NOEL: Hello and welcome to the Tech Done Right Podcast, Table XI's podcast about building better software, careers, companies and communities. I'm Noel Rappin. If you like the podcast and would like to encourage us to continue, please follow us on Twitter at @tech_done_right or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews really do help new listeners find our show. You can also now leave comments on our website at techdoneright.io and we have a newsletter where you can find interesting stories, podcast news and some mini-essays from me. You can subscribe at http://techdoneright.io/newsletter. Thanks. Today on Tech Done Right, I talked to Maci Peterson and Alicia Drucker. Maci is the CEO of On Second Thought, a company that lets you take back texts or internet messages that you sent by mistake. Alicia is Table XI's Director of Software Delivery. We talked about how Maci took an embarrassing text and turned it into an idea and then into a company and what it's like being an entrepreneur who happens to be a black woman and how supporting a diverse and inclusive team can benefit both your employees and your company. Just one other note, we had an unusually high number of audio quality issues this time around. I hope you find the show worth listening to despite those issues. Maci, would you like to introduce yourself? MACI: Sure. I am Maci Peterson, the Co-Founder and CEO on On Second Thought and I am excited to be here with you, Noel and Alicia. Thank you for having me. NOEL: Thanks for being here and we also have Alicia Drucker. ALICIA: Hi, I am the Director of Software Delivery for Table XI and I'm excited to get a chance to talk to Maci. NOEL: Maci, why don't you tell us a little bit about On Second Thought and how you came to start the company and what that experience has turned out to be like? MACI: Yeah. That's a great compound question. I don't know about you guys but have you ever been sent a text that you wish you could take back? NOEL: Yes. I usually want to edit grammatical mistakes but I'm weird that way. MACI: No, I'm the same yay. On Second Thought, lets you take back text messages before they got to the other person. I came up with the idea after autocorrect horribly editing one of my messages, it likes to change around words. After one particularly embarrassing incident that involved an ex-boyfriend and I couldn't take the message back, I realized there had to be a way. When I realized there wasn't and I also found out that many people have been in a similar predicament, I decided to see if there was a there there with creating an ability to undo messages. I got started by winning first place with the idea in a pitch competition at South by Southwest and that was validation that not only was it a good idea but it was also a viable business. From there, I brought on my co-founder, Stewart who is a good friend from college and we started building the messaging app and it's been a really interesting experience with, of course the high-highs and the low-lows that make you wonder if you're part of Dante's Inferno. But overall, it's been one of the most incredible experiences of my life and I really do say that it's a true blessing and privilege to be able to wake up every day and bring something to the world that I know has a positive impact but that I'm also deeply passionate about that I think falls directly within my mission for my life. NOEL: I've never really been at a pitch competition. What was that like and what do you think was the thing that put you over the top there? MACI: Well, all pitch competitions are different. This one in particular was about 200 people in a room at South By, with a panel of about five judges from companies, including Sprint, Big Commerce, NASDAQ and a couple of venture capitalists. About 20 companies pitched. I was the first up and I think part of it had to do with just being blessed and a lot with that first and last recency in terms of peoples memories. I think what stuck is the fact that we solve a problem that pretty much everyone has had. We've conducted surveys and from that surveys, that 71% of people have sent a text that they want to take back, that an additional 87% wish they had the ability to undo text messages. I think because it such a simple problem and our technology is a clear solution, that is likely why not only did we win that competition but we've seen such traction within the marketplace among consumers, as well as with our client licensees. NOEL: How many people do you have working for you now? MACI: We have a team of seven right now and we're adding about six positions between now and the end of the summer. NOEL: What's been surprising about the process of taking this from an idea to a company that has employees and customers? MACI: I think the most surprising thing is where we are now and that stems from our thesis behind how we bring our technology to the public and deliver it to the public. We started off as a messaging app to let you take back text messages because we thought that was the best way to solve the problem, needing to take back messages. Quickly, we realized as we spread to 190 countries that people needed the ability to undo tons of other messages like peer-to-peer remittances that they send via like M-Pesa or social media posts like our president constantly needs to