Trisha Price: [00:00:00] If you build software or lead people who do, then you're in the right place. This is hard calls, real decisions, real leaders, real outcomes. A few weeks back, MIT released its report that 95% of AI projects failed to yield measurable ROI. It impacted the stock market and it got all of us talking about what does it take to make an AI project drive real outcomes.

In this episode of Hard Calls, I chat with Ben Currin, the CEO of Vantaca. About this exact topic. What I love about Vantaca is that it's bringing AI innovation to an industry in need of disruption, community management, and HOAs. If you've ever been a part of an HOA, you know, it's such an important part of our community and it's one that AI and technology can truly help transform.

Ben shared with me tough decisions he and his team have had to make to implement successful [00:01:00] AI strategies from the inside out and the three things Ben balances to keep priorities in line. This is a conversation that product leaders from any industry will gain great insights and how to think about their AI projects differently and drive real outcomes.

Welcome to the show, Ben.

Ben Currin: Thanks, Trisha. This is a blast. Appreciate you having me. It's been so fun.

Trisha Price: Yes. Yeah. I'm so excited. Ben, since the podcast is called Hard Calls, we start every one of these with you talking to us about a challenging, hard call you've had to make anytime over your career recent. Just share something with us.

Ben Currin: It's a, that's a fun question, and I think there's micro hard calls every day, to maybe zoom out. What's a big memorable hard call in the last, last year or so? I think. Deciding on a direction of what it means to have an AI strategy is a was a really, and is a really hard call.

It's also, I mean, it's hard. It's the most important and probably best thing that we've done over the last several years, but that's hard to say. Hey, we've all been, and this isn't just Vantaca, we've all been. You know, spending all of our time and energy building software for humans for years and years and years.

And then [00:02:00] to think about what does it mean to enable humans to delegate all that work to AI and like what all is kind of a sunk cost of what you've built so far? And is that okay and is it not okay? And do you wanna hold on tight to it? So, I mean, that kind of big thing is, is probably the hard call.

And for us it was, you know, this is undeniably the future and it's. It is gonna be a great future and there's gonna be bumps along the way, but we have to jump all the way in the pool and not be afraid of, you know, how many sunk costs there are or what we have to go back and re-litigate in terms of things we've kind of held on tightly to before.

Trisha Price: I can't wait. I've been incredibly impressed with some of the hard calls you've made as it relates to that over this last year. and I can't wait to dive into it more over the podcast. Before we jump into that, maybe share a little bit about Vantaca and who Vantaca is and what makes you unique.

Ben Currin: Awesome.

Yeah, so, Vantaca is a [00:03:00] platform in the community association management space. So what the heck does that mean? Most of us know what a homeowner association is, or a condominium association, or a co-op. These are all community associations and so Vantaca's customers, who we kind of live to serve every day are the professional management companies who make that industry happen.

Who are the, you know, are kinda the connective tissue that gets the billing done to collect homeowner assessments, finds vendors, pays them, does all that back office work. That's what we do. That's who we are. And from a from a technology standpoint, how that manifests is a couple different layers. At our core, we are the general ledger accounting system for this industry.

So we're kind of a system of record. And then on top of that, we think of all of our workflows and the ways that these community association management companies get work done as a system of work. So it's where the work happens, and then kind of the pointy end of the spear [00:04:00] is the system of engagement for our customers’ customers.

So all the way through to how do they communicate with their customers, you know, whether it's email or text or any kind of communication. How do they transact with their customers, accept payments, engage with vendors? Kind of all that work, that's, that's the core of what we do and what we've done for a long time.

And now just to kind of like look ahead and what we're seeing today is. Now with ai, you kind of have this wrapper around this system of record and system of work and system of engagement. That, and I need to find a good way to describe this. It's almost like a system of orchestration or delegation where you can kind of allow agents to do so much of that work that was happening in the backgrounds background with humans previously.

Trisha Price: It's such an exciting time and impressive how far along you are with actual agents doing work for your customers. This isn't like some idea you have or a strategy. I mean, it is, but it's real and your customers are using it and it's in production, um, which I think probably is fairly unique compared to your competitors and for your space.

Ben Currin: It is. And, and what's fun, and I think this is the most, the, the most fun thing right now, um, when it comes to product is our industry, the community association management industry, HOA management. You might be shocked to hear Trisha, that historically it has not been the most technology forward or most innovative industry.

