Who founded Plugg Technologies?

Brian Samson is its founder and CEO.

What led to the creation of Plugg Technologies?

Samson’s experience hiring after raising money led him to explore local talent in Buenos Aires and eventually offer Latin American staff augmentation.

S13 Bonus: Scaling Tech Teams: Unlocking Elite LATAM Engineering Talent with Brian Samson, Founder & CEO of Plugg Technologies

[SPEAKER_02]: Latin America is poised. [SPEAKER_02]: Really at a place where they're meeting the moment. [SPEAKER_02]: Junior engineers are maybe less valuable today than the age of AI and senior engineers are incredibly valuable with their ability to have good judgment, know when AI is wrong and think through all the hard decisions to build a product. [SPEAKER_02]: Although a lot of people are discovering it now, it's really investments that were made 20 years ago. [SPEAKER_02]: The talent has been used to working with U.S. engineering culture, U.S. tech companies.

[SPEAKER_02]: They understand dynamics, the standards. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Brian Samson, founder of Plug Technologies.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is Co-Story. [SPEAKER_03]: a podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries. [SPEAKER_03]: Six, six months moonlighting goes. [SPEAKER_03]: It's the last and all of the backgrounds who share what it takes to change an industry. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't exactly know what to do. [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't go as to get right. [SPEAKER_01]: who built the teams that have their bad company is its team's help each other, which is proud of our team. [SPEAKER_03]: Keeping scalability top of mind, all that infrastructure was up there.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, we've been fighting it as we grew up. [SPEAKER_03]: Total waste of time. [SPEAKER_01]: The stories you don't read in the headlines. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not an easy thing to achieve. [SPEAKER_03]: To get yourself a deficit of off, try to begin to ride the ups and downs of the start-up line. [SPEAKER_01]: Need to really want it. [SPEAKER_03]: Not just about technology. [SPEAKER_03]: All this and more on code story. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Newell Labpart. [SPEAKER_03]: And today, help Brian Samson.

[SPEAKER_03]: Is enabling you to get time zone aligned, talent, from Latin America, vetted and onboarded in under 14 days.

[SPEAKER_03]: Brian Sampson grew up in Chicago and eventually just kept going west. [SPEAKER_03]: Though he spent plenty of his life de-icing windows and shoveling snow off his driveway, he lived in SoCal for a bit, then San Francisco, then Argentina, and now, Hawaii. [SPEAKER_03]: He's been in a mixture of different businesses from start-ups to agencies. [SPEAKER_03]: But outside of technology, he is why for licensed foster parents, and erasing their adopt a child in a wahoo. [SPEAKER_03]: They are in the water a lot, either the pool or the ocean, you're round.

[SPEAKER_03]: In the past, Brian co-founded a company and raised money to get stuff done. [SPEAKER_03]: What he realized was that the money didn't get him very far after hiring people. [SPEAKER_03]: After convincing his wife to move to Buenos Aires in the hopes of taking advantage of the good people and solid talent in this area. [SPEAKER_03]: Eventually they decided to cut the layers and offer Latin American staff augmentation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I've been in this space for about 12 years. [SPEAKER_02]: So everybody is probably done offshore and before heard of offshoreing. [SPEAKER_02]: The big three countries that you hear about the most, China is offshore for manufacturing, the Philippines, offshore for virtual assistance and call center, and then India was the big country for offshore software development. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not to say that there's not other promising countries out there, but those are the indisputed big three.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, onshore is obviously work that gets done in the States, and all this is from a U.S. point of view, but near-shoring has really become popular over the last decade, and if you're in the States, near-shoring means Latin America. [SPEAKER_02]: So how I got into this world is actually raised some capital about 12 years ago. [SPEAKER_02]: I raised about $2 million and I had this thesis where I was living in San Francisco, I was immersed in the FinTech world and I saw that a lot of these FinTech companies had a really clear product vision.