undo his tweets because he said he delete them because of typos or even attorneys telling us, "I've actually sent the wrong contract to the wrong client." Or many professionals have had that email snafu. We realized people are having a lot of troubles and making a lot of mistakes in mobile environment. We know that our technology can fix it. However, it doesn't make the most sense for all of that to happen within one app environment. About a year ago, we were approached by wireless carriers about licensing our technology. With that, we decided to pivot from being a B2C company to B2B2C of sorts. We licensed our technology to this platform in order to allow their customers to fix their myriad problems or mistakes that they make. I think that's the most surprising thing that in the beginning, I thought we were going to be direct to consumer and the next WhatsApp or whatever and to have the change and pivot to B2B was not necessarily something that I saw coming. But it's a strategy that I fully believe in. I think that's the best way to deliver the best service and product to our customers. But it also allows our technology to be ubiquitous so they can fix any mistakes they make in any mobile environment. ALICIA: I had a question, let's back up a little bit. I'm wondering how you got from realizing that you've sent that text that was bad for you and your relationship to South by Southwest. How did you get from the tech to the idea to the pitch competition? MACI: When I sent that text to ex-boyfriend -- he and I actually had been broken up for six months so it made the text message even more embarrassing -- immediately after sending it, I texted the number of my friends asking if they had ever sent messages that they wanted to take back. I did that to validate that this is a problem, that more people have than just me and my clumsiness. Once I had that validation and all of my friends overwhelmingly said, yes, they had that problem, I knew there was something there and it was something that I basically kicked to the back of my mind and continued to think about. Then a few months later, I found out about a pitch competition at South by Southwest and they were calling for everything from ideas to companies and I thought, I have an idea and that's all I have. I applied to the pitch competition with the idea of On Second Thought. The competition was on a Friday. That Monday, I learned that I'd been invited to pitch and through a series of miracles that included riding in cars with strangers, very light hitchhiking and flying standby, I made it to the competition. Like I said, out of the 20 companies, we won first place. It was really one of those things where at the right place at the right time, I had an idea. They were looking for ideas. I happened to open up that email from Startup Grind or Startup Weekend about the pitch competition and I just had the audacity to believe that I had something -- an idea -- that was worth presenting and that I thought could win. ALICIA: That's a really interesting story and during another conversation, I'd be interested in digging into what light hitchhiking means exactly. But once you won the pitch competition, Noel asked a good question about what was surprising about having this become a company. It's very interesting to hear about how you pivoted to B2B. But I am curious, how did you go from, "I won at pitch competition," to, "Now, I'm going to start a technology company." It looks like your educational background isn't in tech. How did you make that leap? MACI: It was truly a leap of faith. At that time, I had just joined Marriott and I was doing brand management and innovation for that by day. After winning the competition, I thought, well, now I have to make this a thing. Especially since we garnered some press as a result of our win. I called my good friend and ask him to join me as my co-founder. I'd work at Marriott by day and work on On Second Thought by night. It's not as though I immediately quit my job. I quit Marriott about nine months later. By the time I had done that, we'd already released our app into the Play Store we already had a sizable group of users or user base. We'd already raised a pretty good amount of friends and family money and we'd also, already garnered a lot of press. When I finally took that leap of faith and left my career to do this whole time, I'd already de-risked little bit. Granted, I had no idea that I would face some of the things I faced as a founder because you can only de-risk launching a company so much and working out on it full time so much. But it had gotten to a point where I realized there is a there there, this is something that I could grow into a very successful company. NOEL: What is it been like being a founder? What was it like getting funding? You said you started with friends and family money, at what point have you been able to get other investors? What challenges did you have while you were doing that? MACI: Raising friends and family was really easy. We actually didn't have to pitch any friends and family. They were all inbound requests saying, "Maci, I really believe in you. I believe in what you're working on. Can I invest?" The fact that we had received so much press attention while raising our friends and family round definitely helped so that every time I posted a