they're comfortable with. So yeah I mean it's like you know we're half design design and strategy but we're also half therapy session for companies, so it's it's really interesting when you see when you get into these companies and you see the the progress of what they make.

Yeah, yeah, certainly. And yeah, that's an interesting frame of mind to kind of come at it with. Like, you guys say you have this cheat code for a company's success. Would you say this therapy kind of approach to it is this cheat code or is there more to it?

Yeah, I mean it's again we when we do this process, it's basically like a workshop sprint that we we get in first. A lot of companies will they'll pad how much it they think it'll cost to do wireframes for six months or or create a brand new kind of like idea or design or product. It's hard to gauge what that is based on just some idea or maybe a a walkthrough of of an of an application. And so I try to be a lot more fair and tell the tell the company like look let's get to let's let's have a date first, let's get to know things but I also want you to understand like if I don't understand these things upfront the actually product strategy and your business goals and what the and your development constraints, I can't honestly give you a a right assumption of what the the design process is going to look like because it can you can churn if I go to like three of your SMEs or your product owners and I get three different ideas, I'm churning and then all of a sudden it goes up to up to top and then the CEO says no no no I want to do something different, which happens a lot more than you think. Um, this is something that will just cause frustration, scope creep, and everything else. And so you know a lot of times too you your product people now I mean product owners and product people weren't really like a such a glue but now they are, but they can make or break your company. If you have bad product owners, you're going to have a you're going to have a product that's going to lag behind. So when I say like the cheat code, it's it's basically like you know we'll because we go into organization what we're trying to do we actually shortcut what a way in which this communication kind of sprint that we do, it's only like two to three days. And within those two to three days we save months of headaches and and scope creep and and churn, but also when you get actually launch, users will actually want to use it. So not only do you save time, you save a ton of money and you're pretty confident you know in what you're launching that people will use. I don't know how many times I've seen features that have been launched and the users don't even want to use it. And so they're surprised because they you know that's another thing when you do UX research, a lot of times these companies are like oh let me just show it on the screen with a group of people and then get the feedback and that's not the right way to get user feedback because you're in a group think situation, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the guy who who is the hippo in the room I call it, highest paid person, is going to have the most influence and the other people might just you know not say anything. And so this becomes problematic and it's just a it's a common theme I see with immature companies where they're trying to launch product and they do it they have the same mistakes. And it's I see it all the time and now with AI, you can you can vibe code your way, you can prompt your way into copy copy your competitors very quickly. So sure a this is a thing I always say like a high tide raises all boats. So if you're using AI and your competitors are using AI, well you both are kind of like a null kind of advantage. But if you don't do if you don't have speed and direction um when you're building your product, that you you will get behind very quickly. But you also have to have continuous improvement because your your competitor's also trying to improve on things and they'll just copy your your thing right away. So it's it's like you have to have all these things working consistently in order to stay ahead of your competition. So that's why I call it the cheat code.

Yeah, yeah, and and well explained, well said. And you touched on the AI vibe coding. I want to get into that in just a little bit. But I did see a very interesting stat on your website where it said around 73% of enterprise software basically products basically fail. And you kind of touched on some of the things that are the cause of that. But what would you say is the most common common things you've seen in your time in in this field that are like man, what are you doing?

Yeah, I would say 99% of our clients that we get into um of that 73% that fail, they they are just misaligned. I mean they just want to jump right into wireframes and I don't know how many times I keep telling you know it's this is where you're going to see a lot of CTOs take charge of the product because if something is very technical, the CTO has full reign of the product side of things. And immediately I can tell you that's that's not going to work in an organization setup because the dev team is worried about getting that backlog fixed or finished. And if you're going to if there's a component that takes 10 hours versus a component that takes 100 hours, of course they're going to choose the 10 hours although it may be very detrimental to the user experience, their goal is to get rid of that backlog ticket. So that's why you need separation because then you if you have product to say wait wait wait a minute let's not do it that way, maybe there's a in between that we can figure out and that way it doesn't detriment the user experience. And then just think if you have multiple dev teams, multiple product teams working in the same application, this dev team decides to do one thing one way and then another page is looking a different way as a user's going through they're like wait a minute, how come this is set up differently? It's the same application. You you cause cognitive load on the user, frustration, and they just they go back to what they're used to doing. And so that's kind of where you see projects fail is because of that and they waste you know they waste their time building these features in the wrong way and they never track the actual metrics. People think oh let's just track tracking metrics is good for like B2C companies where we're tracking conversion rates, how much is how long is people you know their path and you know how many people hit our page and how many people bounce. But it's actually in enterprise software you want to track time on task, you want to track NPS scores, you want to track a lot of these things you know the learning curve because these are all costs to you and then your sales team can say hey look we've actually saved time because you learn things much faster, you get to what you need to get to much faster than competitor B over here. And so that's kind of where like it's just the same repeatable pattern that I see all the time so if I'm able to get through to them I could reduce that 73% failure rate by a huge margin.

