 I'm Daryl Hedley. I'm the VP of Engineering at HAPOSLIS, and I run the engineering team. I work very closely with the product, and I help the engineers get through their day-to-day jobs, as well as having architectural conversations and pushing the product board. If I understand, you are the creator of an open courseware platform that's achieved some success. Tell me a little bit about that, and as I understand it, it's been used by hundreds of millions of people now, which is pretty extraordinary. Yeah, so it was back in the day when HTML5 was pretty brand new, and Apple decided to kill a flash, so we ended up creating a really cool responsive HTML5 framework, had really cool widgets, followed a pattern of ABC, which was articles, blocks and components, super highly interactive for e-learning-based content. So that was internal and external learning, built at a company called Kinio, and then they offered to make open source, which was really, really, really cool. We collaborated with multiple companies to end up building an offering tool that also worked with that, and yeah, got picked up by the likes of some of the biggest companies in the world. And also lots and lots of e-learning companies all jumping in together to carry on building and improving it. And what inspired you to create that? Why courseware? What's your interest there? Yeah, I come back from education, so I used to be a teacher way back when. I taught in primary school, and as I was building out websites, I got a lot into design. I got employed at Kinio as a designer, which was interesting, and I was also coding at the same time, and I just love the online learning space. It's highly interactive. There's a lot of theory that goes behind it around learning objectives, bringing that all back, and I am a huge advocate for learning. So building something like this was just pretty much a dream for me, because I was able to build and take over knowledge that I learned from learning and see how you can merge it into technology. And it was really brand new, like responsive design was brand new back then. They'd only just brought out the video element, so it was really, really early on. And we could do it all in the browser now. You could work across multiple devices, and it just meant that everyone had the access to be able to access it, which I think was a huge thing for us, so we made sure that everything was accessible. But we went down to, you know, not just keyboard tabbing, or whether it had colour blind ratios. We went down to, will it load fast enough on my device? So we optimised images, we would have different image types with different devices. Yeah, so that was always a forefront of what we were trying to do. So in building any complex project, you know, there's always tons of obstacles. And what were some of the challenges that you guys faced, some of the problems that you had to solve for? The initial requirements was they had to work on IEA, which was a real hard one. Anyway, just, so that was browser spec. And, you know, we're dealing with new technology, it's HTML5 back then, and they actually labelled it HTML5, and it's now just gone back to HTML. So we were coming across multiple browsers not supporting certain things. Just the technical deficit across that was just really, really hard to solve. We tried it with different poly fields, we had different interactions that would work slightly different based upon the browser. Moderniser, a really cool library that would tell us which features the browser had would save us daily every time we were building out a new feature. So there was that. Then we had also client demands at the same time as trying to build out a product. And that was kind of solved by us forming an open source branch inside the Atkinia, which is groundbreaking. It was really, really cool. There was a few of us all working on the open source product, and we separated that from the client work. And that's really tough because you have client work that's coming in that is actually almost like pushing you in a certain way, but actually you're trying to build something that's open source where you need a whole plugin system. And the plugin system we have is incredible. So you're able to plug in components, you're able to plug in this thing called extensions, but they could actually modify parts of the content. And we had pre-render hooks and post-render hooks that would come in and actually adjust content or add labels or anything like that. But it's extra functionality you could plug into. When you're trying to do that with something that a client's asking for, it's super hard to be able to catch all those requirements, make it into something that's pluggable that you can extract. And so we kind of had a really nice philosophy, which was the core can be extended but not modified. And by keeping to that rule, we just had this really lovely core. We actually called it core as well. And then everything else, all the components, the themes, extensions for all plugins. So if you actually ever rendered the first version of it, it rendered nothing. So you'd have to add a text component, then a graphic component, then a question. But it also meant that when you compiled that down, we worked into accessibility needs because you'd only have three components rather than say 50 components. So the actual space of downloading stuff worked out as a benefit. So in order to find market fit, any product, with the users and customers, any product needs to find that kind of sweet spot. How did you guys measure that and how did you get there? For this one, can I switch to evolve? Yeah, sure. Let me ask the question. So after at Kineo, you founded a new company, a co-founded a new company to take the concept and the product further. Is that right? Yep, that's right. And so what we ended up doing was taking an adapt. The actual framework, using that and put an offering tool around it. Later on, we actually took out adapt and put our own framework in it for speed and actually getting to faster product market fit. And that product was called? Evolve. Evolve, okay. And a company that you created was called Appeteer. Is that right? Yep. And so in, what was the point at which you found kind of product market fit and things began to kind of take off? And any of us who've been in companies where that happens is always kind of a magical moment. What was, how did you guys get there? And what drove that process? It's magical, but also scary. Especially when you have a whole load of people coming in and signing up. We, we went about it in a really different way. We were self-funded. So we went after kind of almost like gorilla style kind of marketing. We spun up a cool stand learning technologies. And we were one of the first companies to actually just let people use our software. All the other stands tend to actually be salespeople selling it. And we were just like, hey, come and use it. Come and actually play with this. And our whole thing was about, we had this kind of analogy that we wanted our users, the people using Evolve to, for Evolve to be like the pencil of an artist. So the first thing that an artist picks up in the morning is their pencil. The last thing they put down at night is their pencil. We wanted Evolve to be that tool that all learning designers pick up in the morning and they put down at night. And we had to make sure that we, it was easy to use. It was fun to play with and that meant design, but also small little animations or the way that something worked or the way that we could join up pieces of content to another piece of content. We built a live preview. So as you're building it, you can see