211: Critical Growth Lessons from Software Engineer to CEO with Daniel Loreto | Founder & CEO at Jetify

So I didn’t know where to start. It’s like, do we go to your days at Google? Do we go to Twitter, Airbnb, what you’re doing now at Jetify and all the development you’ve experienced and how you’ve grown and. Big companies and startups and like everything in between. So I wanted to ask you to tell us. If you had to go back in your development years, your early years of your career, maybe that first decade, when you were getting started in software development, what would be the moment, maybe the project or the company, the chapter of your career that stands out as the growth chapter?

Like, the one that stretched you and forced you to learn and grow and develop yourself the most. What [00:01:00] stands out as that growth chapter for you? 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah, I mean, I think For me, I feel like the, the, kind of like the first three companies I worked at together created a lot of growth. Uh, so the, the very first job I ever had was at Google.

So, so that was after, uh, college. And what 

Zach White: year, just to put it in context, when did you start at 

Daniel Loreto: Google? Yeah, this is like 2005, uh, you know, around there. And so, yeah, probably a different Google than today. Um, but yes, you know, Google, I feel like was maybe the it company. Uh, you know, like Microsoft is the one that felt old and stodgy.

Google was kind of new and exciting. Uh, it had recently IPO’d already, but, you know, still kind of fresh. Um, and you know, Google for me was very formative in that it exposed me to. Internet scale on big data early on. You got to remember this is before the public clouds, right? This is this is before AWS.

This is before GCP. But a lot of those practices were already happening inside of Google. Um, and so just kind of getting exposed to all of that was a great learning [00:02:00] experience. Um, but after Google, I went to a startup and that was just like. Uh, four people starting a company. Uh, and so that was also very interesting.

Oh my 

Zach White: goodness. So tell us about that transition. Why did you decide to leave, for most people, was a dream company to be a part of as they were growing like crazy in those years, I mean, anyways, still are. My parents 

Daniel Loreto: actually thought I was crazy. I think now they trust my decisions. 

Zach White: After everything you’ve accomplished.

Okay. Maybe you had it right. Yeah. So tell us the, what, what led you to make that move? 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah, it’s a great question. So there are really two things that kind of played into that decision for me. The first is just, I had always been interesting, interested in entrepreneurship and startups like forever, right?

Like I always dreamed, I don’t know, when I was a kid, my, my dad would tell me the stories of, you know, he explained like Bill Gates and Microsoft and, uh, Steve Jobs and Apple. And, and to me, it was a little bit like, wow, like, like you can just. You can just [00:03:00] start something and make it something really big.

Like that sounds really cool. And you can create all these technology and products. So anyways, that seed, I guess, of interest was always there. Um, but the, the second thing is I had been at Google for four years and one of the things I like the most about engineering is to always be learning. Like, Either whether it’s learning new technology or maybe it’s the same technology you’re already familiar with, but applying it to a new vertical, a new space and kind of learning about the requirements of that space.

I kind of always want to be learning. And so after four years at Google, I was starting like the next project and I was starting to feel a little bit like, oh, this is just going to be kind of like a repeat of the motions of kind of what I’ve already learned. That kind of forced me to ask, okay, what’s next?

I could have stayed at Google, probably then switching teams, right. And I just kind of exploring a new area. Um, but because of that seed of [00:04:00] being interested in entrepreneurship, I decided to make that jump. 

Zach White: Amazing. We’ll come back to that always be learning point in just a moment. I love that. And I think people want to know how to do that better.

First, let’s finish the arc of your story. You left. A growing brand name to a small startup that I imagine nobody’s heard of. Yeah, nobody’s heard of it. What happened? Did that, did that company, did that company go on to succeed? What, like what happened at the startup? 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah. So that company, uh, actually got acquired, uh, that company was acquired by Twitter.

Um, and so, you know, that leads me to the third company in, in this kind of, uh, decade, uh, which was Twitter. So. So basically you have Google established, well, new, but very large company with established internal technology, just kind of learning that internet scale, learning big data, and you have these tiny startup just figuring out how to even create a small company, how to make decisions in that context, how to [00:05:00] trade, build a product, 

Zach White: which what did you work on?