Interesting. Yeah, and and yeah, I guess folks watching today, like there's your uh today I learned. But yeah it sounds like um people people tend to get in their own way of of doing things and kind of take the easy path. Whatever's comfortable even if it's a bad habit. Exactly, exactly. And it's it's hard to it's hard to shake those habits. Um I think it takes like two weeks or something to form a habit and I'm not sure how long it'll take to get rid of an habit, especially then.

Oh god I mean especially when when egos are involved, if you're at a high level and you you know the company's riding on your decisions, are you going to do something that's uncomfortable? Probably not. The only way you do that is once you fail and they're like okay this didn't work out let's try something else. Let's get a consultant that has actually launched you know hundreds of project products versus me that have been in this same software for last 7 years. You know, it's right. But it's funny, I mean it's just egos egos will trump people's like rational decisions. So most definitely. To be human, to be human. Yeah. Yep.

Uh yeah, and just to shift the conversation a little bit. Um I want to go into um AI a bit and then you also mentioned you've been in crypto um around since 2017 so um interested to get your perspective on this industry as well. But just around this whole notion of vibe coding, I mean it's taken the software industry and the weekend hacker space kind of by storm. Um we see a lot of startups kind of taking off a lot of Y Combinator applicants get into the program with at least a a first MVP vibe coded. Like and actually we've also seen quite a bit of security um or insecure projects kind of landing in the space. There was this one I think it was called like T or something where they had like a open API that leaked out a lot of people basically everyone's like locations and whatnot. Just just wanted to get kind of your perspective of these types of of companies and projects that are kind of starting up, perhaps not having as much of a tenure in software development and kind of where you're seeing some of these projects where you think they'll kind of end up without having a proper set of eyes kind of go through and patch up these security holes.