story on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter, I pretty much get a phone call from someone in my network wanting to invest in my company. As a result, we raised about $150,000 from friends and family. In addition to that, we won a couple of other pitch competitions which yielded about another $60,000. We had a pretty good financial basis to get things up and running. Then from there, we raised angel capital and then we've also raised venture capital as a result of just persistence and prayer. Also, demonstrating that we can meet our metrics that we have product/market fit that we can also grow into a multi-billion dollar company because the total market value is billions of dollars. Actually, it's hundreds of billions of dollars and our adjustable market is tens of billions. All of those things made it easier or it made sense for venture capital investors to put their money into our company. ALICIA: There's a lot of detail about how Silicon Valley can be a difficult place to break into. There's a whole show about this and about navigating all of the politics and layers and kind of ridiculous situations that entrepreneurs like yourself find your company falling into. Did you feel that the established group there was hard to break into or did it feel like your product was just resonating so much that it wasn't an issue? MACI: I would say that the Bay Area in general, just socially is a beast of its own. It's unlike any other region I've ever lived in. It's very different from Chicago, DC, Atlanta, LA, even. It's just its own true ecosystem, environment and culture. I would say that, in general the Bay Area is just its own different animal and it can be challenging. However, when I came to moving out there and getting involved, I would say I had two things going for me and one is that I am a woman and the other thing is that I'm black. Because of those two things and because there are only a handful of women founders who have raised over a million dollars, it made it so that people like me are at the forefront of many others minds. When it came to funding, that was challenging. However, in terms of just getting help and exposure and people willing to be an ally and roll up their sleeves and help us figure out and tackle this problem that we were solving, I would say that the community has been extremely supportive. Of course, you're going to run into the more challenging personalities, that I would say that's true of any industry and anybody. ALICIA: Would you say that, in the sense the focus on the lack of inclusivity and diversity in Silicon Valley in the last couple of years has actually been an advantage for you? MACI: Been a huge advantage. I mean, granted, it doesn't put me in a place at privilege and it still requires me to work twice as hard in order to be considered half as good or good enough. That is still true however, I would say that there is, at least a projected, conscious, desire to make Silicon Valley a more inclusive and diverse place, and also just see diverse entrepreneurs succeed. As a result of that and the fact that we're solving a problem that everyone believes in and the fact that I've been blessed that a lot of people had just drawn to me and my personality, that they've been wanting and willing and offering to roll up their sleeves to help us, bring our solution, not only into the marketplace but to make it as successful as possible. I'll give you an example. Last week, I met with an investor who I've known for a couple of years. I met him right before I moved out to San Francisco. He has time between two funds. He's leaving one and joining another. We're at lunch and he said to me, "You know Maci, I just really believe in what you're doing and I really believe in you. I would like to know if you would be okay with me interning for you while I'm in this transition. I think your product could do really well, outside of the US as well, as within the US which you're already seeing traction there. Would you let me try to open up some of these international markets for you? Would you allow me to introduce to you to some potential partners or people who can help navigate in those countries. I don't need you to pay me. I don't want equity, I just want to help you." There are a lot of people like that within Silicon Valley and within the Bay Area and those are the folks who are really at forefront of driving change when it comes to diversity and inclusion and bringing really great businesses into the spotlight but also into the marketplace in an impactful way. ALICIA: Do you ever have a mixed or complex reaction to the impulse that folks might have around seeing a black woman CEO walk in their door. I, myself am a white woman, who has sometimes felt like I walked into a building and somebody's eyes lit up like, "Oh, a woman. Great." That's the kind of attitude that I'm kind of asking about. It's great that it has been an advantage and it's great that the timing has been really good for some of the focus that has been on Silicon Valley but I'm just curious. It seems like that's an area where you might be like, "Oh, this is good but I'm also a little conflicted in my general emotions about it." MACI: Yeah. No one necessarily sees me at the beginning of the meeting and are just like, "Wow, I'm so glad you're a woman and you're