Ep 114: Emery Wells (CEO, Frame.io) on Selling to Adobe for $1.3B, Working with SNL and High Pain Tolerance

Emery Wells is the co-founder and CEO of Frame.io, which he sold to Adobe in 2021 for nearly $1.3 billion. In our conversation, Emery shares his journey from NYC bartender to startup founder, including his agency work with Saturday Night Live that highlighted the pain points that led to Frame.io. We dive deep into his rejection of the lean startup concept, how he gets his team to obsess over design details, and the cultural reset at Frame.io that set the stage for its success.

Intro

114 Emery Wells (frame.io) Final Edit YT: I think you need really high pain tolerance. If it's uncomfortable to you to hear pain tolerance, that means you don't have a high pain tolerance. Welcome to the Logan Bartlett show. On this episode, what you're going to hear is a conversation. I have the co founder and CEO of Frame IO, Emery Wells. Now, Emery sold Frame to Adobe at the end of 2021 for nearly 1.

3 billion. Emery and I talk about his journey to founding Frame, which included moving to New York without knowing anyone in the technology industry, creating a Working as a bartender for a number of years before founding a digital agency that worked alongside SNL to make their digital shorts. This led to Emory's recognition of the pain point that ultimately led to frame.

We talk about a number of different things related to operating a startup, including why Emory categorically rejects the lean startup concept and why he thinks it's done far more harm than good for businesses. I fully reject lean startup. It's equivalent to like, Teaching an artist how to paint by numbers.

We also talk about his near Jobsian obsession with design and getting into the details of almost everything he cared about while operating Frame. The team is doing the demo of the thing they're going to ship, but there's like always a caveat. There's like 10 caveats. What pixel perfect meant was not 99.

9 percent accurate, but 100 percent accurate. So that meant if one pixel was misaligned or not centered or whatever the case may be. We actually would cancel the meeting after those three, four months. I don't think I've ever seen a pixel off. We also talk about what culture really is, including a near fatal experience that led to a cultural reset within frame and ultimately set it on its course to its sale to Adobe.

You'll hear that discussion with Emery here now.

Emery's Journey to Founding Frame.io

Logan: Emory thanks for doing this Emery: Yeah.
Thanks for having me.

What Frame.io Does and Its Early DaysWhat Frame IO Does

Logan: So uh maybe for people that don't know can you describe uh what Frame does

Emery: io is a
video review and collaboration platform At least that's where we started. We've expanded

a little bit since then. But essentially, um, you know, if you're a team working on video, like this podcast here, you're recording a video. You go through an editorial and review process after we're done recording.

And frame is the [00:02:00] platform that, that teams used to do that. So you can upload

the work in progress, edit, leave comments at different points in the video, you can draw and annotate on the frame. So, um, you know, really kind of everyone from Hollywood studios down to teams that are doing podcasts like this, uh,

Logan: use it all the time We were just talking before, I think Slack, maybe is the thing we're in the most, but Rashad on our team, uh, he said this would be the single tool If it went down, it would ruin his week most. So, uh, I think that's a good. place to be It means there's a stickiness

Emery: Yeah.

Early Days and Customer Base

Emery: That's funny because I remember in the early days of pitching, you know, the common thing that, you know, investors ask or think about or talk about is, you know, are you building, are you building a vitamin or a painkiller?

And, um, and I, you know, I think early days people were, I think there was a consensus with a lot of the early people I spoke to that it was, you know, it was a nice to have vitamin,

Logan: it was you know
it's nice to have vitamin customers? I assume VCs doing podcasts weren't in the

TAM analysis originally.
It was probably a lot of media and like agencies. Yes

Emery: I mean I think our earliest customers were, well, our very earliest customers were A lot of kind of individuals and small teams that were making, they were making video a lot of, you know, small boutique post production companies. And, um, but, but yeah, I think that media focused companies were our first enterprise customers and it's expanded to kind of like all sorts of people that make video.

SNL Digital Shorts and Post-Production InsightsEvolution from SNL Digital Shorts

Logan: You evolved this out of SNL in some ways. Uh, like, I mean, I realized the through, lines not perfect, but maybe maybe talk about the, uh, the SNL digital source shorts and how that came to be a part of, uh,

Introduction to Frame's Founding Journey

Logan: frames founding journey

Emery: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I had a post production company prior to Frame. So, it was a, um, a, boutique agency that, that did all kinds of post production, did visual effects and color grading and finishing, mostly for broadcast advertising, like commercials.

And, uh, one of our clients was

Working with SNL Digital Shorts

Emery: SNL, and so I used to do all the, the digital shorts for SNL. I did a, You know, for four years or something, everything [00:04:00] that was pre recorded for SNL is what they call their digital shorts and that's their movie trailers and, you know, fake commercials and music videos and things like that.

So my company did the post production for those. And, um, we were, I, you know, I was working on those while building frame, incubating frame in my post production company, amongst other, amongst other things as well. But that was a

Logan: remember a lot of those like Andy Sandberg and Lonely Island and all that stuff

What was the biggest one that you you, it was already kind of going before your production group got in right? So what was the biggest one you guys worked on that was kind of viral on

Emery: the internet? So we, I started working with SNL, you know, the tail end, tail end of Andy Samberg's time. So they had already done like, you know, the, the big viral, like

Logan: Lazy Sunday Dick in a box I'm on a
Emery: and I'm on a boat.
Those were like the, like three early viral hits they did.

Building Frame While Managing Post-Production

Emery: But, um, but we did start working on them for like, so Dick in a box wound up being a trilogy. There was three of them. So there was two more after that with Andy.

Logan: in boxes
Emery: it was, uh, I think the names were, um, uh, it was, it was mud. One was

called mother lover.

Logan: Oh yeah yeah yeah I remember that

Emery: one called Not Gay in a Three Way.

Logan: Yeah yeah

Emery: Um, and then, uh, yeah, there were some other big ones. There was uh, um,

oh gosh, there was uh there was one with Kristen Wiig called Red Flag that was a

Logan: a really really big one Yeah that was like a dating one about like signs of red flags or something in the in the

Emery: Yeah it was like, she was like in a beautiful ballroom.
It was like a perfume commercial perfume was called Red And, And they were

talking about like

Logan: know what

Emery: I dunno, you know what

Logan: Different red flags Yeah yeah yeah I remember all

you uh

Emery: Her pinky fingernail is longer than all the rest red flag

Logan: Did you uh did you get in with that group at all Like did you get to do after parties or go to any of the shows or anything

Emery: Um yeah a little bit Yeah. I mean, There was uh yeah it was a it was like it was a tight tight group And [00:06:00] um yeah I was always invited to like the the um I mean so so generally the way that it worked is I mean when the

show was on airing we were usually still working So the whole nature of SNL is like so live it's so last minute Um, The digital shorts you think well they're prerecorded. Like they probably do those well in advance No they don't They're um the schedule for those is they they would um, they would shoot them on Thursday So they would have Uh, sorry they would shoot them on on Friday So they would they would have their I forget the exact schedule like they would have their writer pitch meeting on I think Wednesdays was the was the pitch meeting Um they would have one day and that's when they would decide like what they were going to shoot like of the things that were pitched And then they would have one day of pre production on Thursday they would shoot on Friday and they would air on Saturday which means that we were working on them usually usually you know we were still you know putting the final touches on them when they, when the show had already begun airing So oftentimes, like you know you're delivering the final piece sometimes 10 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes before

Logan: are you on site 'cause I'm just thinking file file transfer times and all that Like how are you actually getting them the files

Emery: um, I had my, I had a, I had a, you know, my post production company office, which was, you know, 15 blocks from, from, uh, from where they were from you know. And, uh, no, I would, I would, I would upload stuff. I would like FTP stuff to them And then uh sometimes we would have like random slow internet days and I would have an assistant that would like literally just like be running up the

Logan: with like a USB like

Emery: like, with like a hard drive and stuff So we would ship hard drives. I would messenger hard drives but then I would messenger hard drives and then you know for like for the, the the main delivery and then we would upload FTP stuff like last minute for like replacement shots or whatever and then sometimes somebody would just you know have to like sprint up the street So we were building [00:08:00] Frame while we were doing all that work I mean that's the thing I think Frame you know it was very very classic founding story of we we built what we needed and there was no question There was like zero question in my mind what needed to be built Um I knew that you know how we made video and our experience working with clients and back and forth I knew that was completely universal even though we were doing you know broadcast advertising So um very much a product that was was built from you know a deep insight of doing the work and, and needing the product ourselves.

From Bartender to Entrepreneur

Logan: So uh normally I don't like to go linear in this but you have an interesting uh I guess story to New York So you grew up in Miami moved to New York didn't didn't do college You were originally going to go to skip college And did you always have interest in media and

Emery: entertainment Yeah. Well, that's what I, I moved to New York with the intention of trying to be a filmmaker.

Logan: Okay got it So so that was the intention and um you bartended for a while when you were initially here I guess any interesting things you learned about um the service industry or like that made its way into frame

Emery: from Actually I think that being in the service industry uh I bartended for three years when I first moved here So from like 20 to 20 I moved here when I was 20 So From like 20 to 23 I was bartending And, uh yeah, I think you learn a lot in the service industry I mean you know I worked at um I mean, a lot of them, I'm sure you know it I bartended at Bond Street Sushi So I was you know in the lounge bartending this was over 20 years ago And, um yeah. You know, you, in the in the in the service industry um You learn to be of service know you say yes a lot And you you have to you know kind of Cater to the to the people who you're serving And that apps, that, that, that absolutely stayed with me for years I mean when I started my first post production company um, you know I went from being a bartender to starting my first company And I'd never worked in a company In fact I've still never basically worked in [00:10:00] anyone else's company Oh I'm at Adobe now But I I brought that mentality into you know starting my post production company And doing doing a post production company is a service business. And I would you know I think the thing that made me successful in the early days is I said yes to everything all the time I just like there was no, I don't I can't remember a time I'd, I'd say no to to a client you know whatever they asked me for I said yes And I don't I don't think that's common I think a lot of people are you know they they I don't know They they are They bring their ego or their I don't know I just I always said yes no matter what it was I said yes and I did that for years and years and years which meant Yeah. you know my life was was was pretty tough for those years I mean I slept in that office I don't know thousands of nights

Logan: Really

Emery: Thousands of nights over the years. I mean I had that company for almost 10 years for uh, eight years I guess So post production you know it's a

it's a very 24 hour business So the big post production companies the big post production companies basically do run 24 seven Cause people are shooting They drop stuff off late at night It's I don't know these things the post production companies really literally do run on a 24 hour schedule There's an, there's a, you know, there's a morning shift, a day shift. A night shift and overnight shift at all these, at all these companies. And, you know, I was in the beginning, a company of one trying to compete with that stuff. So, I mean, I lived in that office. I slept because people would call, Hey, we, we got this shoot.