Yeah, definitely. So you know AI's been great for um you know doing repetitive tasks, analyzing large data sets, and really if you have a large gap in a certain area or knowledge it helps fill in that gap per se. Um but when it comes to like it's interesting I just recently um released a new or LinkedIn post about this. I kind of coined the term like a like a what did I call it? Um it's called like an AI competence mirage. And the thing is is when you're using AI let's say you're a developer and you're using AI, um but you you're using it for let's say I need to come up with a marketing plan or I need to figure out design for something. Um you feel like oh wow this is a huge magic you know magic box that just told me everything. I don't need a designer. I don't need a marketing person. I I could figure this all out now just with AI. But the problem is is you have a massive gap of what you actually think it is. But then on the flip side if I'm a designer I say hey code me this. Oh I don't need a front-end developer, I don't need a back-end coder. That coder's going to look at that code and say yeah I don't think so. It's it's great to start off with but it's not really it's not really where you can get rid of me. And so that that competence mirage is where your your knowledge gap in something is is very is is limited. So you think that you've filled out a gap that through AI. And I think what's happening with executives they have a lot of gaps in certain things especially in in companies where maybe the I don't know how many times I've seen executives where they've not launched a product or maybe they've launched one and they don't know the ins and outs. They're not a developer. They're not a designer. They're just good at business. And so they think like oh my god I just vibe coded an app and this I don't need I don't even let's get rid of 90% of our dev team and the design team, we don't need it. And they don't realize no you actually need more people and because of these like reasons of security, privacy, if you use AI and you don't have a senior level person checking what's being produced, um you're going to launch an app and then you're going to get hacked and then you're going to get sued to death. And just like the T app, they're getting sued left and right because of their privacy issues. And if you're getting into anything with health or education or whatever your if you don't protect that code, um you're out. I mean you're going to be pretty much sued to death. And so I think hackers are they're using AI to break into things and and force multiplying their efforts. And so now you're seeing in in you know I'm actually in Las Vegas right now and their DMV has been shut down for three days because of their systems were hacked. And this is going to be in every every DMV system across the state across the United States because all the systems are pretty um archaic. And so sure you're launching a vibe coded app which seems like it's on a newer tech stack but in all reality if I get a senior dev and they look at two different things of code, one's hand coded you know hand coded by someone good, one's vibe coded, they can I guarantee it's like looking at AI slop. They can tell right away the difference. And so you know use it to to come up with like ideas faster, use it to bounce things that you think you know and then help you along the way. But to think that you're going to do more with less people, especially good people, is just a a fallacy I think. And that's where you know again like if you're if you're dealing with anything that involves people's law I mean even if it's a login and their passwords I'm sure there's going to be a lawyer that loves to have a tort case against you and then make a quick 50 million. You know, so you have to be careful. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I I think um a lot of people are kind of getting too uh too dependent on on AI to to do a lot of things. Like personally I see it as a just like another tool in the toolkit. Like for me like I love to use it to kind of just build the base of a of a new app so I don't have to go through all that scaffolding and I basically save a day or two and then I can actually concentrate on building the building the thing I want to build and solving the problem I want to solve. So it's definitely um here to stay but like I don't like I'm with you I don't think it's going to replace I don't think it's going to replace people. It's just going to um be another tool tool in the toolkit so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, certainly. And yeah, I guess folks watching today, like there's your uh today I learned. But yeah it sounds like um people people tend to get in their own way of of doing things and kind of take the easy path. Whatever's comfortable even if it's a bad habit. Exactly, exactly. And it's it's hard to it's hard to shake those habits. Um I think it takes like two weeks or something to form a habit and I'm not sure how long it'll take to get rid of an habit, especially then. Oh god I mean especially when when egos are involved, if you're at a high level and you you know the company's riding on your decisions, are you going to do something that's uncomfortable? Probably not. The only way you do that is once you fail and they're like okay this didn't work out let's try something else. Let's get a consultant that has actually launched you know hundreds of project products versus me that have been in this same software for last 7 years. You know, it's right. But it's funny, I mean it's just egos egos will trump people's like rational decisions. So most definitely. To be human, to be human. Yeah. Yep. Uh yeah, and just to shift the conversation a little bit. Um I want to go into um AI a bit and then you also mentioned you've been in crypto um around since 2017 so um interested to get your perspective on this industry as well. But just around this whole notion of vibe coding, I mean it's taken the software industry and the weekend hacker space kind of by storm. Um we see a lot of startups kind of taking off a lot of Y Combinator applicants get into the program with at least a a first MVP vibe coded. Like and actually we've also seen quite a bit of security um or insecure projects kind of landing in the space. There was this one I think it was called like T or something where they had like a open API that leaked out a lot of people basically everyone's like locations and whatnot. Just just wanted to get kind of your perspective of these types of of companies and projects that are kind of starting up, perhaps not having as much of a tenure in software development and kind of where you're seeing some of these projects where you think they'll kind of end up without having a proper set of eyes kind of go through and patch up these security holes. Yeah, definitely. So you know AI's been great for um you know doing repetitive tasks, analyzing large data sets, and really if you have a large gap in a certain area or knowledge it helps fill in that gap per se. Um but when it comes to like it's interesting I just recently um released a new or LinkedIn post about this. I kind of coined the term like a like a what did I call it? Um it's called like an AI competence mirage. And the thing is is when you're using AI let's say you're a developer and you're using AI, um but you you're using it for let's say I need to come up with a marketing plan or I need to figure out design for something. Um you feel like oh wow this is a huge magic you know magic box that just told me everything. I don't need a designer. I don't need a marketing person. I I could figure this all out now just with AI. But the problem is is you have a massive gap of what you actually think it is. But then on the flip side if I'm a designer I say hey code me this. Oh I don't need a front-end developer, I don't need a back-end coder. That coder's going to look at that code and say yeah I don't think so. It's it's great to start off with but it's not really it's not really where you can get rid of me. And so that that competence mirage is where your your knowledge gap in something is is very is is limited. So you think that you've filled out a gap that through AI. And I think what's happening with executives they have a lot of gaps in certain things especially in in companies where maybe the I don't know how many times I've seen executives where they've not launched a product or maybe they've launched one and they don't know the ins and outs. They're not a developer. They're not a designer. They're just good at business. And so they think like oh my god I just vibe coded an app and this I don't need I don't even let's get rid of 90% of our dev team and the design team, we don't need it. And they don't realize no you actually need more people and because of these like reasons of security, privacy, if you use AI and you don't have a senior level person checking what's being produced, um you're going to launch an app and then you're going to get hacked and then you're going to get sued to death. And just like the T app, they're getting sued left and right because of their privacy issues. And if you're getting into anything with health or education or whatever your if you don't protect that code, um you're out. I mean you're going to be pretty much sued to death. And so I think hackers are they're using AI to break into things and and force multiplying their efforts. And so now you're seeing in in you know I'm actually in Las Vegas right now and their DMV has been shut down for three days because of their systems were hacked. And this is going to be in every every DMV system across the state across the United States because all the systems are pretty um archaic. And so sure you're launching a vibe coded app which seems like it's on a newer tech stack but in all reality if I get a senior dev and they look at two different things of code, one's hand coded you know hand coded by someone good, one's vibe coded, they can I guarantee it's like looking at AI slop. They can tell right away the difference. And so you know use it to to come up with like ideas faster, use it to bounce things that you think you know and then help you along the way. But to think that you're going to do more with less people, especially good people, is just a a fallacy I think. And that's where you know again like if you're if you're dealing with anything that involves people's law I mean even if it's a login and their passwords I'm sure there's going to be a lawyer that loves to have a tort case against you and then make a quick 50 million. You know, so you have to be careful. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I I think um a lot of people are kind of getting too uh too dependent on on AI to to do a lot of things. Like personally I see it as a just like another tool in the toolkit. Like for me like I love to use it to kind kind of just build the base of a of a new app so I don't have to go through all that scaffolding and I basically save a day or two and then I can actually concentrate on building the building the thing I want to build and solving the problem I want to solve. So it's definitely um here to stay but like I don't like I'm with you I don't think it's going to replace I don't think it's going to replace people. It's just going to um be another tool tool in the toolkit so to speak. And kind of bouncing now to crypto. I'm very curious to kind of get your take on the state of crypto and blockchain. Yeah, don't be afraid to get a little bit spicy too. Yeah, for sure. I mean it's I've been involved with it since 2017 so I've been heavily involved with just trading and did all that stuff and you know it's sometimes you go back and forth you're like is this really a pyramid scheme and you know am I am I just like am I just like timing the bull run so then I can have someone else holding the bags instead of me because I figured out the timing of it? But I think you know with with anything with with stocks I mean you see manipulation there's regulation to avoid manipulation but if something is like crypto is not heavily regulated it can be easily manipulated. And and you can see that very easily when you own a large amount I mean it's just all day long. I mean even me being involved in it for such a long time you still get emotional you're like oh my god it's going to run just buy buy buy and you FOMO in or you FOMO out. And that's a big problem it's like I mean bottom line just buy when everybody's selling and sell when everybody's buying I mean that's just a simple thing but it's still as an emotional person you know it's hard to follow that that pattern. But I mean stock traders do it all day long you know they have to avoid being emotional about it and and just be smart about it and follow the same you know discipline. But you know I think there's definitely from a technical side engineering side it's something that has been always great. I mean you know from the silk road I had I had friends that are that are like the good hackers or whatever they told me about silk road and bitcoin like just buy $5,000 worth of bitcoin this is like 2000 I think eight or something. I'm like oh my god. But everybody ends up selling if you hold it for that long you're like oh it went from you know $50 to a thousand okay I sold not knowing that if you should have held but most people won't. But I think you know I've got I've got family involved in some uh some of the big crypto companies and and just understanding like kind of that space there's so much investment so much money that's going into that space. And so much people so many more people that are smarter than me who are invested 100% trying to make that happen. Um you know there's there's definitely it's not going away. And now with this administration that's so pro-crypto. Um yeah institutions are getting involved so get ready for more manipulation. So I always say like it's just funny when you see all the YouTube channels of of people about crypto like don't leverage in. I mean unless you've got some kind of a million dollar safety net don't 100x in because you're just going to get wrecked. Um but just if you have a conviction about something. I mean what what they say if you would have just put in bitcoin and just hold it it's like almost putting in S&P and just you'll beat most of the traders out there. Same with just put in bitcoin and don't even look at it you'll probably beat most of the traders out there. So if you want to try to you know be a degenerate and degen in buying all these crazy meme stocks and everything go right ahead but that's just like stress I don't even I don't even want to think about. Um but yeah I think it's it's the macro conditions and all this stuff I mean just you know with the what's the Fed's going to do? Is it following the M1 money supply? Is it you know is it following you know terrorists? Is it this or that? Like it is it is a rollercoaster ride that I think most people can't they can't handle. Um and again this is my third cycle and it's like it's still hard like okay I don't even want to look at it anymore. Um because it it's not easy to look at. Yeah, yeah, you certainly if you get or if you stay in it long enough you kind of get numb to the big swings the big ones. Yeah, like 10-20% okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very odd it's like typically if you get like a 5 to 10% return on a stock or something you're like oh heck yeah like I'm going to sell. But like you get 5 to 10% return on a on a meme meme coin you're like ah nah it's like nothing like I wasted my time I wanted like 100% 1000%. Oh yeah, yeah. Um and and it's very interesting like um for all the the flock that part of crypto gets like it's actually the first point of contact like a lot of people have when they want to come and explore the space. It's like the speculation side of it drives people in. Like we have prediction markets now in in Polymarket and some other ones that are um basically kind of just driving in on that that fact that kind of just speculation and this I don't want to say casino but like this just like the the allure of of making money fast um kind of brings people in and you kind of like shave off some of those people like um the really like the tech nerds that kind of go into a rabbit hole of like a particular protocol or like a technology in the space and end up sticking in it right and that's yeah I think with just like anything you know you're going to have the crypto bros that show off their Lambos and and you just want you want to chase after that and and you know with trading it's just it's just too risky and I mean if people really knew what they if you're paying for a course you probably shouldn't be listening to that person um because that's where they're making their money but I think you know with with stocks my my thinking is always been the three Ps product people and process. If you have something a company that has all three then they're probably going to do pretty well. Um and so you know Tesla, Tesla's got I mean I just know everything about lean manufacturing. I know everything about design. I know how fast Tesla iterates on their designs versus like Ford or whatever. So I take those fundamentals and I'm like oh my god you know they're iterating what would take for years into like a month. And so a company that's doing that and is like really pushing that that's like a startup but they're they're massive. So obviously their their valuation you can you can argue it's higher whatever but the fact of the matter is they're no one's even coming close to the fact that they have the people they have the processes and they have the product. And so if you follow all three within like crypto and do your research and and see like is this is this an actual like you know crypto thing or blockchain or whatever like the technology they've got the people there the people are sticking around they're really you know they're really working hard to make it happen then you know that's something that you should really look at and just you know invest in that that coin. Don't follow me for financial advice or anything. But but yeah I mean it's you know I think I heard one uh one uh one thing where they're using what is it called? Like blockchain for AI um human like if a human gives a a command to a robot you want to use it some type of blockchain to say like hey this is an actual it's coming from a human not coming from AI so you can trace the the what's being like created in code or or or yeah it's I mean I'm like wow that's a thing of humanity or something. Yeah something like that yeah. And so those are those kind of things just that fascinates me and and that's I think where the excitement is to where it's being used for actual usage um versus you know some NFT of a monkey you know this is like something that's actually being used as useful and I think that's where it's exciting. Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Um unfortunately we're we're coming to time here. Uh just uh want to give you an opportunity to um tell folks how they can basically follow along with impact.io, how they can reach out to you if they're interested in um uh hiring your services and um any final thoughts you might have um for the audience here.