here." I think also the idea that that is what opened up our doors would diminish the value and the success and the cachet of our business. I think the first reason why people want to talk to us is because we have a great product, we have really good traction and we solve a problem that everyone has and everyone wants to have the ability to undo things and to fix their mistakes before they get to the other person. Beyond that, the bigger thing is people want more control over their personal brand and our technology allows you to do that. I think that's what gets us in the door. I think that's why we're interesting. I think that's why people want to talk to us. I hope and I believe that is not overshadowed by the fact that I am a black woman. I think that it's just like an "and to". Just like, you have a great business, your product is amazing, it's getting this great traction. It's received all this funding. Oh, wow, and it's run by a woman. That's wow. I think that's more of a second thought, no pun intended, than the highlight and the foundational thought. NOEL: Do you find, when you're hiring that you have any advantage or disadvantage over other companies? I guess with only seven employees, it's kind of hard to tell but do you feel like you have a more diverse and inclusive hiring process than other similar companies? Is that something you're consciously trying to do? Or is it not something that you worry about? MACI: Funny, I was asked a similar question the other day and I wouldn't say that we have a diverse and inclusive hiring process but diversity and inclusion is at the heart of our company just given the fact that it's founded by two minorities. We naturally attract women. We naturally attract minorities and we naturally attract the best of the best of them. We don't have to say, we want to see the best candidates, oh and be sure that there are some women and minorities as well. We get resumes from and we talk to and we know and we hire the best people, period, and we have an extremely diverse team. That's something that I am very excited about and very proud of. The fact that these people who are highly qualified and very successful, believe in what we're doing and my vision and have joined us in bringing it into fruition. NOEL: I know from talking to some of the people that we've hired that it's very important to go to the About page or the Team page of a company and see people who look like you. I would imagine that that gives you an advantage when dealing with engineers who are from different kinds of underrepresented groups, that they see this as a place that they're not going to have to be the first one or the only person in the room. MACI: Right. I would say that our team has folks from pretty much every background. I think the other thing and it's a point of laziness that I call Silicon Valley out on that is that we know where to look. We know where to recruit. I had a conversation with this gentleman last week when I was speaking on a panel and he's like, "You know, I just don't know where to find qualified women." And I said to him, "Have you tried recruiting from the Seven Sisters Schools? Have you tried recruiting from Spellman College? How about contacting the sororities and plugging into their alumni networks?" It's not like women are hidden that you have to have like a secret password in order to get to them. You have to be creative and know where to look and it's not even a matter of creativity. It's just a matter of not being lazy and always going to the same people or the same places and all these having the same network. It's about expanding and by expanding your thought process, you also expand your talent pool. NOEL: Maybe, it's about two years ago now, I saw a talk at Madison Ruby Conference from a woman who was calling out New York area companies for not recruiting in her neighborhood in the Bronx, more of a minority neighborhood and making the same point like, "We're here. We're ready to be recruited," and it is just very hard to get attention. MACI: Right. ALICIA: But I do think it's fair to call that out as some laziness MACI: That's all it is. ALICIA: Because all these companies have set channels where they're getting their existing candidate pool from and the matter of expanding that to different locations. I know that, for us at Table XI, we have been spending time recently researching and figuring out where can we expand our hiring. Where are those places where people are not hiding in plain sight they are just just in plain sight and how to get access to those? It does take a little bit of extra work or switching the focus but I agree with you that it does feel like lazy is a good term there. MACI: Yeah. It's all it is. It is laziness. You know, it could even be laziness within your own network. There is no reason why in America, in 2017, people shouldn't have a diverse, not group of friends but a diverse network. If you are looking for candidate of this background, you should have someone in your network that could say how about you reach out to X, Y, Z places. The laziness can go both ways and either hiring managers and companies aren't thinking about all the places and talent pools that they can tap into. Or hiring managers and companies have been lazy about their own personal network but either way, I don't believe