[SPEAKER_02]: They had no trouble raising capital because they were usually the finance guys were the CEOs. [SPEAKER_02]: and they were mostly agnostic about the tech stack or the MBP, so they really didn't care how it was built. [SPEAKER_02]: They just wanted to work and here's the capital for it. [SPEAKER_02]: Co-founded this company, raised capital $2 million seemed like an enormous amount of money for my Midwest brain, but it really didn't get us very far in San Francisco. [SPEAKER_02]: So I was looking for ideas on where we could [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to do offshore, I just felt there's too much, too many complications with that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had done a backpacking trip prior in Argentina. [SPEAKER_02]: And I remember I just really enjoyed it there. [SPEAKER_02]: I had met a few people, the English was great. [SPEAKER_02]: So once we locked in the funding and we kind of had our product vision and our service vision, I came home and my wife and I didn't have any kids yet. [SPEAKER_02]: We were looking for a little adventure, convinced her to move with me to Buenos Aires. [SPEAKER_02]: So we built a company there. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not plug, but it was the original genesis of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in this company, navigating everything, kind of business on hard mode, because you're doing it all on a different country. [SPEAKER_02]: But the first few people we got were a recruiter and then eventually a CTO and then a director of engineering and an architect and the rest of history we grew that to about 85 software engineers. [SPEAKER_02]: The, but maybe your audience can really, the issues that I later discovered from that business. [SPEAKER_02]: Because we were essentially like a dev shop.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were building a lot of fixed price projects or in some cases even some staff augmentations for these FinTech clients. [SPEAKER_02]: And we had a lot of layers. [SPEAKER_02]: So we had project managers, leads, directors of engineering, beefy, cTOs. [SPEAKER_02]: So whenever our customer [SPEAKER_02]: wanted to communicate to an engineer that was actually doing the real work, the real encoding, the real architecture and design. [SPEAKER_02]: They had to go through five layers when stuff just gets lost on telephone.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were also trying to, we built this beautiful office, [SPEAKER_02]: that had a bar and FIFA and everybody's playing soccer. [SPEAKER_02]: And then if you've ever been to Argentina, if anybody listening this band, they love their meat there. [SPEAKER_02]: And we had this balcony outside with this enormous grill. [SPEAKER_02]: They call it Parisha there. [SPEAKER_02]: And every Friday, we would bring in just dozens of pounds of meat and grill it up and have some beers. [SPEAKER_02]: So we had this great office, but I think we overestimated how important it was for our team to work from an office.

[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them really could have cared less about that and just wanted to work around. [SPEAKER_02]: And then we were so focused on the currency arbitrage is the U.S. dollar increased in value and the pace so at inflation and the value. [SPEAKER_02]: These were things that weren't really conducive to building a great company. [SPEAKER_02]: As I ended up exiting sold my shares in that business and then I had the vision for plug. [SPEAKER_02]: plug was really built around. [SPEAKER_02]: It lets like cut the layers.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get out of the way. [SPEAKER_02]: Do pure staff augmentation for tech teams that are trying to grow? [SPEAKER_02]: Higher senior developers rather than what a lot of the dev shops did and we did too back in the day was you quit your best and brightest, you know, engineer at the original client meetings. [SPEAKER_02]: But then these junior guys are doing all the work. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what you make profit and that environment. [SPEAKER_02]: We just did pure staff augmentation.

[SPEAKER_02]: We weren't trying to pawn off whoever was on our bench. [SPEAKER_02]: Everything was a brand new search. [SPEAKER_02]: And we really go into that layer free environment. [SPEAKER_02]: The engineers loved it because they could talk directly to the customers. [SPEAKER_02]: and they could work from home. [SPEAKER_02]: We paid them in USD and we've got some really long-term loyal developers that have been on client projects for years now. [SPEAKER_02]: So I felt like I had to go through that first experience to understand how great Latin America was and the talent there

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm really proud of the offering that we have today where it's just a lot more customer oriented and customer friendly.