What was your actual role at the startup? 

Daniel Loreto: Uh, I was kind of like a founding engineer. Uh, I wasn’t one of the founders, but it would come out very early, uh, probably first or second engineering hire. 

Zach White: Okay. So you’re doing everything. 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, okay, how are we going to build this thing? Like just, uh, um, but so, so yeah, so, so, you know, Google, there was already established technology.

It’s like, you know, big table and board and like, these are the things you use. And I think you’re learning a lot by. Maybe starting those systems like looking at the design dogs of those systems and kind of understanding the practices that Google established Then I start up all of a sudden you’re like Well, you gotta figure it out.

Like, there’s no, um, there’s nobody else to to decide. Um, and I think a lot of it was also kind of trying to translate those concepts that I learned at Google but to, like, what’s available outside of Google. Like, what are the open source solutions that make sense and so on. Um, and then once we were acquired by Twitter, well, Twitter was growing very [00:06:00] fast.

Uh, but it was kind of in those Pre IPO teenage years, let’s say, where it’s growing very fast, but, you know, it’s like, Oh, we’re not scaling as well as we should be technology wise, like we need to revamp this system or revamp that other system. Uh, and so now you’re kind of applying that knowledge you learned elsewhere, but all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, I’m, my team needs to build these things, right?

To handle the scale. Like at the start of, you don’t need to handle the scale because you’re, you’re early, you’re small. Uh, so I think, I think at the small start, it’s more about how do you move fast? How do you iterate on the product? But then at Twitter, when it was kind of like those teenage, teenage years leading to IPO, it’s like, okay, how are we going to be able to scale these products to the number of users Twitter has?

But that foundational infrastructure has not been fully developed yet. It’s in progress, but sure, more, more is needed. 

Zach White: So in the first 10 years of your engineering career, you saw pretty well established at Google and sort of What they’re doing behind the scenes that [00:07:00] maybe now people talk about as common or understood, but at the time it was pretty novel pre as we know it.

Go to the startup world of absolutely blank slate. Nobody has a clue. Let’s figure out how to build it. It’s up to you go get it done. And then kind of hit that scaling up phase, the gazelle phase at Twitter. That’s a pretty tremendous experience. So if you were going to look back and say, which of those three.

Was the most challenging. Is it being part of a big machine like Google and making a difference? Is it the startup where you have no building blocks yet at all? Or is it the scaling? Which is the most challenging for you personally? 

Daniel Loreto: I, I mean, challenging. Well, I’d say I’m actually going to give you two answers.

Uh, I think, I think ultimately this early startup is the most challenging in that, I mean, a lot of startups die, right? So are you able to build? An actual company that will last or not is is a it’s a hard challenge Yeah, so I think ultimately if I had to pick just one I would probably pick that one Um, but I think [00:08:00] a startup is sometimes more challenging less less specifically on the technology and more on Are we building the right thing?

Are we? Moving fast enough. Are we talking to enough customers? Are we talking to the right customers? Are we focused on the right segment of the market? So there’s a lot all of these kind of product questions, business questions, process questions that I think make it very challenging. I think purely from a technology challenge.

Sure. Yes. I think that growth phase where you do, you need to scale, but you don’t have the technology in place yet. Uh, that tends to be the I think one of the hardest challenges, yeah, 

Zach White: if you were talking with a junior developer today. And they aren’t sure which of those three types of teams they want to be a part of.

Do they want to join a very entrepreneurial, new, you know, maybe pre seed startup type situation? Are they looking for something approaching an IPO? Or they want to be at a big brand name, big tech company. They want to jump on with a FAANG organization. What’s your thought about how to make that choice?

If you haven’t done all three the way you have, what would you be [00:09:00] asking that person or how would you encourage them to think about which way to steer their career? 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah, it’s a great great question. So I have some thoughts before I go into my own thoughts of how to pick I guess I’ll say when you’re early in your career.

I mean you do have the opportunity to try a few things So I think maybe the first thing I’m saying is like you shouldn’t be scared to try Yeah, like, you know, try some stuff you can work somewhere for two years and then decide to work somewhere else for two years and kind of start forming those opinions for yourself.