Can we drop off at 10 PM? You know, they'd call me at like 5 PM and I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure. No problem. And I'm there till 10 PM and they needed something the next morning. And I was just, you know, I would stay up all night and do it And I did that hundreds and hundreds of nights.

Building Frame.io: Challenges and Philosophy

Emery: Did you have an inkling of being a software entrepreneur while you were doing this?

Or like when did that start entering the consideration of it? Yeah I always did. Um, I, because you know one of the things so one of the the the areas of post-production that I got really into was visual effects [00:12:00] And the thing that I love about visual effects which I think is very similar to software is visual effects is deeply technical and deeply creative It lives at the intersection Depending on what type of visual effects you can do Eventually visual effects by the way it becomes programming I mean you know if you really get into like complex stuff Uh and so that was my entry point into into into coding I mean, You know you start by doing you know Python scripting and then you have to build you know kind of more complex workflow. So so my entry point into software was through visual effects It is not full scale I mean at least what I was doing back then was certainly not full scale software engineering Um, but uh but that was my entry point And I always wanted to do software I always always always wanted to do software Um I never really I mean eventually I think the opportunity arrived when I met my co founder And I hired I hired my co founder as an employee at my post production company And he had um he minored in in computer science I hired him right out of right out of college It was his first job So he likes to tell people that his, His first interview ever was with me at my post production company and I hired him and He never did another interview and has never worked anywhere else it's a, He likes telling that story But um but he had a, a, a minor in computer science and and together

we started tinkering on software Uh which ultimately led to to doing Frame but we did other stuff before that

Logan: to to doing Frame but we did other stuff before that I

Emery: I don't think I think a couple of years before would've been tricky I think even you might argue that maybe a couple years later maybe would've been Uh but I think it was about the right moment in time And it was um I think bandwidth played a role like you needed you needed better band, Like video on the internet's gotten you know now it's, it's commonplace but, But just being able to like upload move files [00:14:00] watch high resolution video like all of that stuff Um, we launched Frame in 2015 so it was about the right time to you know to build a product like this You needed you know you also needed um I, I mean you basically needed you know video like high bandwidth video to work on the internet which it was pretty much working at that time And um you needed cheap storage And so like for the workflows that we were doing and how much we needed to charge per month to make this a service that people would pay for and offer them enough storage to actually utilize it that was probably around the right time But I I think that the first couple of years of Frame I guess the only reason it would have maybe been better a few years later and this might have only been true of some other players that come into the space but we spent years kind of educating people about the problem And back to the uh thing earlier about whether frame was a painkiller or or vitamin um it absolutely is a painkiller and it's proven to be to, to, to be a painkiller but you know sometimes people don't realize the pain that they're living in until they take the painkiller right Like if you were just done things a certain way for a certain amount of time Um because there literally was no other solution you just sort of don't don't know that you're living in the pain and then you know when the solution comes along you realize that So it took it took years of kind of educating the market

Logan: At one point you had tweeted a bunch of different lessons that you had learned or some things that were maybe contrary to popular opinion And one of the the ones that stood out to me was uh CEO shouldn't get caught up in the details And you had said this is a myth And if you consider leaders like Uh Steve Jobs Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg Brian Chesky and the Collison brothers all are slash were deeply involved in the intricacies of their businesses Can you can you speak to that point and how um how you were able to do that within frame

Emery: Yeah. I mean I think we we we we kind of touched on this but I think people they're, people have the idea that a [00:16:00] CEO is supposed to do

business stuff And like I honestly don't even know what that means. It is the the most important thing that your company does is is build a product that your customers buy And I think that you know It is your it is your it is it is the leader's job to you know to be deeply involved in creating that that outcome And I you know I think the, the the people who I think do you know incredible work and build the best products are the ones who are uh, who who know every single detail of what they're building and are deeply involved in it Yeah I mean uh, my experience of of Scaling Frame was that a lot of people around me told me I was doing it wrong know 'cause I was I would if I would look at a design like what you know, CEOs don't like CEOs aren't involved in designs and or they're not involved in whatever it is that I was that I was looking at And um you know and I think in those days I also I was trying to Cause I never I never built a software company never really scaled up like a large company I was trying to listen and be like maybe I shouldn't be like, am I, Like is it weird And Everyone tells me like, I shouldn't really be so involved And um I would let, you know, I would listen to an extent but then, but instinctively I knew that I just knew there was no other, there was no other job that was more important than, you know, me. Then manifesting the outcome that you give to your customers. And that comes through, that only comes through details.

There's not really, it's not really a high level way of, of doing that.

Logan: I've read that uh you said something about lean startups doing more harm than than good like that methodology Maybe Can you speak to that And I guess the derivative of how it informed uh your philosophy around frame

Emery: I read Lean Startup when everyone else did And I you know this is before I had ever built any software And I remember leading reading the book and thinking at the end of the book like wow there's a magic formula that you can just like [00:18:00] sort of like mathematically find your way you know to success

Logan: ab test your

Emery: AB test your way to success And um and you know I mean I subscribed to part of it for for some time but but when I really started getting into um building the company You know, I think a lot of the people that we hired early on where we were all young I was young I was inexperienced we were hiring young inexperienced people and I think what young inexperienced people do is they sort of like You know they like want to read what the internet saying and try to follow those those formulas We had a lot of people that were really trying to kind of follow that that Lean Startup methodology which now

you know sort of 10 years into building software and, and and having an exit and everything I, uh yeah I I fully reject Lean Startup as a as a methodology And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't like use data as you know one input into um the decisions that you're making But Uh I think it really has done a lot of harm I mean here's here's my realization about Lean Startup is years later I went back and I I looked at um by the way I think Eric Reese is you know a really brilliant guy Um I don't agree with his his framework but I went back years later after reading the book and I was like man I wonder what I wonder what product Eric was building because he used his whole experience of of Lean Startup was this this game he was building And I went back and looked at the product he was building And it was it was an abomination I mean it was a terror It was clearly something that was built by people that have absolutely no idea how to build a product And lean startup was you know sort of like their mathematical approach to trying to build a product And that was not their skillset So, you know it's equivalent to like teaching an artist how to paint by numbers Like you can you can do that You can try to like you know learn how to paint by numbers or you can learn how to be an artist And I think that product I think they're, I think product is an art you know I think that if you're gonna if you're a founder or a product person and you have [00:20:00] this you know company that you want to build I think you have to have really strong internal conviction and you have to be able to see the world more clearly than everyone else And yeah, like along the way like you should have data kind of start kind of bump you you know two degrees this way and bump you two degrees that way But if you have to use that sort of um That sort of approach to, to building software I don't I don't think you're going to make it And I think that I've seen a lot of the industry kind of turn and and start to kind of evolve their thinking Um, because what happened was we started lean startup just built tons of Really bad products They were too early That was the other problem You know this whole idea of like getting the MVP out and we've evolved since I think the market in general the industry in general has evolved past like like what a lot of I think a lot of people maybe were misinterpreting you know the the MVP approach the minimum viable product Cause people were just putting out products that were just not good you know and they're like well I guess it doesn't work And it's like well no it's just the product's not good It's not fully baked You know it needs other things for people to Um to love it and and think that it's it's valuable So um yeah I mean internally at Frame we spent we did spend a couple of years building it before we released it but that I mean I don't know that that was intention. I wasn't even thinking about it back then That was just me and my co founder Cause we were the only two people who, who built the first version And we spent about two and a half years building it before we, we launched it

Logan: Did you pick some point in time In the future of what you needed the product to look like and just build to that Was that the journey or were you

getting feedback uh incrementally from other people from the outside as you were going along

Emery: We actually got no feedback Yeah
Logan: So it was just it was just Hey I know this is what the market's gonna

need based on my experience and let's go from there

Emery: Yeah I, We we actually really I mean we you know a couple of friends here and there We would show it but we didn't have any any formal feedback for the first initial launch It was like two and a half years of building and and I don't think that I'm not saying you shouldn't do that You you certainly should Uh I think it [00:22:00] depends on what kind of like who you you know what you're, what your founder market fit is You know I was building a product for myself of a in a problem space that I deeply understood

From Bartending to Founding a Company

Emery: Um
which I think by the way is a very valid way of building I think that building a

product for yourself is is a great way to build Like let you

let yourself be customer number one And I and I still I would still do that Uh, if I were to do another company Maybe in a space I didn't understand as deeply I probably would incorporate you know more more customer feedback along the way But no matter what product I build I would try to make sure that I was customer number one Even if I wasn't the real customer I think that you can try to like psychologically shift your mind and say I'm going to be the customer now And there's a real there's a real mind shift And I even did this with Frame even building Frame There's a difference between a builder mindset and a user mindset And even as the designer and the builder and the product thinker of Frame I would have to very intentionally shift my mind and say Now I'm going to use it Now I'm going to experience it And I want to and I want to you know experience it from the mindset of a of a user Um, so no matter what I did I would always put myself as customer number one and I would have to be personally satisfied and sort of you know do I like using this product Does it solve my problem when I'm in that in that user mindset

Leadership and Decision-Making in Startups

Logan: I I heard you say uh something to the effect of um as a company scales It's inevitable that founders spend less time focusing on what really matters which is product and get more involved in process and all that Um was that something that you made the mistake of getting more bogged down or were you able to to focus on product as number one throughout the journey

Emery: I definitely got bogged down. And I think that, you know, one of the Things that also I was I would hear a lot from kind of my own internal echo chamber And I think that a lot of founders experienced this is that you know my own I think that that A lot of the company and again I think we were all pretty young and inexperienced but everyone thinks the founder should be this like business guy Or, or, [00:24:00] or girl, right? Like as the founder, you have all these executive things That you have to, that you should be doing, right?