So a lot of what we've done, you know, over the past several years [00:06:00] is work to deliver technology solutions that catch this industry up to, you know, what's happening in other sectors. And what's really exciting right now is the community association management industry, in a lot of ways is leading the way of what's possible when you take a kind of traditional SaaS system of record, system of work, and wrap that up with an agentic layer that can really take on that, that kind of work that humans were previously having to do all manually, uh, in their software. So that's exciting. Getting to kind of, you know, lead and how, and see the, the community association management industry and our customers lead these other services industries is, is super exciting.

Trisha Price: It really is. And I know you, you have, you were working on AI and had already launched some AI features and products, um, before, but your acquisition of HOAi really seemed to, to leapfrog, um, and really, and really push you ahead [00:07:00] from a strategy perspective. Tell us a little bit about what prompted that acquisition and how that's changed your approach to AI within your platform.

Ben Currin: Yeah. So to rewind even further, I think we got really curious organizationally, not just me, not just our product team, but we got really curious as a company about what would be possible through AI. Really late 2022, early 2023, kind of when all of us had the aha chat GPT moment of like, wow, this is different.

This is a, this AI feels more real than, you know, what, what we had previously kind of all thought of as AI. And we got curious first as consumers and, and as users of software and, hey, how can we work more efficiently with this? How can we do a better job internally with these tools and pretty quickly in 2023, that curiosity and hunger to be better [00:08:00] internally turned into conviction that this should change the way that work gets done in our industry if it's helping us to, whether it's generate code or create content or whatever the case is.

It's helping us have this transformational growth in all these areas internally. Well, why aren't we delivering that to our customers? That it, why aren't we helping our industry have that same kind of transformation? And, and we did start to build internally, and built some really neat stuff. And I'm really proud of a lot of the things our, our team did build.

We launched Scout, which is kind of a chat-based, research assistant that kinda ride along with you in everything that you do and help you navigate and do your job better and more efficiently via Vantaca. But I'll speak for myself, I was super hungry for more. We were making progress and our progress was good.

It looked a lot like the progress that many kinda [00:09:00] leading SaaS platforms were making in terms of their AI strategy, but just felt like there was a transformational thing that could happen that we hadn't unlocked yet. And we were super lucky to connect with a couple of co-founders who had been part of Y Combinator a couple years before, and of all things we're laser focused on building an agentic, HOA, community management work. And when we got together very quickly, that curiosity of, okay, well that's interesting. Let's see if that's something different. We realized that how, what we saw as possible for the industry.

If we zoomed way out, if we look, you know, three or five years out. What we saw looked exactly the same. It was the kind of the same picture, and what we realized is to get there, we really needed each other. We were much better and much stronger together because this system of record, the system of work is incredibly important.

You know, the humans are the most important part of this industry. [00:10:00] It's how we build relationships, it's how we build community. You need a place to kind of operate from. But the humans are so bogged down with, you know, busy work and ba backoff tasks that you just can't, can't go do all the things that you know are possible in this industry.

So when you put those things together, kind of Vantaca as a system of record and the system of work and HOAI, it was really clear that that's, that's the future we wanted to be, uh, running toward together.

Trisha Price: That's incredibly exciting and I think the way you've executed on that acquisition, um, might be a little bit different than, you know, you didn't immediately come in and stop one roadmap and that be your only AI strategy.

You didn't just loop it in and sell it as an add-on. Like you've, you've thought about really interesting ways to make that acquisition successful, and I think it's been really successful for you and your customers. Talk to us about. How you executed on it.

Ben Currin: Well, one, I think a [00:11:00] benefit for us and for the HOAi team, kind of together coming, coming together is we were, it was the perfect time to do it.

There wasn't so much baggage, there wasn't so much history to kind of unwind. So we were able to say, okay, well, what do we believe is possible with, with these platforms together? What, what should be possible and how can we orient around that’s the hard call. And then the thing that I, I think we are, are hopefully getting right, but the thing that we're running towards pretty quickly is from day one, the most important thing for us is to say, well, what do we believe and what do we have conviction about in the future now that we didn't a month ago or a quarter ago or a year ago?

And for us it was, it was. Total conviction that the infrastructure of the system of record, the infrastructure of the system of work has to be both built for. [00:12:00] Humans and agents to do the work because it, it wasn't putting all of our eggs in one basket or the other, which is a, a real kind of important thing, uh, to consider.