Um, but yeah, anyways, I think, uh, I think maybe one of the questions I would ask is what type of environment do they feel more comfortable in or feel like they’re more successful in? And what is the best way that they learn? Um, so I think in a large company, you’re learning a lot by studying existing systems.

Uh, you’re assuming it’s a kind of top tier company, you’re also learning a lot by having a lot of experienced people there that can be mentors to you, can be, you know, give you guidance and so on, right? And you’re following a more, um, [00:10:00] defined process in terms of how development happens, how product decisions get made, et cetera.

The flip side though, right? And so again, depends how you learn is that. You have less, a smaller voice at the table in terms of making decisions, right? And so in a startup, if it’s a small startup, even if you’re, even if this is your first job, you’re going to have to make some suggestions. You’re going to have to decide some things and you’re just going to have to try.

Right. And, and maybe, maybe the first thing you’ll try will fail. Um, and so you’ll try again. And so I think you’ll learn more by doing, I guess, as opposed to kind of observing. Right. Um, so yeah, I don’t know. Like, I think it kind of comes down to that difference. Are you looking for kind of these more ambiguous, um, process where, where you can help define more of it, where you can just decide to try things and see what works and see what doesn’t.

Or are you looking for more of a. kind of establish practices that you kind of [00:11:00] looking to learn from 

Zach White: that personality trait or just ethos of life to be willing to go try some things to learn by doing take action and risk. Risk being wrong, making that mistake. Daniel, have you made any mistakes? Were you wrong at all?

Okay. So what’s a, what’s like a big mistake you remember from your career development days or, or recently, whatever stands out an example of this for you, or you just had to go to 

Daniel Loreto: one. Um, So with Jetify, um, I’d say when we first started the company, Uh, let me, let me say this. I think every startup has a different journey.

I think there’s many different ways to create great startups. I don’t think there’s one true way of doing a startup. So what I’m out, what I’m about to say is kind of specific to us, but I think that the analogy applies. and so anyways, if you ever, best practices about building a startup, you’ll often hear [00:12:00] that you need to constantly be talking to your customers, you constantly need to be learning from them.

And I think when you say at that level, it’s Um, kind of obvious and everybody’s kind of like, yes, of course, that’s how it needs to happen. Um, but like, I think in practice, the way you decide to go to market, the way you decide to, uh, offer your product influences. Kind of how you go about getting that feedback from users and customers.

So, when we first started Gentrify, we were taking a completely closed source approach, zero open source. Um, and we were initially focused around kind kind of like the Kubernetes space. Um, anyways, what that resulted in was that for us to get customers at the right time and talk about their needs, uh, it almost feels like we have to go through the sales process, but we were still in the learning stages, right?

And so imagine having to do the sales process and find people at the right time and and almost convincing them that, that you might have some technology or area of interest. Before you start learning [00:13:00] it just felt very slow, right? Yeah. And so for us, yeah Um, we decided to shift to open sourcing more things and that ended up being like a night and day thing Because all of a sudden we had more of a developer community We were able to set up a discord server where people come in all of a sudden we have a lot of users coming to us That we can have this little community And and just ask right and be talking to them.

And so yes, we always thought we should be talking to our customers, but I think we had the wrong kind of go to market approach initially for the type of company that, that we want to be. Can you describe, 

Zach White: you know, what Jetify does and the mission of the company really quick? 

Daniel Loreto: Yes. So high level, uh, Jetify is all about accelerating the speed at which you can translate ideas into working software.

Uh, within that there’s lots of spaces that we can play with. Right. today we’re focused on. Uh, I guess two things, the developer environments, we have an open source tool that allows you to define [00:14:00] those. Uh, but then two, we’re wanting to automate with AI more and more parts of the software development process that can be boring or repetitive.

Uh, and so recently we introduced an AI agent that can act as a QA engineer. Um, but anyways, in the earlier days, like at the, you know, if you go back at the beginning, we were actually focused on simplifying Kubernetes development. Um, which we ended up kind of pivoting away from. Um, and we were trying to do that in a closed source proprietary manner.

Uh, and we just weren’t getting that enough of that feedback. Um, yeah, early on. 