I don't even know what those things are. The only. Reason that a company exists is to build a product that it sells to its customers. And so I think that that should be the time that a founder spends you know the most amount of time on Um and I I I would I definitely always stayed close but you know it it got it got harder and harder to um

Logan: stayed close but

Emery: I stayed close but I think we got harder to do is Um maybe be a be a driver of of the vision as you know the company scales there's more people involved And this gets to you know like how do you how do you set up like a culture around decision making and what's the founders role in decision making Um because you know people think that distributed decision making is another thing that should happen as you scale I don't believe that I think that as you scale um, distributed decision making is really just gonna make everything substantially slower and worse It doesn't mean that people don't have lots of responsibility but you know you you need clarity of decision making and clarity of vision If you think about all the best products out there the ones that people universally love the ones that's like no question everybody loves these products whether it's software or hardware or whatever the case may be It's probably a very good chance that those are the companies that are led by uh founders who really drive like that singular vision and the companies that do distributed decision making Probably less so And I and I think this is you know I'll just say one other thing about this is like I'm not saying that there's one right way to to

run a company or build a company or whatever and This was a key insight for me I think that you know to build like a really world class product it requires you know a founder or a small group of people to be directly driving and and uh and and making decisions But [00:26:00] there's obviously lots of companies that are not Run that way that are incredibly successful And, um and there's just not one right way to do anything You know there's just like lots of paths up the mountain The most the most important thing is that you build a company where everyone knows and understands what your path up the mountain is Because if you know you have a group of people that think no we should do it this way No we should do it that way And there's there's disagreement That's that's when that, that definitely doesn't work.

Logan: work Do you think that the the point about um having more centralized decisioning leading to better products is it what do you think that is Is it the consistency of the design and the experience Is it uh just the the more opinionated nature that you get from having a a more narrow subset driving the vision

Emery: Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. One I think that you know I mean first of all some people are better at making decisions than others right I mean there's people that have like you you need to find um, rather than distributing decision making you need to find the people who are who have proven over over time that they are best equipped to make a lot you know that they're Best equipped to make decisions and be right a lot And I think that's one of Jeff Bezos is like leadership principles is that executives are right a lot And the idea that everyone does that is just not it's just not true right We'd all have if people were like you know you just just distribute decision making and um you'll have a lot of great outcomes Uh I think some people are better So you gotta find those people It doesn't necessarily mean that that's always the founder It's certainly not Uh but you gotta find the people who are, who are best equipped to make decisions And then yeah I mean when you have one person who's really thinking holistically and again this doesn't always have to be the founder but somebody has to be thinking holistically with deep ownership uh, about what every part of the product is. is is going to do and how it works together And inevitably you know when you distribute decision making everyone has squads and they all have their areas of [00:28:00] responsibility And they you know they're they're trying to you know Uh make great decisions for their areas but they absolutely have a gazillion blind spots of you know every other products uh responsive every other team's responsibilities and then how it all fits together as a whole So yeah Um and, and then just generally somebody that has a really clear vision of what the future is supposed to be and someone that can be thinking about the micro decision that you're making today on one small team

And how that's going to evolve Three years from that decision into you know wherever you're trying to get to

Cultural Crisis and Turning Points

Logan: Implicit to all this is an element of culture and how you define you know what it is that your business stands for You guys went through a period of time where there was a little bit of a I don't know if cultural crisis is the right way of articulating it but if if if I my research was correct you're you had to fire your VP of engineering and then three directors of engineering like all resigned in the same day

Emery: We had, yeah, we had, um, we did, We did have some cultural crisis And it was it was over a short period of time But I mean, basically, um yeah we had we had three directors of Venge, which by the way you shouldn't have directors

Logan: to say I'm not exactly sure how that happened but

Emery: no no We had three directors of Venge that that all left within a couple of days of each other Um you know partially because we had some cultural crisis partially because I had already hired a VP of Eng and and that person didn't work out And so you know there's there that is a risk often as you hire and when you bring in an outside leader sometimes the people who are doing the job don't like that new leader and that can drive them out

Challenges and Lessons in Company Culture

Emery: Um

I think there was there was there was definitely an element there but but overall yeah we were we did have um some some cultural crisis and um and really was you know kind of a reset moment where um that was a big turning point in in the company's

Logan: far into the business or how many people were you around then Emery: We were probably

Logan: [00:30:00] 60 ish people And so a couple years in and Emery: a couple, a couple of years

Logan: and had you had you not been explicit about values and Definitely values

Understanding Company Culture

Emery: but here's the thing is uh, you know um the the to me now what like what culture is is is very very very clear And I it was very it was something that I didn't understand for a long time

Logan: Um

Emery: and I would always listen to people talk about it And even still I hear people talk about culture and I don't think they describe culture in the right way Culture is the is the political affiliation of your company or the religion of your company You know when you think about it I like to think about it that way because it's it's much clearer right It's like you think about a political affiliation you're like oh it's a group of people that all have these like strong convictions and values about you know a certain way of thinking And and what we know is that you know two different political affiliations like they cannot work together. And I don't know that I'm not I'm not saying one is right or wrong but like you have to get a group of people that share the same you know political affiliation or religion And the same thing with religions I mean there's very you know uh strong shared ideas in one religion which would be not okay in another religion Um, so it says nothing to do with like you know, What do you guys do for fun And do you hang out after bubble Like that that's not culture Culture is

you

know what are the what is the shared belief system Uh, about how you build how you make decisions et cetera et cetera Um and I you know I just in the first couple of years of building frame um when the very in the very beginning I had never even thought about this never never even crossed my mind that you know like this was something I had to care about And I thought well you know you hire people and you're the boss and they'll sort of like follow your lead And Um I didn't even understand that there was such a wide range of

Logan: ways

Emery: to like I don't know It sounds silly thinking back on it I didn't even understand there was such a wide range of [00:32:00] ways to make decisions that could you know lead to that could lead to so many disagreements Um and so I wound up just you know hiring Also I was you know I was hiring kind of whoever I could get This was you know 2015 2016 2017 I'd say kind of early in the You know sort of Zerp cycle Um but but you know very hard to hire I didn't have a network I was you know you're hiring who you can get And um but anyway yeah we wound up hiring a people that just a large group And it wasn't like there was just one sort of cultural ideology that existed at the company at that time There was just a lot of different ideas and it just led to a lot of internal debate you know in an unhealthy way And um and so We yeah we did wind up having three directors that left in the course of a couple of days and then you know maybe like a month or two later I let go of, of the VP of engine.

The Big Reset: Leadership Changes

Emery: so at that point it was kind of like a big a big reset moment where I had to take in everything that I'd learned and say okay well how do we want to move forward And, and there was three people I brought in at that time. I brought in a new head of eng, a new head of product and I brought in a chief of staff.

And, um, and, and, uh, and then later a new head of design. But really those three people at that time came in and, and, you know, we really sat down and, and intentionally started kind of working on kind of repairing, you know, the, the culture and the team that was still there. It was most, we didn't, we didn't really have that many people leave.

It was actually. You know, those three directors left and most, most everyone stayed. It wasn't really like a big exodus. Um, uh and that and that was the beginning of a of a new chapter

Logan: Did you all was that the group that ended up defining what the cultural values were Yeah And and what

Emery: that was essentially my leadership group through acquisition.

Logan: And so what what did you find I guess in in going through that process uh and coming up with the values Was it was it things that [00:34:00] you think everyone Mostly agreed with is in the company and you just needed to codify it and make it more explicit or were these more aspirational traits like how did you kind of go about actually assessing what the culture was I

Defining and Implementing Values

Emery: Yeah, I don't think that culture I think similar to I think I think that I think that um I think values need to be potent and come from you know one or a small group of people I think with any type of you know decisions that you sort of like lay on people You want to make people feel like they were part of the process I think that's one of the you know that's like the magic is if you're going to set values you want to set them yourself but somehow make people feel like they set them or they were part of it And so the way that we went about it is and I had gone through actually this is we, we had gone through a few So yes we, we did sort of officially set values as, as part of this exercise

Defining and Implementing Company Values

Emery: And

um I had previously tried to do like a, a a value setting exercise where, you know like we had you know we had polled like that we'd send out surveys and ask people like what they thought the values were and and blah blah blah Um I'd done it a couple of different times We never we never had rolled, we never finished it cause it was such a like I don't know it seemed it one it seemed unimportant and to the process that we were running to try to like set the values we were just getting such watered down stuff If you do if you send out a survey to your company and you ask them for values I promise you you're not going to get

Logan: You

Emery: any, great. You get platitudes You get platitudes back So, uh the process that I wound up going through was uh we didn't have any there's no values committee There's certainly no committee First of all if there's ever a committee for almost anything it's probably a bad But

Logan: there was no values committee

Emery: But what I did do is I reached out to like 15 or so people that were um you know who had been at the company for a while and and uh I thought were kind of, you know important figures in the company And I asked [00:36:00] them

Logan: to

Emery: it's just over Slack I just said hey like I'm I'm we're working on values again can you please tell me like the one only one the one most important value to you personally or like you know an idea or a principle or whatever that's most important to you

And

when you ask one on one there was no nobody could see what these you know what uh someone else was thinking And he said just for the one most kind of potent idea I actually started getting some some some better stuff So I I think I wound up asking even more people maybe asked like 25 people And then um and then I took all that and I I sort of wordsmithed it and distilled it and I actually had a lot of good ideas in that Um but I could shape it into kind of you know what I wanted the values to be And then I would go back to that person and say Hey I interpreted it this way or I shifted it this way Does this still kind of align with you know the the core idea of what of what you were thinking and then Yeah They'd say yeah Yeah And say okay well I want can, will you be you know the the kinda the spokesperson of this value And so when we rolled it out um I didn't roll out the values I had I had a group, I'd have like three people that would speak to each value that they, that they had selected it, this was the most, this was the most important idea to them.