[SPEAKER_03]: On this show, I talk a lot about MVP, right? [SPEAKER_03]: We talk a lot about products and building products and that first version of a product. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious where you'll take this because I'm curious about the MVP for plug technologies and that could be the concept that started before or it could be that first version of plug that you went up and brought to life, but I'm curious about that process and digging in that a little more and how long it took you for it to become a thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: because of that very first company I had. [SPEAKER_02]: I almost think of that as like the MVP for plug around 2020, 2021 when I started to jot down the idea for plug. [SPEAKER_02]: All those original principles are still very much and effect today. [SPEAKER_02]: everything from the layer free because I had made that mistake before. [SPEAKER_02]: What a client wanted to, or when an engineer for that matter, wanted to go direct it to the client. [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, I've got this idea.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's by the way, the engineers in Latin America. [SPEAKER_02]: are really passionate and they have opinions and they want to share it and that's I think like a secret superpower that I love about Latin America culturally and why it seems to mesh better with the U.S. [SPEAKER_02]: If you look at offshore again this doesn't apply to every single person but generally speaking [SPEAKER_02]: culturally, there's like more hierarchy. [SPEAKER_02]: So even if you're making a terrible mistake, they might not tell you, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: They'll know it, but they might not share it, because they just don't want to upset the boss. [SPEAKER_02]: You never send that news up. [SPEAKER_02]: But in Latin America, if they think you're making them steak, they'll probably tell you. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of passion and eagerness and earnessness into they want it to be built right. [SPEAKER_02]: They want to take into account everything. [SPEAKER_02]: Once I really understood that, [SPEAKER_02]: Why would you have all these layers in the middle?

[SPEAKER_02]: Why not put these senior developers directly embedded with the lead on the client side? [SPEAKER_02]: That was you kind of had to make that mistake and understand it first. [SPEAKER_02]: And then pain people on time obviously is really important. [SPEAKER_02]: But pain people on a stable currency was very valuable and and I think the work from home as I talked about with the office space. [SPEAKER_02]: that was really like a big light bulb for me. [SPEAKER_02]: So again, plug was built on these principles on day one, but it took that very first company in four years and 85 engineers to get it right.

[SPEAKER_03]: To move forward, then I'm curious about how over time you've progressed and matured plug and how you go about things and to wrap it in a box a little bit, I'm kind of liking that to what would be your roadmap for plug, like how do you decide that okay this is the next most important thing to build to address to staff up to go after all those things, what is the kind of roadmap process there?

[SPEAKER_02]: I like that this is a story telling podcast, so I'll share that in that first company I had. [SPEAKER_02]: For those that have ever tried to bring hardware in the Latin America, we talk about tariffs under the current administration, tariffs are a real thing in Latin America, so it's very difficult to bring in equipment in hardware outside the country. [SPEAKER_02]: It's very expensive, and the reason they do that is they're trying to help the domestic hardware companies by making it so expensive for outside hardware.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for example, a MacBook, we can go on Amazon and depending on like the complexity of it, maybe it's $1100, maybe it's $2000, but you can get on an Amazon. [SPEAKER_02]: Try to do that on Argentina. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, you're spending like three to $4,000 for the same MacBook, and it's excruciatingly hard to even secure that. [SPEAKER_02]: So every time I would travel there, I would try to load up my duffle bags with like a bunch of equipment. [SPEAKER_02]: I had a 49 and then also like three or four MacBooks and I got stopped and custom-send it with this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a whole thing, and this custom's guide was trying to understand what I had and I had a story for everything. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, this is my computer that I used just for email, and this is my computer for versatile. [SPEAKER_02]: And this is my computer for code, and this is my computer for this thing, and this is my security device. [SPEAKER_02]: I thankfully was able to get through, but it's really difficult to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: We spent the last couple of years getting really good at procuring hardware and we've got people embedded in all these different countries from Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and we can move hardware around, we can wipe and set them up, we can do remote access and shut stuff down, [SPEAKER_02]: and took a little while to get there, but it's allowed us to do some great work for early-stage tech startups that are maybe worried about code and they're worried about intellectual property.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then also work with some middle market and larger companies that have some serious security protocols and concerns. [SPEAKER_02]: So that was a huge win once we've been able to figure that out and deliver machines all over the region. [SPEAKER_02]: And as far as the future, we're really trying to build up our brand as a company that's been there and done that. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the story's real. [SPEAKER_02]: Like I've lived the chaos of Latin America. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's a beautiful place when there's treeline streets and amazing steak at wine.