So really looking at every part of our roadmap and saying, does this lead to agents being able to do this work or be able to ride beside the human who's ultimately accountable for the delivery of this? Work and how can that be most complimentary to the humans, you know, at at community association management companies doing this work.

And so that was key. That was kind of the most important thing, is to just go back and, and really re-litigate everything that we thought about, um, how to deliver product and, and what the ultimate requirements are there. And as you know, Trisha, that that did result in us changing directions or pivoting in huge ways from a, you know, how we thought about infrastructure and backend services and kind of all of those things.

And, you know, there's some real [00:13:00] human emotions to manage through that. But it, it was part, probably the most important thing that we did as part of that acquisition and evolution.

Trisha Price: I'm glad you brought that up, Ben. It's actually something I was gonna ask about next, about the human emotion and as the CEO how you led your team through, um, that emotional change, but also the mindset shift right to this, you know, everything you build and everything you have built needs to be executable.

Easily by humans and needs a great UI for human humans too, as well as agents. And that probably took some training, changing in skill sets, bringing in new people, just like the whole change management aspect of that. I think you've done so beautifully. Tell us how you led the team through that.

Ben Currin: Well, Trisha, it's nice to that you're saying we've done it beautifully. We've skinned our knees a [00:14:00] bunch along the way too, so we, we met, we mess it up just as much as everyone else, but I think it all starts with conviction and where you're going. And as long as like. If, if that foundation is really solid and if we're all aligned on that to say this is the future that we believe in and we're super excited about and no matter what we want to get there, then all the other kind of hard things, and whether it's sunk costs or uh, pivots or trade-offs, all that stuff are, that's just the details of, of how we get there.

And so I think about putting a ton of energy. Around that alignment to, you know, where are we going, why is it important? Is that a future that we're super excited about? We believe in and, and will, will it result in our customers winning? And you know, do we, do we have conviction that we can get there?

And if that's the case, then we just keep kind of asking ourselves, are we doing the next most important thing? Did we learn something new today that causes us to go back and have to, you know, [00:15:00] change our mind about something we thought yesterday? I think that's a, that's a huge part of my job is, um, making sure that we all understand why we're doing the big stuff and why it matters.

And then we can, we can kind of, we can iterate through on, on a lot of the little things.

Trisha Price: I mean, you know this as well as anyone. Maybe product managers, even more than engineers, but probably both. I mean, when they've built something or they have a roadmap, there's a lot of like, this is my baby, and you cannot totally change my mind, and I hear your conviction, but trust me, I've been talking to customers, I've done my discovery, I know the data, I have the facts, and I'm convicted.

I know you've experienced that. And yet you're, you're powering through.

Ben Currin: Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. And that, that is that's hard. And I think for everyone, [00:16:00] you can't. That, that kind of conviction, you can't outsource that to anyone else. Everyone has to get there and it, it's helpful for everyone to share a lot of, whether it's the product team or sales or engineers or you've gotta share your individual experiences, but you've gotta also go and whether it's touch the data or talk to the customers and, and kind of get to that level of, of conviction on your own.

Otherwise, it, it's hard. And it's easy to hold on to things that were important in the past.

Trisha Price: Yeah. So tell me how you, you've clearly executed both by organic build as well as acquisition on AI, but it's equally important in this world of SaaS to keep the customer experience and the back to basics as a priority. How have you managed to balance those two things and [00:17:00] how do you, how do you lead the teams through that balance?

Ben Currin: Yeah, I think, I think what's really important is saying there's probably three, three things that I think if you stay close to these three things and you find ways to kind of balance these three, and you can't just go all in on one versus the other.

One, it's important one, like stay close to the customers, whether you're the CEO of the business or an engineer, or certainly a product leader, but stay close to the customers and like listen and ask a ton of questions and just be really curious about how they see the world. And what they're excited about and what they're scared about, and kind of everything in between.

So stay close to the customers. Two, stay close to the product itself. It's not enough to, you know, watch a demo or to, uh, look at data, you know, usage data that's not nearly enough. Like you gotta go touch the product a lot every day and, uh, and kind of get conviction that. [00:18:00] This, this whatever we're building or this experience is what the is what the demo would lead you to believe or what, what the data says, because the data can, can be misleading on that in, on that front too.

And the last is being data driven as well. It's, it's one thing to, you know. Listen to customers. It's one thing to touch the product, but at the end of the day, like you have to be grounded in some sort of data. It can certainly confuse you, it can be conflicting, but if you marry those three together, I think, I think that's a really important way to stay in touch and again, like to get to having conviction on the direction you wanna go.