And so they got up in front of the company and said. You know, this is the value. This is an example. This is what it means. So really, it was delivered, You know uh, as if it was all from the company. Um, and if I'm being honest, it really was all from me, but you know, I think that's like a really important part Leadership is you have to make you know you you have to have like clear potent ideas and it doesn't mean that people they they they legitimately did inform you know those ideas but I I ultimately got to like shape that and have it be what I wanted the identity of our culture and values to be Um And it was it was really I mean it was a really successful rollout It took time you know [00:38:00] like it took time to you know kind of work those into the fabric of the company um But um, but we got there

Hiring for Cultural Fit

Logan: many uh how many values did you end up landing with Was there anything you did in the hiring process then subsequent to that to make sure you were like did you have someone that was responsible for assessing singularly in an interview Did this person map to those uh those values or

Emery: kind of I don't think I ever perfected that to be honest you know we we tried I would um I think I would I would continue experimenting with, with better ways of, of sussing that stuff out. But we did, we know we did, we did culture, you know, we certainly did like cultural value interviews. The number one thing that I would do personally is, you know, over time you learn.

Like what your more controversial ideas are, you know, the things that you get more pushed back on and whatever. And I certainly had learned them in a couple of years in, and I, when I would interview people, I would just unsell them. I would just say like, these are, I would just, I would unsell them based on all the most controversial.

Idea, you know, controversial things I'd learned about the way we operate myself and, and, and I would just unsell them on it and, and Make sure that they're

Logan: Just throw it all on the table and say Hey here's what you're Emery: Yeah.

The Importance of Design

Emery: Like one of the things that was just conti, you know, I'd say that I probably had a, I'm not comparing myself, but I had a job Z and obsession with design I am Insane about design I'm a maniac I didn't know that about myself until I really got into it Uh. And I have that maniacal, you know, obsession with wanting to have great, I'm not, I don't even know, I'm not saying I get there but I certainly have the, the pursuit right I have the, uh, the goal and the desire of getting there

Logan: And how does that manifest itself for an individual employee in this case Is it just constant

Emery: Well, I think the difference, Yeah it's just I mean it's it's it's uh it's a lot of iteration I mean I [00:40:00] think the difference between um look, Let's let's start with like there's if you want to have the world's best design it starts with you need some people that are at least capable of reaching there from like a hard skills you know, perspective, but let's just say that you have those people still getting to that you know kind of Apple level of execution creates you know requires a culture of of um of of deeply caring and what deeply caring means is really it's probably just iterating more than other people and not stopping when

This is actually the key difference it's the hardest thing about getting to like 11 out of 10.

It's not even the work it's pushing through the emotional boundaries of people thinking they've put in the work and we've hit the, we've, we've reached the point where we're done and it's, it's pushing, it's pushing past those uncomfortable moments and. And doing it again. And then it's doing that five to 10 to 15 to 20 more times where people, they're like, your, you, you push people to their limits.

Right. And there's an art to that as well. Um, 'cause there's a way of doing that where people just burn out and, and, you know, don't like you at the end of the day. And there's a way of doing that where people get to the other side and say, wow, I didn't know I, we, we were gonna get

Logan: Yeah because you can get you can do half the effort and get to some to get to 95 percent of the outcome or something But then you need that other half to get to the last 5 percent or whatever which is unnatural Most people say this is will this actually will the customer actually ever notice this or will they ever care on it So in an interview process did you was there any way of um Teasing that out

Emery: Yeah, I would tell people, I would tell people, Especially with leaders because I think I could be a little bit more open and direct with leaders But I told people one of the things that I would that I would battle with is that you know I would hire people who would [00:42:00] be really interested in Frame and think it was like a cool exciting company to work at They would, One of the things you'd always say oh we love the brand and the attention to detail and the design and everything And Then they would come in and be at, Be in opposition to the very things that that created those those outcomes And often had the experience of like, why would somebody come in and say, we want to make The company worse.

We want to Pull it down you know? And so, I would tell leaders, uh, and this is something I did, you know, only kind of a few years in, but I'd say the one thing. That you can never ever do and I just want to be really clear is that if you ever lower my standards We're not working together. Your job is to come in and raise my standards I want you to pull me up like you you should be pulling us, you know, getting it getting us to getting us higher and my you know, my it was hard because my standards are really high, but That was one of the things that I would that I would tell leaders and it is probably one of the things that is like

You know, where I, I, I get, Um probably would make it, would make someone incompatible work with me if, if they try to lower the standards.

Logan: The the the best employees at Frame if you were to go run it back and start another company was there a shared characteristic that stood out uh for the people that you had the most success with

Emery: Yeah I like working with people that have high pain tolerance And, um, you know, I think that's I think that like on the journey to great you know and doing like doing great things Um, I think I think you need I think you need really high pain tolerance Um yeah. Yeah, I remember that tweet I shared about pain tolerance I I deeply believe that I mean I wanna work with people that have a high tolerance for pain And I remember when I tweeted that I people said yeah well like pain tolerance sounds painful You could, you could say like you know why don't you say uh uh I dunno, what were people trying to rephrase it as Cause it sounds like you're like rephrasing it in

Logan: Like a willingness to do their

Emery: Willingness to faster. Yeah. Yeah. And [00:44:00] I'm like I'm like if it's uncomfortable to you to hear pain tolerance that you know that's one of the things we look for that means you don't have a high pain tolerance Like if you have to like soften it to make it okay then I'm sorry to say you don't have a high pain

Logan: pain tolerance Some of the most important things about values uh that I found is the opposite also applies If if the opposite also isn't true it's a platitude it's everyone will agree for it If you can't frame the the the counterbalancing thing in a positive way then what you're saying is probably hollow in some way And so having high pain tolerance there's probably there's an opposite version of that of you know being inclusive or empathetic to other people's feel There's some version of that that's probably also true So and you want people to opt in to Your way of doing things if it's true for every person or the majority of people in the population Then you're not discerning or you're not getting people to opt in in some specific way

Emery: Yeah.

Logan: is the design side of doing Uh building product was that When you think about what motivates you and what drives drove you through the ups and downs of it was a how long was the journey seven years before selling to Adobe and now you're nine ish and is that right

Emery: Yeah.

Logan: was design what you came back to as the thing that most motivated you and most drove you through it or was there some element other element of building a company

Emery: Uh, it was probably definitely design. Yeah.

Logan: As you got more and more senior within the organization or as the company got bigger you stayed the same uh but uh your responsibilities started to become more dispersed um was there a structural way that you maintained responsibility for design so that it didn't like start to be decentralized

Emery:

The Importance of Design and Pain Tolerance

Emery: I think it was something I struggled with. I mean I did wind up you know hiring some really good people in the design

organization
Um which you know, which they brought a [00:46:00] lot of intensity to uh to
design. And so, yeah, I mean, naturally
like naturally when you scale

Framework for Quality Execution

Emery: I mean you, you just, it's it's impossible to be like involved in you know, every minute little detail, but the thing that um, Oh so, so this was the big so, so one of the big turning points that we did And something that was really critical for my continued involvement in in not just design, but product And just kind of overall high

quality execution Um

Logan: so like

Emery: after we had the big reset moment and we brought in these new leaders and then shortly after that we brought in a head of design So we had this new leadership team and you know my you know my objective with them was like we want to really elevate the quality of our execution And so we set up um we set up a pretty simple Pretty simple framework um where we would have on on Fridays we would have what we called uh stakeholder reviews which were you know sessions to kind of review the work.

But, um, let me, if I, if I back up, like when, if there's, if there's ever a problem within a company. You know, and this is super common, right? You're like, you know, you, you sort of expect something of the team and they deliver something else, right? That's just like one of the most common things you can experience as a leader.

I have, I have developed what I think is a pretty straightforward, simple framework, and these are ideas that are not new. There probably exist in every management framework. It's just that management frameworks have a lot more steps that I don't think about. So I just use three things, which is. Um the key to change anything is, is you first, you just have to sort of align on expectations.

Like what does success mean? What are what if we were to all say, yeah, we knocked it out of the park. What does that look like? And the more detailed you can be the better, right? Like write it down in excruciating detail and then get everyone to sign up, you know, sign up for it and say, yep, we all understand that this is what success looks like because now you have this thing you can all point to if you ever stray from it, you have.

the shared understanding of expectations. Um, so [00:48:00] so expectations is one Um the the second is accountability Like how do you hold people accountable Uh or how do you how do you ensure that uh that people are aligning to those expectations You have to do check ins you have to do inspections A favorite quote of mine that I did not come up with is that people do what you inspect not what you expect And so if you're not inspecting you're not doing The expectations I don't think you're I mean through some process in the organization I don't I don't think you're ever going to get there And then the third thing is um is actually the the accountability or the action like what happens if somebody is not meeting those expectations Right You've, you've

aligned on them You said it you you check in to to make sure that they're happening now what happens