[SPEAKER_02]: But there's also labor strikes and volatile currency. [SPEAKER_02]: For example, if you go to a cafe like in the States, we'll go to a restaurant and the prices are printed on the menu. [SPEAKER_02]: But you can't do that in a place with crazy high inflation. [SPEAKER_02]: You've got to have the prices in chalk. [SPEAKER_02]: And a wild example of this is, [SPEAKER_02]: I was talking to somebody who lives in Buenos Aires and a few years ago, he was at like their version of a home depot, and he was just there to buy a tool.

[SPEAKER_02]: And from the time he was in the back of the store, picking it up from the aisle to the two minutes or whatever it took him to get to the front of the store, and they check out the price had changed. [SPEAKER_02]: Right, so that's these are really difficult places to navigate, but we've been there. [SPEAKER_02]: My business partner was an expert in Monterey, Mexico, so we've done it all firsthand, but not everybody knows that. [SPEAKER_02]: This is a big exercise for us over the next year too.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's getting our brand out there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious about you talking about we, right, and there's people that run the business and there's people that you also employ to do the development work. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious about how you go about building that team or win about building that team. [SPEAKER_03]: What do you look for in those people to indicate that they are the winning horses to join you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Latin America is really not that much different from the states, and it shouldn't be treated any differently when you do the hiring process. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you traditionally do a peer programming exercise, you should do that. [SPEAKER_02]: In the age of AI, when code is cheap, but judgment is expensive, run your interviews like that. [SPEAKER_02]: I think that judgment is really valuable today. [SPEAKER_02]: Being able to make architectural decisions, think through business requirements, security aspect of it, being able to, to know when AI is wrong, almost every client we work with, as AI, and part of goal, not an overwhelmingly, an overwhelming majority of the goal that they're hiring for.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's our job to vet in English, make sure that they can really communicate at an advanced level, that they're able to be problem solvers when work through chaos. [SPEAKER_02]: That's actually, I think, a superpower of Latin America is this is the region that generally is had to go through some pretty hard things with wild inflation we talked about. [SPEAKER_02]: to illustrate this for a long time Argentina's currency was paid to the dollar and then couple decades ago almost overnight it wasn't.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say you had a thousand dollars in your bank account and then the next day that thousand dollars is only worth a hundred dollars and you didn't do anything wrong really government it. [SPEAKER_02]: So, they're constantly thinking about creative workarounds, they're constantly thinking about problem-solving, just like you value those skill sets in the states, you should do the same hiring process for people in Latin America, and I've been pleasantly surprised by the problem-solving ability, and I think a lot of people listening that are in hiring roles will feel the same.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious about scale, right? [SPEAKER_03]: This will be interesting given what blood technologies is about. [SPEAKER_03]: Had there been interesting areas where you've had to fight scale as you've grown, and obviously scale here is people.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like Latin America is poised, like they're really at a, really at a place where they're meeting the moment. [SPEAKER_02]: Junior engineers are maybe less valuable today on the age of AI and but senior engineers are incredibly valuable with their ability to have good judgment, no-win AI is wrong and think through all the hard decisions the build a product. [SPEAKER_02]: Latin America like isn't all the whole lot of people are discovering it now. [SPEAKER_02]: It's really investments that were made 20 years ago.

[SPEAKER_02]: People in this call might not know. [SPEAKER_02]: Google is in Brazil and Mexico. [SPEAKER_02]: Microsoft is in Brazil and Mexico and Costa Rica, Amazon, AWS is in the region, Uber, Meta, Salesforce, Coinbase, Brax, Lyft, Webflow. [SPEAKER_02]: These are all major tech companies that [SPEAKER_02]: been in Latin America for years and years. [SPEAKER_02]: So the talent has been used to working with US engineering culture, US tech companies, they understand the culture of that, the dynamics, the communication, the standards, so much so that there's also a lot of VC money that's going to [SPEAKER_02]: And that's been funding just like San Francisco where I was out years ago where you have an exit and all of a sudden a bunch of engineers leave.