Trisha Price: Ben, you're a leader who doesn't ask things of your team that you also are not willing to do. And it's one of the things I, I really appreciate and admire about you. And so I'd love for you to share with our listeners today. [00:19:00] How did you get close to the customer and close to the product when you first joined Vantaca many years ago?

Ben Currin: Yeah, I know you've, you've heard me say this, so you're put putting me on the spot with, with a funny story, but I, well, one, um, I was, I was incredibly lucky to join the Vantaca team at a really cool time, which is kind of not day zero, but day like one or two. So we had just a couple of customers and we were just starting to kind of sell the product to strangers and, and figure all that stuff out. And so everything was like, the experiences were all small. These weren't millions and millions of homes that we got managed. It was, it was less than that. And our customers, we knew all their names and we knew 'em well, and we knew their kids.

You know, it was kind of that, that phase. But when I joined it, it was really important for me to become deeply, deeply fluent in not only, not only the product certainly, but, but how our customers use the product and every bit [00:20:00] about their business. And so what I did, this is kind of a, a strategy because everyone was busy and no one had time to, you know, just teach it to me.

I talked to our, at the time, one man support team, and said, Hey, I want to, I wanna take a crack at all these support tickets and just kind of get first look at 'em. And for, uh, I don't know, six months or so, in my first six months, the first few hours of every day, every support ticket would come in, I'd try to solve it, go recreate whatever they were asking about in the software.

If I didn't understand it, I'd call the person. So many of our early customers got a lot of phone calls from, you know, a confused Ben Currin asking, Hey, I know you submitted this, and I don't know what that means exactly, you know, and let me ask you some questions about it, and I'll come back to you once I understand what you need.

That was incredibly helpful just to get close to you know, how our customers are winning, how they're struggling, what matters to [00:21:00] them. And if you do that, I think it'd be an interesting strategy for a product leader today. If you do that for a few months, it's hard not to have conviction about what the most important things are because you're really close to it.

You're really close to the customers, you're close to the product. Hopefully you've got the right telemetry and data as well. And, and once you do that. It works.

Trisha Price: And I know that's something that many of your successful leaders that are there today, even at this size and scale, continue to do and it's, it's worked well for you.

Ben Currin: Yeah. Yeah. It's a, I mean, it's an ongoing journey and it's probably maintaining that closeness to all three of those things. Is harder with scale, not easier. I think when you're small, like everyone talks to every customer and everyone uses the product all the time and you're close to the data because you know you're touching it every day.

I think it's easy for people at scale to specialize too much into some of those areas and lose broader awareness [00:22:00] or, or kind of outsource their conviction to, you know, to others on the team in those areas.

Trisha Price: I love that.

Going back to Vantaca's roots, you know, there's something you and I have a lot in common is when I came to nCino, nCino had spun out of a bank and then became a SaaS company. Vantaca was the same way, right? It was an idea out of a community management company and became its own independent SaaS company.

And with that, there's challenges of transforming the company from being IT and automation to product-led. And clearly you've been successful with that and you continue to do it. [00:23:00] Like even last week, I know you were playing around with new modern product management approaches and tools. So talk to me about for folks who are going through that type of transformation to really becoming product led and a true product centric company, how you made that successful and how you continue to invest in yourself and the team with product-led approaches.

Ben Currin: It's a, it's a good question. I think that's, it's complicated because you don't always know or ever know when you are making that transition or transformation to becoming product led. It's like there's probably a continuum. And so yeah, you don't wake up

Trisha Price: one day and you're like, we did it. We climbed the mountain.

We're product led. We passed the exam.

Ben Currin: Yeah, exactly right. There's like that. At least I haven't had that exact moment, but maybe, maybe I'll, we'll, we'll have it at some point. I think early on when, especially for a, you [00:24:00] know, whether it's a company like nCino in, in kind of the experience you had or Vantaca coming from frustrated software users and consumers to, you know, and, and kind of birthing that into, you know, a better, a better way to solve these challenges.

You go, you have to at some point go from just knowing what the right answer is to being curious. About how to get to the right answer. And I think that's kind of the, the inflection point where at some point, and, and, and, and. At some point, you go from just being able to know the answers because you know the answers and you've touched it, and you've lived it, and you're building, you know, a, a solution that you understand to one, having enough diversity in your customers, that they have problems that are unique to them, or opportunities that are unique that you don't understand or didn't have understanding of.