Logan: when

Emery: And obviously like you know firing somebody is the most extreme thing you can do but usually that's not the right tool in, you know that's a last resort tool And so for us what we did is we set up these uh stakeholder reviews They were held every Friday We every we basically took all of Friday and it was we had Every single team had a slot on Friday they could use to present work but you know sometimes they weren't ready to present and so they didn't have to use the slot But when they did have a piece of work that was ready to present they would use these slots And um and so as we were trying to change the kind of internal expectation of what we were delivering um, one of the things I did is is. when we rolled out this program is that prior to the Friday presentations the teams would come in and they would present their work I I would have my leadership team do like a pre inspection of the of the presentation And um in this case let me just clarify we had we had two types of meetings We had What we called a stakeholder review and that was they could present you know uh work in progress design or kind of anything to get feedback And then we had something called the build review which was like this was a A finished [00:50:00] unit of work and it had to meet every expectation that are you know that meets kind of our shipping criteria and what customers would experience And so importantly for this build review you know I don't know how many times you've been in a meeting and I'm sure founders can relate to this you're sort of the team is doing the demo the thing they're going to ship But there's like always a caveat there's like 10 caveats It's like okay well yeah so there's this we're still working on this one thing It's like this meeting was to say no caveats At what point do we have the thing that's going to be the thing that our customers use? And that's what this meeting was for And so are my my leadership team would do a pre inspection of the work to make sure that it met the criteria And one of those criteria among many was that you know we uh the need that the the the execute the build the execution of the build had to be pixel perfect And so that what pixel perfect meant was you know not 99 9 percent accurate but a hundred percent accurate So that meant if one pixel was misaligned or not centered or whatever the case may be um, we actually would cancel the meeting and that seems like kind of like not a big deal right Like it's not like it's certainly not the same as firing somebody but it actually was a really big deal And because what it meant is when we when we rolled out these you know kind of the expectations in this new program the build reviews we canceled these meetings for months I wouldn't look at the work for months and months and months the meetings were canceled and it created a lot of tension On the teams a lot of tension internally Um, But

eventually you know we we uh the team had to build the muscle and all collectively we had to build the muscle and ultimately kind of became part of our our team. you know culture I'd say Um that this is what it meant to ship product at at Frame And uh and after those you know sort of three four months of, of pain I mean I'd say that we won just like across the board radically shifted our quality of execution up [00:52:00] And I think after those three four months I don't think I've ever seen a pixel off I don't think like in like years I don't think you just you know And it's one of those things like you experienced with with Apple and it's not to say that Apple's perfect but one thing that you know you'll get with Apple is like

Logan: it's Emery: it's

just going to be a hundred percent You're going to, it's going to be polished Right And yeah, maybe there's other things they didn't get right or idea but like there is a quality of execution that is just fundamental Like they can't they, they're nothing will ever come out of that company that doesn't have that veneer of polish And that's even just that forget about like all the foundational decisions underneath that That's really really really hard to do culturally and at scale. Um and so we you know we we got there and um and that and that whole kind of builder view, I think um it was cumbersome on the teams I don't think the team's always loved it

Logan: I would imagine getting their meeting canceled Was it the

Emery: but just overall the the the pro like I think you know it was cumbersome on the teams There was we actually wound up Getting rid of them as we were trying to accelerate our speed of execution after after working on quality of execution then we worked on speed of execution And, And one of the things we tried um, when we were trying to accelerate our speed of execution was to get rid of those meetings because teams wound up putting a lot of prep time You know it's one of those things like when you're

When

when a team is presenting to a leader an executive or the CEO you know even if you don't want them to put a lot of prep time you're like Hey just show me what you're doing It's impossible They will spend days and days They spend so much time And I've experienced this like now being at Adobe and I'm not the CEO and I'm not the boss And you know I, and I and I and I have to go and present

you know to senior leadership or to Shantanu the CEO and you're just like gosh I can't just roll in Even if their expectations are different you feel like you're not doing your job If you're you don't show up like buttoned up professional presentation it's [00:54:00] designed well the whole thing And like you know sometimes that's necessary but a lot of times it's not And um anyway we tried we tried uh we tried getting rid of our our kind of review process And I don't think it really accelerated us Yeah I don't think it accelerated us And I think that there was a hit in like that that was like that was like these gates that ensured we were always shipping

Logan: the
Emery: the Quality Yeah.

Building a B2B Brand

Logan: Yeah Um brand is an interesting uh thing for B2B companies I think you guys were pretty purposeful about the brand of frame How did you think about going about building a uh a brand in the B2B world I

Emery: You know, I didn't think about it a lot other than the fact that you know I think I probably just instinctually built Frame I wanted to make it cool Number one like I just want I wanted to make it cool I wanted to make it a desirable brand Um, I had never worked in enterprise software prior prior to prior to launching frame I had really never bought enterprise software Cause I had a small boutique agency Any software I ever bought was just you know something I could sign up with a credit card myself And

Logan: um I

Emery: I built frame overall from the from the brand to the product and everything I, I, we started by building Frame in the way that like I don't know I would use it buy it et cetera. And so we had this kind of very kind of more consumer looking motion you know from sign up with a credit card self serve focused on brand But I've come to you know I've come to evolve my thinking and I think there's people who think You know maybe brand is not a worthwhile effort in enterprise software designs on a worthwhile effort enterprise software I mean I've I've I've shared tweets around you know how there's such an opportunity in enterprise software If you just come in like just like do like high quality execution you can basically just win in any vertical And there's people that are just like hundreds of comments of people saying nobody cares about the product Nobody [00:56:00] cares about quality Nobody cares about design Like

That's not going to matter to the buyer And I'm like guys this is why enterprise software sucks You know because this is there's a belief system that whether, you know, a brand doesn't matter design doesn't matter you know, quality of execution doesn't matter in enterprise software and I think that that might have been true truer you know earlier but I think today where um one we've seen this this big shift in the consumerization of enterprise software And What does that mean It means that like I think people's expectations of what software is is just different right Like we all use much more high quality software and whether you're using software at work or using you know Instagram on your phone you just have like an expectation of what good software is And I think the end user within organizations has a bigger voice than they've had you know than they've had before Like whether it's it or you know, whoever's making the buying decision they're much more careful about buying something that their users are going to hate or not use And uh and so I think there's just been this big kind of consumerization of enterprise software Um anyway you originally asked me about brand We built a brand because I love I mean it's just fun for me really And I I don't know if it's like This is what I'd say I think that anecdotally I think that our brand both our go to market motion and our our brand Probably made it a lot easier to start enterprise conversations.

Logan: it just an outgrowth of your own style and personality or were there frameworks or methodologies that you used of how to actually actionable eyes what the brand was and what you wanted people to feel or was that just more innate to you

Emery: I think it was probably more innate. And, um, You know my background was in post production and and and uh production and post production and filmmaking and so I just you know I'd want [00:58:00] to use that tool set as well Like we we were able to do stuff that you know, You know, maybe less expensively than it would you know than someone else could do it Cause we you know I just literally had done that work for for years and knew the freelancers and the people to hire and things like that So um yeah, I think it was more innate.

Effective Launch Strategies

Logan: you have a uh a methodology or a style of launching twice uh doing a pre-announcement and then an announcement Can you talk about that and what the benefits of it are

Emery: Yeah. I think that um you just basically want to milk a launch for everything that you know for as much as you can And um for most of our

launches we would always do we would do a uh you know like a teaser So you want to let people know that it's coming in And a lot of people do this but I think I think we would you know maybe milk it a little bit more Um so you do you know you do some kind of teaser where you get people excited and let them know that it's coming Um, and there's lots of ways to sort of you know, maximize you know that experience I'd say like if I go all the way back to our like actually launching frame for the first time and we use the same framework for subsequent launches but

uh

we would do a uh we you know we do this sort of like an announcement launch and um And you know build a landing page and experience and a teaser video And then you know we'd build, you know lots of kind of gamification around um you know like if I go all the way back to the to the original launches before anybody had access to frame and I'm sure we've all seen like these gamified launches I guess you see less of them now to be honest but

Logan: uh you know

Emery: back in 2015 it was like the era of gamified launches And, uh and so what we did is we um you know, We had a we had a landing page that wasn't just any landing page Like we put a lot of effort into creating like an experience of a landing page And most people you know when they're launching something it's like hey drop your email in right And then to get notified when it's going to be ready And that's sort of the end of the [01:00:00] journey But I think that's a missed opportunity because when people are interested and engaged and excited and wanting access to something you can usually get them sort of do more things on your behalf So uh in the in the earliest launch We had this landing page where you could drop your email and get notified when it's ready But then as soon as you put your email in we kind of took you through this whole gamified journey where we had like a point system and we said you can do this for five points and this for five points and this for five points And the more points you gain the earlier you know like kind of you raise your ranks in terms of

Logan: And what what some of them are like if you send this email and share with five other people

Emery: Yeah, it was, It was it was um it was shared on social I think we had I think we had back then, uh, Twitter and Facebook. So we got, you got points for

sharing on social. You got points for, um, I think you could add friends email addresses in, uh, you got bonus points.

Oh, you had to answer a survey. It was like five questions. And then um, you got a bonus points for following us on social. And um, we had like 15, 000 people go through that, go through that flow. This was when we were literally zero, no one. I mean, you know, it was just me and my, this was our earliest launches.

Me and my co founder had no one else that were helping us. And, um, and that early launch got like 15, 000 people to sign up. Um, And then,

Logan: And what do you think I mean was it were you previewing on the landing page what Frame was And so

Emery: We were previewing what what what made it, what made it work? What made sort of the, the viral loop work was, um, we, when we seeded it with uh It is just like kind of grassroots marketing Like you know we were we we come from the industry so our my previous industry was in post production So knew all you know knew all those people in the industry and identified you know people that were kind of influencers That were didn't exist in 2015 I don't think like commonly but You know that we identified people that you know had a following and asked them we just asked them Hey will you I [01:02:00] mean like people I don't think people are getting paid to do a kind of influencer stuff in 2015 I think so We just like ask people Hey would you you know we're launching this thing would love your support Would you share this Um, and so we just kind of seeded, we seeded the, the, the sharing with I don't know 50 75 people that um that would you know share the announcement on on Twitter And, uh And then um and obviously we did trade press and uh we were on the front we actually were on the front page of Hacker News because we were using a we were using a front end framework that was new at the time for the landing page called Famous It was just like front end framework JavaScript framework that was supposed to like their their their mission was to sort of build once run anywhere and do like you know iOS level animation on the web we wound up using it for the for the landing page not for the whole product but just because we were using that that that framework we were front page on Hacker News and I think that you know that got some actually probably got more like um Silicon Valley types of investors potential investors that's where they found us on on Hacker News Um, we were also an early version of product on like the, when it was back as a, an email distribution list Um but it was all just through these like organic seeding and then the social um sharing flows and and it just kind of worked So like somebody would would tweet it and then another person would

see it They'd go they'd sign up they'd tweet it and we got that loop going Um so we had 15,000 people sign up for, uh for that initial

Logan: And you also did uh personal touch like automated follow ups You would reach out after 15 minutes or something to someone

Emery: Yeah, that was, that was really, uh, important As well So You'd Sign up and then you would get an automated email for me 15 minutes after And I think a lot of people do this now Um but the email that you got from me 15 minutes after signing up was, it was totally plain text There was no unsubscribe, which I know technically is you know not you're not supposed to do that [01:04:00] but I was really trying to make it look like it was an email that I wrote and it was super plain language It was like two sentences I think it was like Hey I just noticed you signed up you know um you know what interested you and frame? What pain points do you have And I got thousands and thousands of responses um, which I went through every single one of them And I uh I I went through and read every single one of them And that was in, in them there were like you know there were there were potential future enterprise customers There were there were uh investors Um and the one of those emails was uh from Balaji at Andreessen He was at Andreessen Horowitz at the time And that was my That was like first contact with Silicon Valley I was a total outsider I didn't know a soul like not I didn't know an engineer I didn't know a founder I didn't know a venture capitalist I knew zero people and sort of like my first contact with Silicon Valley was was this email from Balaji And I remember getting that first email and I'm I'm pretty mellow guy I don't really like show a lot of visible excitement but I was you know it was I w I couldn't believe that I won It was you know it was an investor who was voicing interest and it was from Andreessen Horowitz.