Zach White: Super interesting. You have a passion for this space and I can imagine, I mean, I’m already feeling it, like, Ooh, let’s talk about, you know, kind of geek out on the product a little bit. It gets really exciting when we start sharing these stories, but it also opens up what’s a really common challenge for engineers, especially who aren’t sure if they want to do what you’re doing one day or not.

So, so you’ve come 

Zach White: through that. Uh, you know, then you left a really [00:15:00] sweet gig at Airbnb, you know, director, senior leader, engineering leader at Airbnb, and still decide to start a company again here at Jetify.

So how do you. How do you stay healthy and balanced with the demands of being founder and CEO at a startup? 

Daniel Loreto: I think it’s twofold for me. Uh, one is before deciding to start a company, I picked a space or problem area. I was sure I was passionate enough about that, even if you had obstacles coming your way, I would still be interested.

Uh, where even if this ended up being the thing you work on for the next 10, 20 years, I would still be interested, right? Uh, I think sometimes it’s easy to be like, Oh, I don’t know, I have a startup idea in this space. I think that would be a good business or whatever. But then you’re not really passionate about the business.

Uh, I wouldn’t [00:16:00] recommend being the founder in those situations. I think you can maybe join a company, uh, in those cases. But being the founder, I don’t know. You’re, let’s say you’re a year in and you’re like, all of a sudden you’re like, I don’t want to deal with this anymore. Then, then you’re in a bad spot.

Right. And so. Yeah. So anyways, I think that’s important and, and that allows you to, because you’re passionate enough about the space when you’re dealing with all this stuff, you can kind of zoom out and be like, why am I doing this? Yeah. Oh, cause I believe in this goal mission thing that I’m trying to achieve.

And I think that can be reinvigorating. Um, and then two, uh, I guess for me, I mentioned family, but just having that, that time with them, uh, is, is important as well. So those two things together for me, uh, allow me to have that right balance. 

Zach White: Do you think? If a mentor had come alongside you when you were that young single developer working from 8am to 10pm and said, Hey, this is going to burn you out.

You know, you need to act like you’ve got two kids at home [00:17:00] and go take care of yourself and. Do they say, do you think you would have listened or it would have helped? Or do you think it’s just part of the process? To be honest, I don’t 

Daniel Loreto: know. So maybe there’s no, maybe you just have to learn it the hard way.

Zach White: It’s so interesting. You know, everybody asks that question. You know, if, if I knew then what I know now, my life would be different. And sometimes you hear people say, well, look, you got to go through it to learn it, and I’m not sure we can ever know the answer, but yeah, 

Daniel Loreto: yeah, yeah. I don’t know if I would have listened.

So, uh, yeah, I don’t know. 

Zach White: We’ll just let people take this and make their own decisions. But I don’t think young Zach would have listened to old Zach anyway, even if I’d gone back and told him what to do before my burnout. So, well, Dana, let’s come back then. You told me how your dad instilled some of this entrepreneurial spirit in you and that you’ve had the.

The constant desire to be learning, putting yourself in challenging situations, making changes, taking risks. It’s been a part of your path [00:18:00] to the growth and success you enjoy now and have had in your career. I’m curious how you would describe the focus of your growth journey between technical acumen, you know, engineering skills, learning about the tools and developing technology and staying at the bleeding edge.

Of what’s new and what’s happening in technology. And, you know, AI is getting a lot of focus now, but it was cloud computing and all these other things you’ve done in your career versus leadership acumen and developing yourself as a capable leader and now founder and CEO, and of course your role is. Far more than just technology today to be successful.

You must be better than just a great engineer. So how do you think about development between these two domains? I think engineers really struggle to decide where should I focus? Do I need to be learning more technology or do I need to be taking management and leadership courses and training? How do you [00:19:00] decide, or what’s your philosophy about these two buckets of growth?

Daniel Loreto: I think to be a good leader of technical teams, you need to have that strong technical foundation.

It creates credibility and you’re speaking from. Experience from knowledge. And so I would actually say early on, you do want to maybe go deeper on that technical side and develop those skills. Um, and I think as you grow there, you’ll realize. You know, doing big technical accomplishments requires more than just you.