And as the team is growing and building, you're able to bring in incredibly talented product. Managers, product leaders, engineers who don't [00:25:00] have any background in this industry. And so creating kind of systems or creating a mindset and a philosophy with those teams to allow them to go and get that conviction and go kind of touch, you know, the customers and the opportunities and, and understand where we're going, and then build the things to get there.

So I, I think that's really important and really hard. But for all of us, like it is the thing I think I've, there's lots of ways to think about kind of different companies being product led or sales led. And I think if you're a technology company and you're selling technology like you have to you, if you're not product led, you're slowly decaying, uh, in terms of, of how your customers will interact with your products in the future.

Trisha Price: Yeah. But then again, your sales team's on the front line and know what it takes to hit their quotas. And you have to balance listening to them too. It can't be your whole product strategy. Yeah, yeah. But there has to be a good connection, [00:26:00] which

Ben Currin: Yeah, no, there, there has to be, and that's the hardest, I mean, it's the hardest thing probably about product leadership is finding the balance of all those things.

I mean, inherently, salespeople have this benefit of they're talking to the industry who isn't yet using your product so they should be bringing in new perspective and have a diversity of kind of perspective there. And that's, that's useful. It's just not the whole thing. Yeah, so you can't over index, you can't overweight or underweight any of those things.

Trisha Price: So I think recently you played with some of the new tools like Lovable or Bowl to do some prototyping, and I think your team did too, in terms of, of putting some effort and time into utilizing those tools. Tell me what that's been like and um, how you think about those types of tools impacting how you build product going forward.

Ben Currin: One, it's just fun. [00:27:00] So I think everyone, whether you're a product manager or a designer or an engineer or a product leader or just, you know, anyone within the business who's curious, like it, it's a blast to kind of, to, to use these tools and see what's possible. What, I've found, I'll share personally where I found it incredibly useful and then what I, how I think it will add value to our kind of product.

Systems and our product motions with our team personally, I've found it incredibly helpful as a communication tool. So for me it it like, it, it's one thing to, you know, sit through a discussion and talk about where we're going and kind of hear what we think is possible and listen to customer feedback and then to iterate with the product team to kind of articulate, here's what I think and here's what I'm curious about.

And I have this hypothesis and and, and position it in a way that other people can kind of iterate and take it and make it better [00:28:00] and you know, throw stuff away. And instead of trying to like do that through you know, a discussion via, with words or even more challenging, like writing it up, like, you know, trying to write a, you know, a description of this, you know, this product or this idea that, uh, that you're curious about. It's just hard. But building a clickable prototype in an hour on a Saturday and sharing that with the team and saying, this is what I took away from that meeting. What did you guys take away? What did you know?

How did the, how did you see this coming together? And being able to put those types of true kind of real products together just can accelerate the understanding and the kind of the growth of, of the idea by making it more real for everyone who's involved.

Trisha Price: I love that.

Ben Currin: I, oh, I guess that's, for me, that's so, that's selfish.

That's like, that's what I, yeah. Like that's, that helps me. You can this

Trisha Price: idea, I mean, you're so close to the product. You're so close to the [00:29:00] customer and you have ideas and you wanna be able to share them with your team. What an easy, quick, modern way to share them.

Ben Currin: The, the, and, yeah, exactly right. That's, and so that's selfishly for me for our teams and for our kind of product management system for our product leaders.

I think that where this is gonna be most game changing is to, instead of just talking to customers and asking them like, what do you want? What problems are you trying to solve? And, and really just kind of consuming that information, you can take that information and then instead of say, okay, great, I'm gonna, you know, mock something up or whatever, you can like, make it real for them.

Like, this is what I heard from you. This is what you asked for, but here is what I think actually would solve your problem. Like, does that, does that change its perspective and that cycle time that used to take, you know, weeks or months or, or longer in the worst case, can be shortened down to like, okay, thank you for that feedback.

Give [00:30:00] me an hour and we'll come back together and have like a, a totally different version of this discussion. I think that's so exciting and the kind of speed of iteration, I think is gonna massively accelerate.

Trisha Price: Yeah, I do too. It's so fun to watch how product is changing and how fast they can go. I mean, I've always said, and I still believe this to be true, that engineering resources are a company's gold and you really can't waste a moment of their time.