It was like Oh, like bingo. um and that, uh, Anyway, you know, of course I responded and that led to an introduction to somebody. He introduced me to Steven Sinofsky, but those those responded those that automatic response email um, really kind of like opened up these conversations with uh with VCs

Fundraising Lessons

Logan: What uh what did you learn about fundraising So you went in and met Andreessen in the early days pre product fully launched

Emery: had the announce yeah So this this this this launch that I just told you the story about that was an announcement launch The product was not ready to use and I um yeah so I so Balaji you know uh responded to that email from

Balaji and he [01:06:00] You know he said you know not really my space but I think um but I'd like it, you know to meet my colleague which was Steven Sanofsky. And so I went in um my very my first first con, first like contact in person or really I guess at that point other than that conversation with Balaji you know my second conversation with anyone in Silicon Valley was was Steven Sinofsky Uh, and For those listening I think most people know but you know Steven was the president of Windows at Microsoft He had left Microsoft and he was now uh, at Andreessen So that was I came in and I you know had a had a conversation with uh with with Steven Um which did lead to a board pitch at Andreessen you know some weeks after that But I uh uh, they did not invest But you asked me what I learned about

Logan: about

Emery: about pitching Um there was a really important thing I learned about pitching which was you know when I came in first conversation with Steven, I mean I don't he kind of knew a little bit about the industry and the space so he he he did get it But um I mean my original pitches I think we're all we're just all we're all bad And one of the things I noticed is that You were to sit down and ask me Hey tell me about Frame tell me about the story like on a phone call or just like casually whatever I would I would tell you a story of who I am what I'm doing and why it matters And when I but then I looked at my pitch and it's like well this the, the pitch looked very looked very different And so uh, basically my realization was if somebody just asks me about Frame when I'm not doing like a pitch with a deck I, I am able to Tell a really compelling story but my my pitch isn't there So um One of the one of the conversations I had, I had upcoming with uh, an investor who had reached out um you know typically when you Make first contact you're like oh so tell me the story right You're just like Tell me about what you're doing Um, and I knew that My storytelling that I just would do off the cuff [01:08:00] I couldn't like recreate, I couldn't sit down and think about it and recreate it. Like you just have to do it. There's something about, I have a job where I'm communicating to a human.

This thing that I need to tell and your brain just like works differently. So I recorded my conversation with this investor, just my side of me pitching my story. And then I took that recording and I'm like, okay, this is the, this is the narrative. This is the framework. So I took the story and then I made the, I put slides to the story, which I think other people, it's just, I've done this a lot now.

Like I always just want to first, like, let me just.

The Art of Storytelling in Presentations

Emery: Let me just like talk and tell a story. If I'm doing a presentation, I try to just talk and tell a story. And since I would do that, you know, with my chief of staff, I would, you know, just sort of, or, you know, dictate and talk about what thing I wanted to tell and then go back after I had that story and start working on how the pitch and the slide deck sort of it. and then that made my pitch like infinitely better.

Logan: than uh people inevitably speak to slides and they just kind of go slide by slide through it And ultimately oftentimes slides are a uh an amalgamation of a bunch of people's thoughts and feedback all going into some version of it versus what you naturally want to want to communicate Um did uh in the early days you got an acquisition offer for like 10 million bucks

Turning Down a $10 Million Acquisition Offer

Emery: Oh, this is a great story, yeah.
Logan: Why uh what made you say no uh to doing that

Meeting Key Industry Figures

Emery: The first two People I ever made contact with was was first thing was the Balaji that got introduced to Steven Sinofsky And the and the third or second person was um uh, was Aaron Levy from Box And he had also responded to that autoresponder He saw it you know wherever he saw it he responded He was like hey Aaron Levy here like you know think what you're doing is really cool So when I flew out to uh San Francisco Which you know by the way when I flew out to meet Steven when I flew out to meet Aaron they weren't like Hey come out to me. I you know you're I'm just like Hey I'm going to be out there these dates if you want to meet And I'm like I'm going to no reason to

Logan: be there Yeah yeah And they're like I'm not here And I'm [01:10:00] like actually it's these other dates I'm I'm gonna be here Yeah I

Emery: anyway, Right So I went out and um I think actually Logan: I'm trying

The Acquisition Dance with Aaron Levy

Emery: I'm trying to think if I what Was it was, did I meet Aaron first or did I meet Steven Sanofsky first I forget which one but I went out Same trip And um anyway you know Aaron was interested in what we were what we were building And uh I met him for dinner at Fukie Sushi on El Camino uh near the box headquarters back then I think they moved Um and he brought like his whole executive team too And um we had this like longmy first contact withI think I maybe had a phone call with him prior I don't remember But we had this like long dinner And then after dinner we went back to uh Box HQ and I gave him a demo of uh of what we had This is all pre launch We hadn't launched anything It was pre launch Gave him a demo of what um of what we had built And, um and that kicked off a series of of conversations uh, With with Aaron who you know Um I think was really kind of interesting you know he, Aaron's background I think he's you know famously was like an intern at Like a movie studio I like universal or somewhere And he had, he had, I always had this interest in filmmaking and I think saw the angle for Kind of what we were doing and how that fit fit into box So it kicked off a series of conversations and um You know uh, I, I I loved getting to know to know Aaron He's a he's a great Great dude and someone I've I've stayed in touch with over the years Uh, but it did ultimately culminate like I knew that there was a I knew you know the nature of the conversations were like leading towards some conversation around around an acquisition and we had met you know I don't know four or five times um different scenarios um and I kept thinking you know it's actually funny as I think back about this this, these Conversations with Aaron I really only had two I call I guess kind of serious acquisition dances I had interest along the way of the years but nothing that [01:12:00] was like really real It's funny as I think back about these conversations with Aaron it was similar to um acquisition conversations with Scott Belsky where there is a dance you know like

Logan: Adobe who

Emery: Scott Belsky is at Adobe he ultimately acquired There's there's a dance where you're getting to know someone And you know thinking back to those early conversations with Aaron we had met like you know, four or five times and I'm like you know I remember thinking that I'm like gosh the next conversation has got to it's got to there's got to be like a serious yes.

There's got to be like it's got to lead to an offer right Because they're the first year you're kind of getting to know each other and all these things Uh and so I remember after you know several several meetings with with Aaron we had a meeting scheduled I was back in New York I'd met him a couple of times in San

Francisco He was in New York We met uh, Somewhere in New York Um we had a call scheduled It was like late my time I don't know 10 11 p. m. my time And I'm like okay there's only one thing we could possibly talk about on this call It's gotta be an offer And prior to prior to that call I called my co founder and I said okay look I you know Aaron's gonna call me I think there's gotta be an offer right So like let's we I want to I want you and me to be aligned on like what's our what's our buy it now price

Logan: by the way are you dual processing with VCs at this point Are you self funding as

Emery: this is uh, going on I mean I was just self-funding. I mean, I was just self-funding. I was dual processing with VCs Um we didn't wind up actually getting we, we were not able to raise until after we had actually launched product And then we had a lot of early traction and everything but um But yeah I called my co founder before the call with Aaron I was like I just want to be aligned Like what's our what's our buy it now price And I think uh honestly I don't remember what our buy it now price was but it was something like North of 20 million or something like that And and mind you this was it's pre launch you know like we were it was just he and I and yeah I had a company that was doing well but like that would have been that would have been a lot of money for [01:14:00] me for me back then for all of us for anybody Um and so Aaron called and you know we're having our back and forth we're talking and I'm just like, Hey I just gotta get to the thing, like, when's it gonna come out? And I think uh I think he had sort of I think he had offered like you know uh uh a million dollars Um, was the opening bid Um and I, you know I I told this story before and so like I I want to be consistent as I tell this story I think I've told it like on an interview before but I don't remember what number I countered with but it was an absurdly high number like It was a number that you know he uh it was just inappropriate to, to counter

Logan: 30 or

Emery: think it was like 50 or something like that, you know like something stupid Uh and you know, I think it was, I remember his his his response was like His response was funny Cause he's you know he's a very funny He always he's always got a great joke and he was like he's, he's, his response was like God damn it. you really are a founder. And, uh, yeah, So it um I think that uh yeah he in that conversation he was you know he was pretty I think we got in that on that phone call he got up to a verbal like he's like look there's, there's the highest number that we could ever acquire a company for That's like a prelaunch company with two people um is 10 million Like the board would never allow

me to do anything above that And It's just probably wouldn't you know and so we and I don't even think I don't even know that that was like an offer 10. It was just basically like kind of setting a. Just so know demarcation of Yeah,

Logan: you use that and that was the anchor for the seed round right That was

Emery: the I used that. I used I used that and I I yeah so that was my anchor for the seed round when I when I um when I pitched Andresen and then later Excel and and that was our valuation so we did our you know we raised 2.2 million in the seed round and uh 10 million pre. So I use that as our, as our anchor for the, for the

Logan: value Flash forward all the way uh to [01:16:00] the actual acquisition Uh

Emery: so how did


Adobe's Acquisition Interest

Logan: uh how did all that come to be with Adobe

Emery: Uh it started off with the DM on X then Twitter still the Twitter back then from uh from Scott Belsky who uh, yeah he just he just sent me a DM on Twitter like saying hey um you know been following you guys would be, would be great to connect And I and I knew getting the, the DM from him already was uh you know I think I I think I sort of right off the bat kind of knew like okay this this is this is probably gonna lead to some kind of

interest

in a conversation around acquisition because I

Logan: is this the end of 2020 beginning of 21

Emery: It is the beginning of 2021 So I think it was um March of 2021 when he reached out Uh, the first the first uh

Logan: you guys didn't know each other That's

Emery: what I was going to say is that You know, I mean one is Scott is you know really prolific investor He's you know really prominent you know figure in in in uh the industry

Logan: guys are both in New York Emery: York, both in same space.