Uh, and so, whether you want it or not, there comes a point where you need to influence other people, where you need to collaborate with other people. Um, and so, you know, when people say leadership, sometimes if you take a narrow, definition of that. You’re talking about engineering management, but I would argue even if you stay out of engineering management and you just kind of more technical role, you want to become an architect, a tech lead, there’s an aspect of leadership in there as well, right?

Um, and so, so anyways, after you have that [00:20:00] kind of strong technical foundation, if you want to create bigger products, bigger technology, you know, bigger accomplishments, I do think that leadership Plays a role. And so now you need to invest in those skills, right? Yeah. How do I, how, how do I communicate technical ideas to others?

How do we arrive at decisions so that we can kind of like move in the same direction? Yeah. And so on. So I, I think that investment is needed. Um, and then the last thing I’ll say is I, I think it is important to e even as you shift to leadership, cannot stay. Somewhat, uh, fresh in your knowledge of the technology.

Um, so, so for example, for myself, I mean, uh, for, and for a lot of people, like all the all the AI wave, you know, is, is new and, and things are changing. And so I can’t just, sleep and say, I have this knowledge from 10 years ago or 20 years ago, like I need to kind of. Learn with everybody else, uh, you know, kind of what new technology is doing to our industry and, and, and figure out [00:21:00] how to apply it.

Zach White: Yeah. Can you speak on a tactical level, how you do that? Do you, you know, carve out an hour and just read stuff online or take courses? Do you, you know, go to universities? Do you go to conferences? How, how are you actually? Yeah, creating that learning for yourself. 

Daniel Loreto: I, I like to learn, by doing.

Um, and so what I’ve been doing is, uh, I find some time each week to, to code, even though I’m kind of like running the company. Uh, but my focus so far has been, well, I want to code prototypes for new features or ideas or directions that we’re exploring. I want to do it in a, in a part of the product where I know I’m not the bottleneck to the rest of the team to deliver because I’m just, I’m more into prototyping and not like being the person that’s going to implement the full feature end to end.

But then three. I’m going to force myself to use a technology I’m learning about or, or do [00:22:00] it in a way that I haven’t done it before that I’m trying to learn. Um, so, you know, in, in these days, for example, I am prototyping ideas for AI agents. So that by itself is forcing me to learn like what are the best practices to create AI agents.

But then I’m also forcing myself to try to type as little code as possible because I want to be asking The LLMs to code for me and I’m trying to I’m trying to push it to like how far You know, how far can it go? How far can AI write code for me? Where does it break down? What if I Ask it in a different way.

What if I create a different workflow? What if I create a different, you know, I don’t know. Best practice on how to use it. Yeah. 

Zach White: I love this. So creating space in your calendar every single week, still gets your hands dirty, do the work, write code. Yeah, 

Daniel Loreto: yeah, yeah. I would say so. Yeah. It could be throw, it could be, you know, something quick, a prototype, whatever language you’re most comfortable with.

Just experiment. But I think that kind of [00:23:00] tinkering, uh, is, is essential, at least for me, the way and the way that I learned. 

Zach White: What about on the leadership side? You mentioned eventually you need to make those investments. Are there any specific investments you’ve made in yourself for personal development and leadership development that were really impactful that you would reflect back and say, super happy with what I did there?

Daniel Loreto: just this realization that, again, to achieve more, you need to work with people and then just deciding to spend a lot more on, on the people side, like understanding motivations, understanding how best to communicate.

everybody’s a little bit different, of course, but I would say as a general rule, people that start as software engineer, you’re super passionate about the technology, you think very logically, right?

Um, you, you kind of like thinking in code terms, like, like this happens, that happens, et cetera. Once you’re dealing with the humans, it’s not like [00:24:00] that. Um, as you got to actually get a shift mode, um, I kind of just focus more on like, hey, how do I get people to agree? How do I get people to communicate? I think maybe another important kind of like mindset shift that happens at some point leadership positions is you’re no longer the person creating the code, right?

Um, and so you need to start asking yourself Well, how do I enable this group of people create their best work to operate efficiently? so how do I help them do it? 

Zach White: It’s 

Daniel Loreto: kind of.