there is an excuse for it. NOEL: Yeah, I also think that companies only put stock in the value of having diverse viewpoints after they've been burned on it a couple of times and that is the kind of thing that encourages you to seek out and expand your network. If more companies came to the table and thinking just having a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different points of view on the job is a positive value in and of itself, then that gets around. That helps you overcome some of that inertia. MACI: Well, there's data that proves that diverse teams create one) better products and two) have higher revenues. In fact, I didn't get a chance to read the story about the former first lady, Michelle Obama, spoke about it yesterday when she called out Silicon Valley for its lack of diversity and she said, "It's hurting your bottom line because you're creating products that don't resonate well with the mass audience or they don't perform as well they could." If you had people from diverse backgrounds to speak into your strategies, whether it's in the product or the marketing standpoint. That's why Pepsi was in hot water over the Kendall Jenner campaign. There's just so many obvious problems that could have been fixed if you had one diverse voice in the room. NOEL: On the other side, there are so many cases where there's obviously an audience like really ready and eager to embrace something that speaks to them that it seems counterproductive not to take that into account when you're putting a team together. MACI: Absolutely. ALICIA: I think, particularly around the example you just threw out with Pepsi and the tone-deaf commercial that they had, it's not just if there were diverse voices that were empowered in the organization to speak up. I have no doubt that there are people involved in the making of that. I mean, there are probably hundreds or thousands of people involved in creating that. But clearly, the decisions that were being made were not ones where we had enough people with different backgrounds to kind of raise their hands and be assured when they did, that their voice would be heard and their opinion would be given the weight that it should have been, which I think is often the problem. It's not just that an organization doesn't have diverse folks in it or created an inclusive environment but it's also where people are slated in the organization to actually make a change or be able to speak the truth that they're seeing, is also a problem. MACI: I completely agree, Alicia. Organizations need to have decision makers and people in leadership positions that represent diverse backgrounds and underrepresented voices. Absolutely. Because those are the people who like you said, are empowered to say, "This isn't going to fly with this demographic. Did you realize that this is slightly offensive? Or maybe we need to think about it this way." NOEL: Back when software companies are trying to emulate successful auto companies in terms of process. One of the examples was a company where any line worker could stop the line, if they saw a car or something that wasn't right, that everybody was empowered to say, "This isn't right," not only does it help to have people in leadership positions with backgrounds but also to have a culture where people can stand up and say, "This is not right," and have that be heard by the leadership, even if the people making those claims aren't in the leadership. MACI: Absolutely. ALICIA: One of the things that I also wanted to ask a little bit about, as far as how this topic speaks to innovation and focus for On Second Thought, is that some of the articles that have been gained popularity recently, pointing out that the white men in tech is overwhelming and the majority of our technology is being built by them and from that perspective. You mentioned that On Second Thought has been lucky to have a great pool of candidates from all different walks of life and background. How does that help encourage the inclusivity of experience when actually leveraging the product and how have you have used the great pool of folks that you have working for you to focus on inclusivity of experience for the product? MACI: I would say the answer to that question now is very different from what it was when we were more consumer facing. And I say that because we're talking to a much smaller audience now that then gets expressed to a larger audience but we're not necessarily always involved in the marketing of the feature within the platform that we integrate. From a consumer standpoint and when we were a consumer focused company, whether consumer focused product, it really came through with the features and thinking through, people in Kenya are sending mobile money transfers to each other via M-Pesa. They make mistakes during that at a very rapid clip. I have never been to Kenya. I've never been on the continent of Africa and therefore, that's an issue that I never would have known about. And it's because not only do we have a diverse team but we also have an extremely diverse user base that we were able to be enlightened to that. As a result, it was something that we were looking at for the product roadmap of the app itself but more important, it's another vertical into which we can license so that we can still allow people to undo the mistakes