it all live. So our aim was purely that. And so we gave everyone purpose in the company to be able to build into that. And it just flew off, off the wall. Yeah. So we had Google within six months of starting the business and it just grew and grew and grew. Yeah. I think there's some more that like we can probably go into how we actually went around product market fit, which was, we just spoke to a lot of people. We spoke to, we had some really great people who came in as beta testers. I mean, we had Google as beta testers, which was just insane. And so they would come in, give us feedback. We'd like, that's so much to do. So much to do. But actually we learned quite quickly that we needed to hear what their actual problems were. They would actually, they came in a lot with their solutions. And I remember a chat with one of the product managers we had at it. And I was like, I think we need to go into this call and actually change this conversation. They're just giving us these solutions. Let's go in and actually give them like asking for their problems rather than their solutions. And this kind of changed our whole philosophy. And this is massively in product management now. We went around and just asked them what their problems were. And actually a lot of them were on scale. And so we then think about all these features that to do with scale. And then we'd come back to them and be like, hey, we think we could solve this problem by doing this. And they were like, that's so much better than what we were thinking. We're like, yes, we can do this. So we actually went in that way. We had a really amazing, amazing company called the cotton on group who were just phenomenal. They had seven brands I think across Australia and they used Evolve and they were instrumental in what we built. They gave us really fun interactions to think about. They'd give us scenarios where they wanted to teach their learners in a specific way. And then we'd be like, oh, we could build something like this for them. And that would actually help them bring that back to them. So we went after their problems and we tried to solve their problems. And that's what really brass market fit because we were listening to all of our customers, but constantly. Like I was probably on hangouts and calls a good time, a good couple of times a day. As you led those different teams and kind of scaled those different organizations, what are some of the fundamental lessons you learned as an engineering later? Give people space. I think that's the biggest thing and trusting them. And even when, you know, you have these hard times as long as you can put the trust and you give them a sense of purpose and they're trying to achieve this. They fly past that purpose and it's just one of the most incredible things. I worked with some of the best engineers. I think I've ever worked with there. And it was just one of these moments where you go, this is where we'd like to get to. Gov and it. Here it is. Here's some of the boundaries that we have around kind of, you know, what we're expecting from time, roughly what we have from the technology choices. Gov and it and we'd work closely with them. We'd bring in customer feedback and it just, we've had this kind of really cool loop for a very, very small team. So we had support coming in. We had sales coming back in. And we did a few things that just helped us gain that almost like slightly larger purpose that we all believe that we were doing something that was really amazing. And one of the things is giving credit where it's due. And I felt like I was giving credit a lot because these engineers were just jumping through getting up to this purpose and you could feel it. So our support team, an amazing person would bring back feedback from the customers around features that we had and it fed straight back in. And so the engineers would hear it. The PM would hear it. Everyone would hear it and be like, wow, we did this. Do you see what we did? We did this. And then they would jump into that. If you can bring data along with that, then you kind of push that and it kind of accelerates that. Why hypothesis? What did you see here and kind of what inspired you about what we're trying to do? Where did you join? Well, firstly, I had a conversation with you. And the conversation with you was really inspiring. You told me what you wanted to do. And that was purpose. And I'm a very purpose driven type of guy. So when you spoke to me about purpose, I was like, damn, this is cool. If we could get onto this and we could build this out and keep this going. And then you mentioned about the education market. And I was like, ah, that's sold for me. And those two things together, making sure that we're always in education, that we're pushing education and actually some of the things that side effects of all of those things, like, I don't have to download a thousand page document to annotate it. I can now do that as a group. I can do that as a single person. I can also bookmark important pieces of content. And I just believe that content is expanding, expanding throughout the world, a bit like space. And we need some way to be able to join up those pieces of content. And if we can do that by links, by bits of content, you know how I like my wonderful comments of quotes that people have. I have them bookmarks so I can then come back to them and be like, oh yeah. And then I'll jot something down to it. So that a few of us that have some of my old engineering mates are, we're commenting on little bits of snippets of code externally and having our thoughts of like, what is your first thought? And we're playing a game at the moment. What's your first thought on this? And seeing what we can like post out of it. So it brings another dimension to communication, but it also links up content. And I just think with everything expanding, there's a really wonderful way that we could be connecting content. And then I met the team. And the team are just an incredible bunch. Some of the most senior engineers I've ever worked with. So they challenged me to a really lovely kind of space where I'm like, wow, it's really, really far advanced. I'm going to have to go up and do some research on some of this stuff. And so it's really great. I feel like the team kind of pushes itself. Moving forward, as you scale the engineering and product teams, what are some of the fundamentals you're looking for in new team members? I've mentioned a sponge kind of attitude where someone can soak up a huge amount of knowledge and be able to use that sponge in kind of different areas. And what I mean by that is someone who can say, take a theory of something and then being able to apply it to multiple places. That someone who's driven by purpose, someone who is a nice person. It sounds really simple, but actually our culture is really lovely here. People share things. People are very open. It's actually one of the other things around joining was, everything was open. So me going back through the history of some of the videos and watching the interaction between teams, the conversations we're having around architecture, I could literally go back in time, see it all and be up to speed with everything. And it was just really lovely. So someone who's open, someone who's willing to share, but also someone who's able to passionately put across their view and believe in that view as well, is something I need. Great. Well, I'm just thrilled to have you here. It's been an amazing couple of months just getting started and just really looking forward to the adventure ahead. So thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's going to be really great.