But yeah, so I had, I, 15 people along you know over the years had offered to introduce me to Scott and I always said yes I was like yeah yeah because every person I would talk to every VC I would talk to like hell, you know you should talk to He's like do you know Scott You should talk to Scott And I'm like great I'll talk to Scott. But then it would always just go silent So you know I think on the other side Scott was like nah you know

because he

was at Adobe and and they're basically you know they were competitive right So he didn't Scott doesn't invest in competitive companies and things like that Right So I I never um I, I never met him but, uh but then he reached out over over DM and uh and that that kicked off you know a series of conversations similarly to the Aaron conversation so you know series of conversations where it was like lots of getting to know each other lots of walks in the park lot you know there's a lot of um you know over a [01:18:00] period of a couple months um before we got to maybe Not a couple months It was like uh probably six weeks from initial contact to a uh negotiating a verbal offer.

Navigating the Acquisition Process

Logan: Mentally at that point in time you're running a business uh and you're planning for a subsequent fundraise an IPO whatever the the things are And then there's this uh orthogonal

Emery: Well we were actually um, we were actually, uh closing our Series D so it was like a it was close to a hundred million dollars Series D that was all being done by our our insiders um our existing investors When the conversations started And Scott actually convinced me to pause the closing to see if there was a path to

Logan: That would have been a very unnecessary dilutive uh amount of capital to

Emery: And, And I think to you know uh one my board was supportive you know they were like they were um they were supportive of pausing the round So we did pause it And um We did we did pause it for a little bit but we reached a point in the negotiation where we felt like we were probably too far apart on, on valuation And so you know I had, um we basically thanked Scott and you know just kind of said Hey like after we eventually did get to that first offer I I, um you know said Hey I think just indicative I think I think the the offer is indicative that we just have more work to do And so I'm going to close the round and um you know Maybe we'll, you know there'll be an opportunity to speak in the future And um and I and that and that was my true intention I I was like I cause I talked about it with the board and and it's you know we I needed to capitalize the business Like we we needed to get this this round done And I had been holding it for for a while So I reached out to uh my uh lawyers at the time was Gunderson was the team we worked with And I told them like [01:20:00] we're gonna go Like send out the wire information And I think this was

Logan: um

Emery: It was Friday it was a Friday and I told Gunderson to send out the wire information But then I got another I got like another follow up call from Scott and he was like he's like Emory don't do it Like just give me one give me 24 hours Give me one more day And and so I I called you know I called the lawyer back I was like Hey did you, did you did you send the wire information out yet Cause Like this, no don't don't sit, don't send it He's like I'm just about to send the email I was like don't don't send it So pause it for one more day And then it was that next day that we wound up uh uh having our our verbal agreement

Logan: Was it hard uh through that period of time to to have these two things going on Well

Emery: it sucks It's I mean it's really hard Yeah it's really hard I mean because, you know the full the full acquisition took Um from first contact in April to closing in October um and during that time you know you're I was spending 90 I spent I was spending 95 percent of my time on the acquisition and you know 5 percent of the business and then as as things

Logan: progressed and it

Emery: and it actually we got to the LOI and we signed it Then you have to pull in more people and like you know diligence is intense Diligence for acquisition I mean I've only gone through one so I don't know what other acquisitions are but you know it's it's like a venture capital diligence uh you

know but like times a hundred I mean it's just like it was it was intense We also as part of our as part of the acquisition we had never done an audit and you know Adobe being a publicly traded company Uh they required that we complete a three year audit um and to do a three year audit in the course of like a six weeks diligence period um which normally a three year audit you know I'm told would take you could spend like six eight months even longer just depending on like how much you want to how much time you want to spend on it Like we we did a three year yeah. audit in in about I think it wound up taking about eight weeks um which was [01:22:00] intense I mean like it is you know you are digging up I mean the amount of crap you got to dig up like some random receipts that like you know the auditors pull out some random Charge and you're like trying to find some receipt because you know in the early days you have like people are just spending on credit cards and whatever whatever Um anyway yeah it's intense Um I mean those that was that was by far the most intense period of the entire journey was trying to do the acquisition uh, while continuing to run a business Also, the business was going through its steepest growth inflection point at that time Um, uh, But yeah it was I mean my, I would start I would start I would do like a you know cause because we were trying to run the business and the exec my my my leadership team had all their normal responsibilities We would start um, with a exec team morning huddle at 8 AM. Um, And then of course we're in New York Adobe's In in san francisco and um our bank we our bankers we were using catalyst they uh, who Were based in san francisco and a lot of times adobe would have like their Acquisition update meeting around like 6, You know 6 7 p m Or something like that usually late and then so that was already even later in new york and then you know my My team at catalyst would usually like have dinner with their family Anyway I would be my my I would talk to catalyst in the evenings at like 11 p m midnight And and then we were just dealing with all of the diligence stuff like throughout the whole day So and I did that for you know six months It was intense

Logan: Is there anything you would've done differently in the process or if you were advising a founder to be prepared for something That could be I mean this is the outcome for 99.9999% of companies uh maybe audit sooner I don't know

Emery: yeah Yeah I think there's a lot of stuff you can do just hygiene wise that you know if I were doing differently I would just know that you know have a little bit of better hygiene about yeah you should do an audit You should probably do you know a yearly audit Um I I [01:24:00] think that um I mean, trying to honestly like I sort of purged a lot of this from my from my mind

Logan: some trauma compartment in

Emery: yeah, yeah,

Logan: Put you on a couch over here

Emery: yeah, yeah, Yeah But no there, there is, I'd have to sit down and think about it There's a there's a number of things from a from a hygiene perspective Like um, just keep you know like the how you you know keep all your just like your enterprise contracts keeping those like Making making sure that like you actually have like every executed signed, like you know sign both sides the final executed contract like you know in your salesforce database along with the bubble, just like you just gotta have good hygiene You gotta I mean our we, you know we're a little messy Like we had some like we're like your startup. Yeah. Like We couldn't like we couldn't find like our fully execute some of our fully executed contracts you know like their side signed but then like we didn't have like our Countersigned and blah blah blah blah.

Yeah. Just a little stuff. A lot of little stuff. Yeah. Um, Was

Logan: Was there something unique at that moment in time that you felt like uh it was going to be a good partnership with Adobe versus going uh on your own Or did they just end up making the compelling offer that made it worthwhile for everyone

Emery: No it was definitely I mean I think I think a big part of moving forward was was Scott you know Scott I, uh Belsky is is a really um he's just first of all he's just like a really good he's like a good dude And anybody that knows him would all say that he's like a good kind like honest like he's the type of person you're like Oh I wanna work with Scott You know, Like he's Super likable Um and he's a start you know he's a startup guy He he was his company uh Behance was acquired by Adobe And so he was able to really relate and tell me about his journey of Behance being acquired by Adobe He was also really transparent about the things he was trying to change at Adobe The things that he was like Hey these are the things that you know I think we're not good at and you know we are we're trying to we're trying to change [01:26:00] and you know we'd love your help with it and blah blah blah So I think I'm. big part of the deal happened I mean no first of all like the reason the deal happened was Scott I mean he sponsored the deal sold me on it sold it internally Um and so yeah I mean the the the deal happened because of Scott and a lot of way in in more ways than one Um but uh for me personally he really he really sold me on and I you know I think also I looked at it as Adobe Adobe was the natural home for for a frame We didn't have a lot of like natural acquirers you know there's always like a random like Oh Amazon somehow thinks they should be involved

But uh in terms of a company that's like this is in their wheelhouse what they do like Adobe was the, the company

Logan: Yeah So it just made sense That makes

Emery: Like maybe Autodesk a little bit you know like were they were sort of in, and they were they were kind of sniffing around around the same time Um but it was I really like and then but Adobe was the more natural fit. So

Logan: So you've been within Adobe now for
Emery: about two and a half years a little, little more than a little more than two

and a half years

Lessons from Adobe's Culture

Logan: Uh what have you um taken from Adobe's culture way of operating that um I don't know if you were to run it back with another startup in the future just something that you've uniquely learned from working within it

Emery: Yeah Well you know I think that I'm super grateful for the experience of you know of working at Adobe I think it's it's a really uh it's a really great company But you know I think that I think the key takeaway And granted I'm not running Adobe So you know it's not like I have the same purview of running frame versus running Adobe But you know, I've got a seat at the table I'm in a lot of the important meetings and a lot of the uh exec meetings I was reporting I was reporting directly into Scott um you know who's the

you know

I was reporting into the into the the E team the executive team [01:28:00] Um So point being I've I've had some purview and my experience is that it's not that different And if anything it is It's like it's it's all this, it's all the same stuff It's a lot of the same problems Like of course like you know the bigger the company grows like the nature of them change a little bit but the problem solving is is kind of the same And and it's, that's funny It's something Scott said to me during our early walks is you know he's like you know W is a giant company It's over 20, 000 people but at the end of the day like it's still just like five people in a room making decisions And that's true you know um So if anything I think it's given me maybe more comfort or confidence that like I don't know I guess I I I think I could do that It doesn't seem that different