[SPEAKER_02]: They take their winnings from their stock options and go ahead and start a new company and then where they invest in other people that are starting new companies. [SPEAKER_02]: That's been happening now in Latin America. [SPEAKER_02]: Do you get a lot of VC money that's

[SPEAKER_02]: They've got some nice unicorns, Macartolibre, it was like the Amazon, of Latin America, there's Ropee, there's New Bank, which is a massive fintech in Brazil. [SPEAKER_02]: There's some really cool stuff happening, and I feel like it's perfect for this need for senior engineers that all these US tech companies have. [SPEAKER_02]: So as you talk about scale, there's more people than you to imagine. [SPEAKER_02]: that have this understanding, this experience, the standards, the levels, and they're there they're ready to meet the moment of today.

[SPEAKER_03]: As you step out on the balcony, you look across all that you've built with plug technologies in particular, what do you most proud of? [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's been in plain so many people. [SPEAKER_02]: We're well over 100 people on our team. [SPEAKER_02]: And these are people that have an income, they're able to support their family. [SPEAKER_02]: That's something that I'm really proud of that we're able to make an impact on all these people's lives. [SPEAKER_02]: And give them access to really interesting work that they're enjoying and they're finding challenging.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's flip the script a little bit. [SPEAKER_03]: Tell me about a mistake you made and how you and your team responded to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is probably from the first company right away because I didn't grow up in a sales role. [SPEAKER_02]: So right away, it was like just in super intimidating for me. [SPEAKER_02]: That's something that other people have to do. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not my skill set. [SPEAKER_02]: I must immediately, I hired two expensive sales people, and you just expect magic to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: And whatever these guys do, they're gonna come back with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in revenue.

[SPEAKER_02]: But six months nine months go by and that's hardly the case and by the way like it's not necessarily their fault We were we were expecting something that was you know really difficult and Sure there might be some special rainmakers out there that can do that by the company that's basically starting that zero But it's really not realistic and then I realized that [SPEAKER_02]: Company is really like talking to founders. [SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't matter if you're a one-person show or a hundred-person company or somewhere in between.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's nobody that's gonna care more that's going to know more, that's gonna be more passionate, that's gonna want this to succeed more than the founder. [SPEAKER_02]: And I've said a lot of bonehead things,

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking to customers, but I realize that I get a lot more grace from them because they know that I really care where those senior sales guys, the clients had at a different expectation for that. [SPEAKER_02]: If anybody's listening and maybe they're, you've only been in the technical role

[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to give you a lot more grace as the founder, so I'd encourage you to put yourself out there. [SPEAKER_02]: And not be afraid to make mistakes because I've certainly made thousands of them.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, let's look into the future, Brian. [SPEAKER_03]: You already mentioned some things about the future, but I want to give space. [SPEAKER_03]: Personaful answer there, what is the future for plug technologies? [SPEAKER_03]: And the industry is changing fast. [SPEAKER_03]: Things are moving quickly with AI, and all the things, what does the future look like for plug? [SPEAKER_02]: I feel really good because we've put the work in. [SPEAKER_02]: We've been in Latin America for over a decade.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that the real future of work is global teams. [SPEAKER_02]: Where I think in the past it might have been like what I call offshore or even near shore development factories. [SPEAKER_02]: or maybe companies would throw something over the wall or follow the sun noddle or pass the baton. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you just hope that they understood the requirements and you wake up the next day. [SPEAKER_02]: That's there. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think it's a lot more now about integrated global teams where the time zones are all aligned, everybody's jumping on Slack, they're on WhatsApp, resume, or Jira, whatever, like in real time and talking through it, and you're just getting the best possible team.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not even about cost anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's what's super exciting about Latin America. [SPEAKER_02]: or like maybe five, 10 years ago. [SPEAKER_02]: Cost was probably like the number one thing, but it's all about, okay, you can say, 40 to 60% maybe more over a U.S. developer. [SPEAKER_02]: And then if you're hiring in the U.S. you're thinking, okay, like what's the catch, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So it's cheaper and does that mean they're 40 to 60% worse? [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's where everybody's mind goes.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it's cheaper, it can't be as good. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think because of all this, all the investments that were made by all these tech companies,