Zach White: That mindset shift is so important. The skill set development. Those where I see a lot of people fall short, like they get it intellectually. They would nod and agree with what you’re saying. Yep, I need to stop being the one who does all the work and start coaching and enabling and developing teams where other people are doing the work.

But [00:25:00] the actual ability to do that well is harder than it sounds. It’s, it’s not something that comes naturally. It’s hard. I do 

Daniel Loreto: think it’s hard. Yeah. And it is, a, there’s an art to knowing where to stay hands on and where to not, right? And there will now be decisions where even if you have a strong opinion, maybe that decision is not too consequential and It’s more important to let whoever you assign the ownership to, to like, just make those decisions pick what they think is best.

Zach White: Sure, sure. 

Daniel Loreto: you need to be able to decide what areas and what decision making is relevant. Uh, for you to kind of, you know, stay close and maybe even be the one making the decision on what areas are areas you can fully delegate and maybe don’t even care about the details.

Um, and so, yeah. For 

Zach White: the other, you know, director minded or maybe founder [00:26:00] type minded folks who want to be able to build those teams that are super capable, you’ve got a bunch of experience in this. Domain. You’re building a team right now at Jetify. You’ve done it in these other organizations like Airbnb and Twitter.

So what do you look for when you’re building out a tech team? You’re starting a company, you’re hiring a bunch of people. If somebody wanted to be hireable by you, what are those hallmarks of the best talent, the people that you want on your teams that you look for when you’re building an organization?

Daniel Loreto: Yeah. Um, I mean, I have some common things that I look for. For in all the companies that I work at, but I’ll say there’s also some things that maybe are more dependent on the company. 

Zach White: Okay. 

Daniel Loreto: Um, and so for Jetify specifically.   I’m asking myself two questions. One is, what is the culture that I want to create for this company?

and two, what type of [00:27:00] people will succeed or, or, or, you know, be really helpful at this stage and type of company that we’re at? Um, and so what that translates into in practice is, Look, there’s the technical part. I want technically strong people, right, that, that know, know their stuff, uh, in terms of the technology.

But, I’m also like, for, for the culture I want to create, I’m looking for people that are, uh, that collaborate, uh, and so know how to work in a group and, and know how to share information proactively. Uh, and know how to kind of arrive at those decisions together. Uh, and because we’re a startup, I’m looking for people that are kind of willing to deal with the ambiguity of a startup.

Uh, maybe they actually find that exciting and exhilarating. Uh, I’m looking for people that are more passionate about the challenge that we’re trying to solve, like the problem space, than a specific technology. Because we might change, we might change the details of the technology as we go, right? And so Um, and people that are passionate about the space and not just like the kind of individual thing we’re creating at any given time.[00:28:00] 

I’m looking for people that are proactive, that, that if they see a problem, Um, they can kind of make suggestions and, Hey, is this important? Should I help with this? Uh, as opposed to just kind of be waiting to be told exactly every step to take. Um, so yeah, it’s kind of, you know, things like that, that I, that I think about in the hiring process, 

Zach White: I know hiring.

Is a competitive advantage for a startup. And I don’t want to ask you to reveal something that’s part of your secret sauce, Daniel, to building an incredible team on that technology foundation. Is there a hallmark of success that you look for or a way that, you know, if somebody’s just. Ruffling their resume feathers, uh, versus actually has that deep skill outside of traditional, you know, coding interviews or these types of things.

Like any, any tips you would offer other founders or, you know, VPs, executives hiring great talent that are super interesting for you. 

Daniel Loreto: I kind of like to cover three areas from the technical side.

Um, one is, yeah, like, [00:29:00] like the coding itself, you know, that, that, that one I think is pretty established. It’s like people know how to do coding interviews. Um, two, um, It’s kind of like the architectural side, right? And so how you think about systems, how you, how you, um, how you might change that system in different scenarios and stuff like that.

But then the third one, which I think is maybe the one that’s a little bit more unusual. Uh, I just like to go really deep in something that they know about or claim to know about. Yeah, yeah. Um. Often it might be an area that I, I’m not an expert in. Right. Uh, but that’s fine. Like, I just wanna keep asking kinda like the five why’s or like keep, just Yeah, 

Zach White: just keep drilling.