But you have to be able to play, you have to be able to prototype, to innovate and be a product company. And I think these tools just allow us to do a lot more of that imagination of the possible and art of the possible, and iterate and get feedback and get alignment. Then engage with engineering to make this real in a way that I think is changing the [00:31:00] game.

Ben Currin: I'll share one funny example. We've always believed in a lot of experimentation, a lot of iteration, and like just testing out ideas and not everyone is gonna be perfect, and it's very hard, even when you kind of organizationally and culturally give that permission that, Hey, we're gonna build some stuff.

Let's get some feedback. Some of 'em are gonna be dead ends, and that's okay. It is hard to get people to build it, not knowing if it's gonna be right. And I think this, this kind of next era of, of product leadership and product management gives the opportunity to be not certain, but have such deeper customer backed conviction that what you're building is, you know, you're going down the right track.

I think. I think that's super exciting.

Trisha Price: I do too. I do too. So tell me, beyond product, what are other places in the organization where you've made similar strides [00:32:00] forward in terms of efficiency and effectiveness using AI across Vantaca?

Ben Currin: Yeah. The biggest couple of areas that immediately come to mind are engineering itself, so like code gen and the ability to move much, much quicker on that front.

Tools, whether it's just using Claude kind of organically or Cursor and combinations of the two and various kind of automated QA testing tools. Like there's so much that's possible on the really the whole SDLC, but like the kind of going from product kind of discovery through build. That's probably the biggest, biggest area of impact.

Another great one is things like marketing and content. Just like having like a, you know, almost like a study buddy be able to ride shotgun with you and just help you move so much faster and kind of [00:33:00] get through, whether it's writer's block or whatever the case is.

Those are, those are some of the highlight examples, but it's everywhere. I mean, it's, it's every, every part of our business.

Trisha Price: It is. So, Ben, as we, as we start to close out today for our listeners, you know, tell us what are you thinking about from product strategy for the future. How you think about, you know, now that you've executed on this acquisition, like what's next?

What's really cutting edge in terms of, of how you're thinking about your product and in the next couple of years, or even couple of months? Because you guys are moving pretty quick.

Ben Currin: Yeah, well, I, I think there's a couple, there's a couple of vectors to kind of go down on that. One is going back and looking internally and saying all, what are all the things that humans had to do in software previously?

And for us it's what are all the ways that humans have to interact with Vantaca? And they've always had to do that and where are [00:34:00] friction points within that. Not because something's bad or a bug necessarily, but just friction points because hey, this is just a cumbersome thing or it's repetitive, or whatever the case is, and it, it wasn't something that could be cleanly automated to kind of use that.

That word, it's something that would be better delegated if, if you could, you know, have someone take that on. So that's one vector is just going and finding all those friction points and whether it's, you know, more traditional kind of, you know, software as service work, you know, SaaS work to go do that.

Or if it's service as software work to where we can go and allow our human users to delegate some more of that to agents. Like that's kind of vector one. And then vector two is like, where else are, is there friction that we can help help our customers solve? That just was outside kind of the realm of possibility previously, whether it's outside of Anica or just outside of what was possible through traditional technology.

I think that's those are kind of the two [00:35:00] big vectors. And, and from a, here's the, I'll give you an analogy that I don't, I don't know if it's a good one, so I'll, I'll throw it out there and you can tell me. But I think when it, when it does come to kind of product in the future, we have as, as a software company and as a system of record, as a system of work, as a system of engagement.

And now with this agentic layer of kind of orchestration around it, we have this really cool challenge right now, which my, my analogy here is a car. And so most of us have ridden in a Tesla, like if you like or don't like Teslas, we'll put that aside. Most of us have ridden in one and, uh, and are aware that.

Tesla has this self-driving capability and like they FSD (full self-driving) and it's pretty tremendous. If you, if you've checked it out in the last few months, it's gotten pretty amazing. And what I think the evolution is, is now if you look at the interior of a Tesla and like what is the interior of a car in this age of AI, there's way less stuff, you [00:36:00] know, there, you don't have.

You know, cruise control settings to, you know, because it just is gonna follow at the right distance, or you don't have, you know, wiper control speed because it's just gonna wipe, you know, wipe the, the, the water droplets when they fall. And there's way less stuff, right? You can, you don't need all 11 different climate controls.

It's just, Hey, I want to be, you know, 70 degrees in my car, make that happen. So, but you do, there are certain things that are persistent that are still there and are sticky and make you comfortable. Like if I got in a Tesla and there was no brake pedal or no steering wheel, I'd be alarmed in 2025, I probably wouldn't go, you know, take that car for a drive.