[SPEAKER_02]: There's just so much more knowledge and experience and quality in the region, and as the world shifts to the future of, just give me the best possible team that I can get. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking for a capacity per dollar. [SPEAKER_02]: Not cheap, I just want the best of value, the best of ROI. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of engineers in Brazil that tech companies are paying well into the six figures. [SPEAKER_02]: And it might blow people's mind because maybe you read somewhere that engineers will work for $1,000 a month.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, you can get some really amazing AI and dad engineers and Brazil, you can get something. [SPEAKER_02]: Radical talent in Columbia, Mexico is a massive market or a hundred million people are in Mexico. [SPEAKER_02]: It's right there, so everybody's on the same time zone. [SPEAKER_02]: And they're all senior level, they've all been conditioning and developing for this moment. [SPEAKER_02]: So I see much more integrated teams, everybody on the same time zone, projects done in real time, more so than I've ever seen.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think this is only going to continue. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, Brian. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's switch to you. [SPEAKER_03]: Who influences the way that you work? [SPEAKER_03]: Name a person or many persons or something. [SPEAKER_03]: You look up to him, why? [SPEAKER_02]: Probably the book that I reread, probably the two business books that I reread the most are Shudag by Phil Knight and the hard things about the hard things by Ben Horowitz. [SPEAKER_02]: And the theme for both of those is, it's like excruciating, it's painful to read these because [SPEAKER_02]: You hear about all the brutal trials by fire that they went through, the brink of bankruptcy, multiple times, the bad hires, they're almost going to get fired.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I just loved how real they were and but they were, they both had these kind of iron stomachs, iron wheels that they get through it. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think as an entrepreneur, for me, it's 12 years into it. [SPEAKER_02]: There's something about getting up off the mat over and over again, because it's always gonna be hard, but having that. [SPEAKER_02]: Having these guys kind of influence and give me this confidence that, just keep going, there's always gonna be more challenges, but you're really building this and it's exciting.

[SPEAKER_03]: Last question, Brian. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm really interested where we're going to go with this. [SPEAKER_03]: So you get on a plane. [SPEAKER_03]: And you're seeing next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing. [SPEAKER_03]: They're jazzed about it. [SPEAKER_03]: They can't wait to show it off to the world and can we show it off to you right from the plane? [SPEAKER_03]: What advice do you give that person? [SPEAKER_03]: Having gone down this road a bit in different facets, industries, start a life into plug, what advice do you give that person?

[SPEAKER_02]: The first advice would be, that's great, awesome to see, but you don't have a business until you have a customer. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't forget that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's so easy, because I've done this by the way. [SPEAKER_02]: In your apartment, and you don't leave, and you're on these, either it's a coding session, or you're writing your business plan, or website, or events, or investment deck, or something. [SPEAKER_02]: where you don't talk to any customer is or prospects, you just heads down building.

[SPEAKER_02]: The second thing I'll say is the world is flat in many respects, recognize that the talent has upleveled from bug fixing and legacy code and maintenance to there's some really hardcore sophisticated talent. [SPEAKER_02]: And we talked a lot about engineering here, but really across the board, anything that can be done remotely, [SPEAKER_02]: is available outside the U.S., and I'm pro-American. [SPEAKER_02]: I love seeing great stuff happen in America, but I think as the world gets more competitive, it actually makes us more competitive.

[SPEAKER_02]: The forces everybody to raise their game and step up, and I encourage, I encourage this person on the plane to look at global talent. [SPEAKER_02]: and they be surprised and how much they could help with product development, ideas, technical decisions, and so forth. [SPEAKER_03]: That's fantastic, Brian. [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for being on the show today, and thank you for telling the creation story of plug technologies. [SPEAKER_03]: My pleasure, thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: And this concludes another chapter of Coat Story.

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