Daniel Loreto: Explain this to me. Okay. And then they, you know, kind of, you get the first level explanations like, okay, but like this detail, I’m not sure I understand that detail. Can you go like, one layer deeper and, and explain that to me. Interesting. And then keep, just keep going like, deeper, deeper, deeper. Uh, and you kind of get a sense of how deep they’re able to go.

They can go. Uh, but also how clearly are they able to explain it to you? Um, and [00:30:00] I’m sure I’ve interviewed some people who are experts, but weren’t able to explain it to me. Um, and I mean, that still are no higher because I, I mean, if I’m the CEO and I need to make a decision and I’m hiring an expert to trust them in this area, I still need to have, some high level understanding to help me make those decisions.

Right. So if that gap of communication is there, even if they’re like the world’s best expert, if I can’t get that understanding, then, uh, yeah, anyways, 

Zach White: that’s really great. One other CEO I’ve talked to. he said a similar thing that that ability to communicate at a level of depth, but still concisely and clearly and help people who don’t have your background understand is a quality he loves.

And I think lots of engineers don’t want to practice that it’s like they’re impatient with having to explain [00:31:00] things to people. They just expect you to get it because, you know, I’m, I’m too busy or, you know, you need to be as smart as me. There’s this general, I’m surrounded by idiots kind of mindset that perpetrates engineering teams.

So this is a great reminder for everybody. It’s actually really worth it to practice communicating your genius. In a way that doesn’t require your whole genius. That’s right. That’s a great skill. 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah. The ability to translate kind of deep technical concepts into maybe simpler concepts that people can understand.

Uh, yeah, it’s important. Ironically, I feel like, you know, like if you’re working at a big company, the higher up you move in terms of management, the more important it becomes to manage up. If you’ve heard the concepts. Uh, so, meaning the ability to proactively. Explain, communicate, uh, and identify issues to, to your leadership team, uh, becomes more and more important.

And so, I don’t know, I think people sometimes have this view of like, oh, when, you know, when I’m at [00:32:00] this, type of role in my career, like, I’ll be able to make the decisions and, and like, that’s it. Well, I don’t know, there’s still a lot of, in a bigger org, there’s a lot of coordination that needs to happen across different teams.

There’s a lot of. Context building that you need to obtain from your team and that then you need to be able to share elsewhere so that the organization can make the right decisions. Right. And so that, that becomes really important. 

Zach White: So tell us more about what you’re excited about in the future with, with Jetify in particular, but linking that to the trends in technology, as you see it, whatever you’re open and willing to share, where are you going?

What do you most. Yeah, 

Daniel Loreto: I mean, I’m sure you’re hearing this answer a lot these days of AI, right? And, and we are very excited about AI. Um, I think in particular, we are excited about agents, uh, and we are excited about aging agents, helping in the software development cycle in ways that can remove. The most kind of repetitive or wrote work, uh, to [00:33:00] enable more creativity, uh, for development teams.

Zach White: I love that. So I’m a mechanical engineer by training, Daniel, can you relate the impact of what you just said, what an agent could bring to a developer? In a mechanical system metaphor, that’s 

Daniel Loreto: interesting. Um,I think it’s like all of a sudden you’ve discovered a new type of tool that helps you create, you know, machines, or maybe you all of a sudden have this robot that can take a lot, a lot of the kind of more labor intensive steps of, of creating a machine for you.

you need to figure out what, what are the new workflows? What are the new ways to build that take advantage of these new tool or these new robot so that, you know, we’re more efficient and we can achieve more. 

Zach White: I like that. It is tricky to relate the two, but, uh, the robot example comes to mind for me as well.

That’s why I was curious how you would describe it, but what’s super [00:34:00] unseen in my career, at least it’d be like, if you could present the robot with any raw material and it would somehow know. The best way to, to operate on it. Wouldn’t, it wouldn’t just be a robot that does the same thing every time. It’s a robot that can learn and adapt.

Purpose robot. Yes. Yeah. Really, really cool. So, um, tell us what’s your particular vision for the company itself. How many people are on the team? Are you growing? Are you still in that sort of learning phase, getting ready to raise money? I just tell us really quick, where’s Jettify at in its growth? 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah. So, um, I mean, the team’s about 10 people today, uh, kind of have always wanted to keep burn low.