Logan: What's that Steve Jobs quote that like you look around the world and like anything you see is created by people no smarter than you or something When you get into these big companies or you meet these people it's uh

Emery: Yeah. And I think, Yeah I think they're they're, they're normal people and I think

Logan: I think

Emery: what I'm about to say is not It's not indicative It's you know in many ways the jobs that people have at startups are a lot harder There's a lot more responsibility And you know at startups I think that you know just naturally the scope of responsibility can be much more narrow You

Logan: At big companies they can be

Emery: big company, Sorry a big company is the scope of responsibility can be much much more narrow and, um and, you know so I think that like I don't know, I'd like to maybe have somebody have the opportunity I'll come back on and tell you after I've run a 20 000 person company like, is it any harder But uh, you know from I think in some ways startups can be a lot, a lot harder. Uh

The Impact of AI on Creativity

Logan: Adobe spent a lot of [01:30:00] time thinking about AI I'm sure you have as well There's been a number of different tools that have come out uh related to video generated video Um uh there's there's so rare from uh OpenAI Runway There's a bunch of stuff related to to that category that seems to be coming out Um what's your uh Any high level thoughts I know you've tweeted a little bit about uh different things related to to AI Um being in the creative world working with design tooling it sort of feels like you're in the eye of the storm to some extent what's your what's your purview or perspective

Emery: Unlike how it's going to impact the creative world Logan: just in general any thoughts observations um

Emery: I think predicting the future is really hard. And I don't, I don't, I don't proclaim to be able to do it But you know I think we're a couple generations away from seeing how truly impactful you know kind of video generation uh you know can be for the for the creative industry you know you it's certainly

potent enough to be involved in like a creative process and you can you know, sort of do a shot you know you can generate a clip and use it as a B roll or or whatever but it's still you know it's it's still tricky to kind of guide it Um and when you get into really Like what you know like professional creative workflows I mean there's a lot of intention around what they're trying to create And I think that

Logan: you know AI

Emery: it's hard to I think everyone's trying to work on controllability Like how do you how do you sort of steer this thing Cause it's obviously incredibly powerful but I mean I just, you know not, not speaking for Adobe I think of like over the next few years um, It's like I don't know if it's two years three years 10 years but there's clearly going to be a day where it's probably not so far off that you can really just like input a script and output a movie and probably be as good [01:32:00] as like great great movies Um, and how does that change the landscape landscape of creativity I don't know

Logan: Does it lend itself to more I mean I guess inevitably it will lend itself to more

Emery: Taste

Logan: in some ways and more like back to the original point around what motivates you design and some of those considerations as the functional skills maybe get up leveled in a more meaningful

Emery: Yeah I mean I think absolutely taste is you know I think in a in an AI in a kind of a gen AI world taste becomes you know a more important component. um skills then, and then creation There's a lot of people that have the technical skill to create But you know maybe their their taste is lacking And if you can put these tools in the hands of people who have great taste um you know I think that'll be it'll be fun to watch and and you know back to like great I think great things in general come from a framework where you have one person driving really clear vision and then you know lots of contribution for from other people and, you know movies Our Movies are really really hard to make I mean if you if it, it, it is it is a shocking number of people that have to collaborate And, you know movies do have like like culturally it's about like a director driving a vision But still there's just so many people that have to you know come in and be part of that to make a movie happen Um and it's so expensive that your ability to iterate or fix something that didn't work well like just doesn't really exist You can't really do that So when you get to the point where you have a tool

Logan: that

Emery: one person's mind can can guide and you know create a story around and iterate and iterate and iterate basically for free until they can find what they love I you know maybe the bet, you know maybe we'll have some of the best content we've we've ever had because you'll have [01:34:00] absolute clarity of vision It'll cost nothing to iterate and explore different ideas And um I think we're gonna see a ton of cool Stuff

Logan: Is there anyone from the outside in that was particularly influential uh to the business or the outcome Anyone you would wanna shout out or give credit to

Advice on Board Selection and Dynamics

Emery: I will say that I had a really awesome board You know I think that startups go through tons of problems and for many startups board problems are one of them And I just never had board problems I had, You had

Logan: Voss from Excel

Emery: had Vos from Excel ames from First Mark and uh, Itai. who was a board partner on behalf of Insight but now has his own fund LGBP, he ties it on. Um but those were my those were my three board members and um for a long time it was just Voss and Amish. Um and I also had um Chris from SignalFire He was a board observer He was uh also involved from but all all of them you know I think that I really heavily leaned on on my board And I think just a lot of conversations around like how much value add to investors bring And I don't know I thought they brought a ton of value because for me as a first time founder they really had just like didn't know a lot about business especially when it came to really thinking about like how do we you know how do we think about capitalizing the business setting you know success milestones you know scaling a sales organization thinking about like I mean I think a lot of I think a lot of the stuff I did wind up talking to the board with was was on the you know kind of the the business side I, the product side I always drove instinctually but I mean I thought they were invaluable

Logan: there anything you did in selecting them that was purposeful

Emery: No. Lucky. I was lucky I was lucky I think I was lucky Yeah I I mean I'd say that I for our seed round we had a competitive seed round and I wound up choosing Voss from Excel And I [01:36:00] think I chose Voss because He,

um he did seem to like just truly get the Frame io value proposition the best There's you know there's the the term founder market fit I think there's also like investor company fit you know in terms of like who really understand like he just he he he really understood it He was an investor in Envision um which was Envision was similar to Frame They were kind of like you know Frame for you know, design and envision was ahead of us um by a few years

Logan: and a mish was as well

Emery: I miss was as well. So so I you know I I envision was a great company that kind of like set a path for us It can be so much easier when there's a company that's kind of like proven something out you know and I think we had a lot to prove in our market because, you know there wasn't you know video collaboration like didn't exist And um Kind of the review and approval market was like pretty nascent but but Envision had at least charted a path for us and proven like this space can be valuable So yeah um uh, Voss and Amish were both on the Envision board and they were on on our board And, but I think that what it, What it meant was when I would speak to them they they really they really got it and they really understood it So um and they're both great SAS investors both great B2B investors They work well together That's important too is like you know there's like the board dynamics of like do your board like each other because you might like all of them but they don't like each other And that can create you know tension So I never I never had any any board problems The only time I had a little bit of tension with my board was during acquisition And that was cause there was one board member that was really playing his fiduciary responsibility to like you know maximize the outcome And and I we, it was a little bit of disagreement on like when we should like continue to push on the negotiation where I felt I had pushed like I was on the frontline negotiating So I had all the Easy for the armchair quarterback to say you [01:38:00] gotta push harder in retrospect I guess so if

Logan: if nothing purposeful in retrospect uh if you were giving advice to someone and picking a board member picking an investor um would you probe on how deep they can go into the space and how unique their actual interest is in the space Would you just spend more time with them and get the vibe check and really pin that down Thank you Yeah that's a good question I mean I think that um yeah

Emery: I mean I think that especially you know Especially for I guess for all board members Um It's not dissimilar to hiring you know an executive like I think it's super important that you like each other you know like if you don't if you don't want to hang if you don't want to go to dinner with that person Uh this

is actually both this this very much applies to hiring executives and it's something that I kind of came around to Uh a little bit later yeah you don't have to be friends Like that's not what it's about to like work with someone I

Logan: think you

Emery: think you kind of do I think you have? to, like each other enough where like you There's some level of enjoyment of spending time each other. And I call that a friend. know, um, and I'm not super, I'm not like, I don't, I don't like hang with my employees a lot.

I'm not like friends, but you do have to like each other. I think that's important for the board. Like you, you got to like each other. I think their, their conviction in the space, in your space, their understanding of the space, I think really, really does matter. And then, and then I think you want to understand, you know, uh, like talk to other founders and founders, hopefully founders that have, It's probably much more valuable to talk to founders that, you know, of companies that did not succeed or went through some moment of crisis and understand how, uh, how how the board would, respond to that.

We did go through one moment of crisis where I had to like. I think was a, you know, the wrong board maybe would have led to, I can't talk about the moment, of crisis, but it was, I think the wrong board would have maybe led to a different outcome and it all turned out [01:40:00] to be totally fine because, um, because we had a good board.

So, you know, it it, it, it is a marriage.

Logan: Marriage with, uh, not necessarily the recourse of divorce, I guess. Uh, it's hard to divorce your

Emery: Yeah, also I think, you know, I, I, I've heard like other founders where you have like a board member, they're out of, they're out of, you know, they're out of fund, and like, you sort of don't think about it, but like, um, they leave the fund they're at, and then you're sort of like, giving over to somebody else, or whatever.

I mean, I think kind of understanding, Where they're at in their careers and, you know, their intentions of, I don't know, you can really like learn that much by asking, because whatever's going to happen is going to happen. But I think it's good to sort of maybe have a conversation around that and think about it.

Um, uh, I think the seniority of the person kind of does you know, Matter, Uh, it matters. I think the seniority of the person matters. There's probably some people that are not as senior that are just as helpful running the business, but the seniority matters in terms of like, let's leverage on. Being able to get stuff done for future rounds, whether it's them doing around or helping you do, you know, around with somebody else or however you construct that. Um, Voss was particularly, he, you know, Voss was actually kind of early in his career when we started working together. Um, he was, he was, he was pretty young. But, um, one of the things that Voss did do is we worked together on every single fundraising round. We worked together on every single pitch deck. We built every pitch deck together. Um. Every single one. I mean, I would go to his house and we'd sit down at his table and, you know, and, and, and go through the pitch and rewrite the pitch and practice the pitch. He was, he was particularly helpful on, uh, on, on pitching. Well,

Logan: Well, good.
Final Thoughts and Reflections

Logan: Well, Annemarie, thanks for doing this. This was fun. Yeah,

Emery: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Logan: Thank you this episode The Logan Bartlett Show with co founder and CEO of Frame, Emery Wells. If you enjoyed this discussion, we'd for subscribe on whatever you're us on as well as share that think might find interesting. We look forward to [01:42:00 you here next week on another great episode of The Logan Bartlett Show. Have a good weekend, everyone.