they made from sending money to others. That's just one example of how a diverse team or diverse user base who we listen to can impact the product and the experience for the rest of our customers. ALICIA: I think that in and of itself is actually a huge bonus when you have folks of diverse experiences working at a company because, I think that one of the challenges that white men working in tech sometimes have is the assumption that their experience is _the_ experience and a lack of awareness that lots of people have different experiences, that is not as easy for that group to understand because society tends to be aimed in their direction in the first place. I think a really important element of the company is to be able to take a step back and say, "This isn't working the way we expected," or, "They have a problem that I didn't even know about. We need to explore that and figure out a way to solve it for this group that is different from me but is a real problem for them." MACI: Right. Absolutely and you don't know what you don't know, right? And if you don't have mechanisms in your organization that allow you to see your blind spot and to understand what you don't know or to have an awareness of what you don't know then, you'll continue to operate in a self-validating way. NOEL: Yeah, because the leap from, "I sent an embarrassing text to an ex," to people in Kenya inadvertently sending the wrong person money, that's a leap that you need some knowledge to get to. It seems like that doesn't necessarily follow one from the other and it helps to have experiences or be exposed to things that will lead you to make those kinds of leaps and find those kinds of customers and audiences that will be responding to things that you wouldn't have thought of or you wouldn't have even seen you started out. MACI: Exactly. It's a logical leap that I didn't know was logical until I knew that was an issue. But prior to having awareness of the fact that people are making mistakes in those environments, I never would have guessed it. ALICIA: Maci, you first came into Table XI's radar because Mark Rickmeier who is on Table XI's management team, met you at Chicago Ideas Week and he just said that the panel was, I think everybody just kind of start of talking about the experiences that they had at work that had been difficult, whether, I think there were a series of different women on the panel and I think, everybody just kind of started sharing some of the things that have been happened to them or that they had experienced and he was shocked. He was like, "What? I can't believe it," and I don't think he told me the specific story that you had shared but I was wondering if you find that people are often shocked by the experiences you share or not? MACI: It depends to whom I'm talking to. By and large, women are like, "Of course that happened." That happened to me or something worse with me or something similar had happened to another woman I know. I would say for men, kind of. It depends on if they have daughters of working age. I'll give you an example. I was pitching to this investment group and the feedback I received was, "Maci, delivered the best pitch we've ever seen. Excellent presenter, business makes sense. We're going to pass because she was too confident in the way she answered our questions." And I thought, "Wait, that doesn't even make any sense," because if I wasn't confident in the way I answer their question, then they would say, "She doesn't know what she's talking about we're not investing because we don't trust that she understands how how to guide this." And so I realized that's a comment that they most likely would not say to a man and beyond that, I am fairly confident they wouldn't say it to a white man. I told my dad about that because I was livid. I was so angry. He said, "It's crazy that you are still seeing things the same crap that I faced in the 60s or in the 70s in Chicago," and he's like, "It's unbelievable that 40 years later, the same crap is still going on and that you have to endure it now." I also spoke to my godmother about it and she is another extremely successful women, storied career and she was like, "Oh, yeah, honey. I went through the same crap in the 70s when I was coming up and when I was early in my career. I even have gone through same crap even now while I'm sitting on several boards." I think it depends on who you are talking to. I think of it is if someone who has had a similar experience they're like, "Yep, that check has been there. That sucks, is's unbelievable that's still happening, bad experience and we just have to continue to move toward progress. But I think if it is someone who has never faced anything like that before that it is shocking and the nice thing is hopefully, they'll take our experiences and our stories and execute against them and make sure that those things don't happen within their organization. ALICIA: One of the things that Table XI has been doing over the last year or so is we have a weekly lunch and learn on Thursdays and one of the lunch and learns every month is set aside to talk about some of the diversity and inclusivity topic. That's a huge, huge area and sometimes we focus on bringing somebody in to talk to us. Sometimes we just dissect something that has occurred in the world. It varies a lot but