And so I, I think as we all build software there's a lot of work to figure out like what's a brake pedal and a steering wheel and what's not and what should be, what's in the way of a really clean and simple and, and delightful experience. So I, I think that's, that's really [00:37:00] exciting work ahead is to go figure that out and get conviction about what's durable and important and additive to the user experience and what's in the way, uh, of having a great user experience.

Trisha Price: And that, I mean, that is just changing so much. And that's a different way of thinking for your product team, your UX team, your engineering team is not, how do I perfect this workflow with the least amount of clicks, but what's the brake and the steering wheel and how do I offload everything else? Um, you know, make sure my user feels in control when they need to be, but offload everything else to automation and agentic work.

Um, I love that, that I think that's a, a great way of thinking.

Ben Currin: Yeah, totally.

Trisha Price: Great. Well, Ben, one final thing I just can't not touch on is we have both built, led software companies in a very non-traditional town. Right. For our listeners, [00:38:00] I live in Wilmington, North Carolina, Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.

It's where nCino, which is where I was before I came to Pendo headquarters, is, and it's also where Vantaca’s headquarters is and where Ben lives. And if you don't know where Wilmington or Riceville Beach is, you can go look it up, but it's a pretty small town. What do we have about 250,000 people here, Ben?

Ben Currin: I think that's right. Yeah.

Trisha Price: Maybe a little more now. Yeah. That everyone started now we're probably gonna grow after this. No, I'm just kidding. But as you guys, as listeners can imagine, non-traditional tech talent, non-traditional place to build a software company. Yet I think it's created a special and different dynamic.

And as you guys have heard from today's episode, Ben and Vantaca are very far along on the AI curve, both using AI internally as well as launching AI products and features. So talk to us about how you think about that as an advantage and [00:39:00] how you still manage to make it work.

Ben Currin: Well, you teed me up probably unintentionally, but maybe perfectly to say thank you to you and to the nCino team, or just where nCino was in their journey when we were just getting started, gave us a lot of confidence that we could build a real big lasting, impactful software company headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina.

I was, I don't know, not not worried, but aware that it might be a bug, not a feature to be headquartered here. Although we love it and it's an amazing place to live. It's an amazing place to raise our kids, like, you know, all those things. But I think seeing you see a little bit of, of the results of other people being able to do it and you have the confidence to try.

And what we've found over the last, you know, eight years or so is it is [00:40:00] absolutely a feature, not a bug for us. Are our team members who are lucky enough to live here, I think view that as one of the most impactful benefits to working at Vantaca and to their families' lives for being able to be here.

So that's, that's amazing. It's a great place for people to be, and we've had so many really cool success stories of folks who started working at Vantaca, living somewhere else in the US and after visiting for some, you know, team meetings and some onsites and, and different things ended up saying, this is amazing. I'm gonna move here. And it's been, you know, a, a great thing not only for them but for the Wilmington community to bring in super talented, amazing, smart people and their families. So that's great. And selfishly, I'm very, very grateful to be here. It's a spectacular place to live, and it's cool now with whether it's nCino [00:41:00] or Vantaca or kind of the next crop of companies here to show more proof points that you can do that. And we can build great companies.

Trisha Price: Yeah, to our listeners, whether it's Wilmington, North Carolina, or it's Raleigh where Pendo is, or you know, somewhere in Indiana or Ohio. Totally. Yeah. I think what we want and hope everyone to take away is yes, there's a lot of amazing talent in the tech hubs of the Bay Area or even New York or Boston, but, you can do it anywhere. And in a lot of ways it's, I agree with you, it's a feature, not a bug to be able to get outside and of those areas and build a real community of people that buy into the vision and and execute as a group. So I love what you've done and Ben, major, congratulations to you and Vantaca.

I know it is the best is yet to come, and it's still [00:42:00] early innings for you. But it's been so fun to watch your success and your leadership and appreciate you coming on Hard Calls today and sharing with us some of your moments that matter and hard calls and, and some of the tips and tricks that have worked for you and Vantaca to get here.

Ben Currin: Yeah. Awesome. Trisha, thank you for letting me join you for a fun conversation. This has been great.

Trisha Price: Thanks, Ben. Thank you for listening to Hard Calls, the product podcast, where we share best practices and all the things you need to succeed. If you enjoyed the show today, share with your friends and come back for more.