Uh, I mean, that’s another learning, I suppose, like when you raise money, there’s going to be pressure to spend it, but I think you want to spend it. Can measure it to. Feeling like you have the right business signals and business milestones and not just because you have money, you should go and spend it.

Uh, so I think we have the right team size for what we’re doing right now. Um, we recently released our first agent. Uh, which we call TestPilot. Um, and TestPilot is a QA engineer, but that’s an AI agent. Uh, and so we’re looking to automate all that kind of manual clicking that people sometimes have to do on their [00:35:00] apps in order to test them.

Like that end to end testing. So I’m not talking about unit testing. I’m talking about like, Kind of final testing you do through the UI. Um, I said, we’re hoping to take that away. Uh, I just automated I think I think it’s one of those places where I feel like everybody’s gonna be happy if it’s automated like nobody likes doing it anyways, that’s why we picked that first space Vision wise, you know, if the company is really successful we hope there could be more agents that we introduce in different areas right and so End to end testing could be one.

Pen testing and security could be a different one. Uh, helping internationalize an app might be yet another one, right? I think there’s so many areas, uh, where AI is going to change the way we do things that, yeah, I think there’s plenty of space there. Get ready. 

Zach White: I love the idea. Even if maybe a QA team would hear this and say, Oh, you’re never going to replace.

Everything we do for this reason or that reason or whatever, it’s really common to want to defend our territory. But to me, that, if you could just do that [00:36:00] 80%, that 0 to 80, 85, 90%, and maybe somebody still needs to come in and finish the work. Yeah, and I, you know That’s still incredibly valuable. 

Daniel Loreto: we’re not here to replace people’s jobs. We’re here to enable you to focus on To do more and to enable you to focus on the areas that are truly interesting and creative and not the rote ones. Uh, so I never phrase it as like, AI is going to replace all QA engineers, but I’m hoping QA engineers don’t need to sit there every day and click on the same flow on every release.

Because, oh my God, how boring is that? Wouldn’t you rather be testing? You know, the, the new features or, or like something really complicated, that’s tricky to test and then let the AI do those repetitive, boring things for you. A 

Zach White: hundred percent. I think back to my old days as a test engineer, not in QA, you know, in the laboratory with physical product, we needed more time constantly to come up with better tests.

You know, the tests we had just weren’t detecting all of the failure modes that the products had. So to be able [00:37:00] to take the road stuff off your plate and go figure out more robust ways to test product, that’s an incredible use of time. So, uh, Daniel, this is awesome. Love what you’re doing. And I can imagine the happy engineer listening is going to be curious about Jettify and about you and what you’re up to. So where could somebody. Go to learn more and get connected with you and your team. 

Daniel Loreto: Yeah. The easiest way is just to go to our webpage.

It’s jetify. com. Uh, we’ll have a description of our products. There’s a documentation. There’s a way to join our discord if you want to chat with us. So just go there, check it out. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. 

Zach White: Amazing. We will link all of that up in the show notes. Happy engineers. So go check it out.

And Daniel, I’m really excited to hear your perspective on this last question. We always end here. Because, you know, as a founder, as a CEO, and as an engineer, especially that the questions we ask really matter for the answers that we’re going to get. And we need to ask [00:38:00] better questions if we want better answers.

So what would be the question you would leave the happy engineer with coming out of our conversation? I think I 

Daniel Loreto: would ask them like what product or technology would you be happy working on for the next. And if, if that’s not what you’re working on today, why not? What 

Zach White: would you be happy working on for the next decade or two?

And if you’re not working on it, why? Not that’s amazing. Daniel, thank you so much for your time today. I just want to acknowledge you incredible experience and success and generosity to open up and share your wisdom and those experiences with me and with the happy engineer. And we wish you a ton of success with Jettify go crush it out there.

And we hope to [00:39:00] see you back here with, you know, a hundred and a thousand and more people on your team, sharing the updates and the breakthrough technologies you’re developing and appreciate again, your time being on the show. 

Daniel Loreto: My pleasure. Thank you, Zach, for having me.