I think for me personally, and I think for some others who attend as well, the sessions that feel really valuable for our internal work environment are the session where everybody just kind of shares stories and we talk about, "This happens to me and that didn't feel good because of this reason." One time we had one of our women designers, she actually had an experience off of a client site and she asked the client then come in and they both talk together about the situation that occurred and how they unpacked it. To me that's super valuable and I was wondering if you would agree that it's valuable for people in underrepresented groups in tech to speak up and share their stories more and trying to provide more places and kind of spaces for that so that there are spacees that are appropriate kind of opportunity for folks to share their stories because so far, in this year that we spent having this sessions, it does feel like personal stories from people that others know are the ones that really help them internalize the situation the best. What do you think? MACI: I think, it depends. It depends on if sharing is followed by action, like these are the issues and this is how we propose. we can fix them first with our own renovations and then how society can fix them at large because that's trap that a lot of initiatives like that can fall into. If it's just about sharing experience and then going on your merry way, a lot of value comes when those experiences and reactions are then turned into strategies that then yield change. When that happens, I think they're very valuable. ALICIA: What are some actions that you've seen that have been taken after that kind of situation, where folks have shared a bunch of experiences then, the company or organization has said, "We're going to take some action." Where have you seen that be really successful? MACI: I think in some places we're still in a wait and see period. But I think one that immediately comes to mind is Uber and we're still waiting to see what happens but the first thing was people shared. They said, woman came out via blogs and other media outlets and social media and said, "I have been sexually harassed at Uber. I have been discriminated against at Uber. This is not a diverse work environment. It's not an inclusive work environment." From those allegations and the stories being shared, Uber hired Eric Holder and his firm to do an investigation to see, ok how many of these stories vet out and not only how many of these stories can be verified but also how many more stories like them are within our organization. After that, he start firing the people who are the offenders. In the last quarter, I think they've let go 11 or 12 employees based upon the research found in the sexual harassment and discrimination cases. Then, yesterday, they announced the hiring of my friend and I'm so excited for her, Bozoma Saint John to be the new Chief Brand Officer to help turn things around and make sure that this culture that they're establishing actually seeps down into Uber spirit and they're true soul and culture so that what they're preaching is actually happening for their organization. So we still have to see if this works and how successful it is but I think they're a pretty good case study in how you can go from, "This is a problem. I'm sharing that this is a problem," to direct action in a pretty short period of time. ALICIA: Thank you for sharing that example. I think that's really a relevant one for right now that's happening. I think that certainly, there were a couple of people who came out to talk about their experience at Uber in a situation that was probably personally somewhat dangerous for them like they didn't know how or what the reaction might be and it really made a lot of change which is great. I think one of the things that Table XI has challenged ourself to do, just in a general way, is to make sure that you don't have to be in a situation where it could be dangerous for you to talk about it. We want it to be something that we just regularly talk about so that we can continue to make small changes and tweaks and work on it before it gets to anything close to the example that has become kind of extreme of Uber. But that's helpful just to understand that you have seen an organization, even in that place, make really great strides and congratulations to your friend for the new position. NOEL: I think that we're pretty much out of time but I want to thank both of you for being on today. I really appreciate your time and this is a great conversation and thanks. Tech Done Right is a production of Table XI and it's hosted by me, Noel Rappin. You can find Table XI on Twitter at @TableXI and me at @NoelRap. The podcast is edited by Mandy Moore. You can reach her on Twitter at @TheRubyRep. Tech Done Right can be found at TechDoneRight.io or downloaded wherever you get your podcasts. You can send us feedback or ideas on Twitter at @Tech_Done_Right or subscribe to our newsletter at TechDoneRight.io/Newsletter. Table XI is a UX and software development company in Chicago with a 15-year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Find us at TableXI.com where you can learn more about working with us or working for us. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with the next episode of Tech Done Right.