Yeah, you can follow me on you know we have our own YouTube channel called Making an Impact with three eyes um and we talk about you know all our old war stories to you know AI UX everything um you can check check us out there follow me on LinkedIn reach out at you know impact3eyes.io um and you know we as far as like a final word of advice I think you know I think if you if you're think about planning any kind of significant software initiative um I mean the cost of like doing upfront strategic work especially if you just talk to me and and just like hey what do you think Makoto? Is this a how would you approach this? You know just a simple just a simple video call for five minutes I can tell you right away kind of what's the best approach but you know just following a proper process upfront like they you know they say if you had a chance to chop down a tree what would you spend you know you had 60 minutes to chop down a tree what would you do for 50 minutes you sharpen your axe and the same thing here you want to really like do the upfront strategy otherwise you're going to be spending millions of dollars and time and you're going to be losing especially nowadays so it's it's kind of like that an insurance policy for software success so that's pretty much it.

Excellent. Yeah, well said. Well said. And uh yeah I guess that's a that's a great way for us to kind of take off into the weekend and uh with that just want to wish everybody a very happy Friday, happy weekend wherever you may be. Makoto thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come on the show. Yeah thanks for having me. Everybody enjoy their Labor Day holiday and uh yeah can't wait can't wait to hear the feedback. That's right. That's right. And uh like Makoto said enjoy the long weekend if you have a long weekend and we will catch you back here next week for another great episode of DevNTell. Till then have a good one folks. Thanks everyone. Cheers. Bye.