ClarisTalk AI · the FileMaker AI podcast

EngageU Live: Ryan McCann, the Interim CEO of Claris

November 29, 2024 · 17 min · Matt Navarre and Cris Ippolite

Episode 23 This just in! Ryan McCann is the interim CEO of Claris, replacing Brad. He has been at Claris a long time and knows the community well. Matt and Ryan talked frankly about many issues including the FileMaker community, how to handle infinite feature requests, and the upcoming Engage conference.

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Transcript

Transcribed by machine (whisper, large model), 5,107 words. Names and product terms are sometimes misheard; the audio is the record.

0:00Claris Talk AI You know, it's really cool, and I'm not just saying this, I mean it. It's like, look at the folks that were here today from Claris. Wes Powell, Andrew Cates, Doug, David. These are like super talented folks. Most of them. I love them. Super talented guys, and I'm just surrounded by people like that. So it makes having to transition into something very quickly super achievable, if that makes any sense. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so much about this has been amazing. So I think you said you've been to this conference once before, years ago? Never been to this one. No, first time. Yeah, 200 people. Pretty impressive, right? Very impressive. And I really, I like the regional focus.

1:18You know, we made a decision coming out of COVID that we were going to invest more in international conferences, and it's the right choice. I mean, just, I was in Australia a month and a half ago. Two months ago. Very similar vibes, similar size, similar type sessions, and the energy is awesome. And I intend to continue investing in these things. Yeah. Were you there at the Japan conference a couple weeks ago too? I was not, but a little soon, a little short notice. So, but we actually, that's our conference, so I didn't, you know, I didn't feel as, you know, exposed, or, yeah, we had fun. Since I've been using FileMaker, Yeah, you're the fifth CEO. What does that, yeah, what does that mean?

2:05I don't even know what that means. I mean, is it good or is it not? It means I'm really old. Yeah, you've been around a while. I know Andrew said the same thing. He said, I don't want to, I'm not making you feel bad, but I'm telling people, like, you know, this is my fifth or sixth CEO that I'm dealing with. So I, yeah, I mean, I'm really, honestly, man, I'm excited about this opportunity. I, I feel really comfortable. I'm in a position. I like the plan that we have for this year. I was obviously a big part of setting the plan. I really like the momentum that we have now. And so it's not to me about having to come up with really new, cool ideas or reboot anything.

2:46It's about executing, and I feel like I'm all right at that. I'm going to ask you the right question. Okay. So what, what is going to be, what's your take on risk and like taking risk with some new directions, you know, putting money into things that are not assured, but I'm obviously, I'm not going to say take a, because if there's risk, it's going to ruin the hundred plus quarter profitability thing. But like towards that, but that's what I want. I have a higher tolerance, I think, for the risk, but I guess we got to define risk. There's low hanging fruit. Yeah. There's high risk opportunities that could potentially significantly change our trajectory.

3:26One of the areas that is much less known, and I'm going to, I'm going to take a risk by even talking about this because the second I say anything about any diversion in course, it creates controversy. So I'm not trying to do that. We're just talking. Yeah, we're just chatting. Whoever's listening, just take it that way. But, you know, there's, there's 90% of what. We said as a plan for the year, I do not intend on touching it because we're just executing. There's maybe a 10 degree shift that I might want to make in some areas. And I think the one that jumps off to me is AI, it's like we're making investments there, but I have a lot of energy for the opportunity and I have a lot of energy for the difference in this opportunity versus other opportunities.

4:17I don't know that we can afford to. Not. Be aggressive. And while I love. So what do we do? We make powerful technology available to everyone. We're going to do that with AI as well. We tend to take a very methodical, thoughtful approach. And the community loves that. I just didn't. Well, I don't know. I'm told they do. I'm a I'm the risk taker more. Yeah. So I think that this is one of those areas where it's not about like just shooting in the wind. But I mean, are we appropriate? We invest. Yeah. That's the question. And we are reevaluating that. I am reevaluating that because like any normal year, we're going in, we're setting ourselves up for the year. And it's a natural opportunity for us to reexamine some things and say, hey, do we really have enough engineering resources over here?

5:07Are we prioritizing this versus these two things? Is it really a lower priority? That's the kind of thing that I'm talking about. Is it a risk to take advantage of an awesome market moving opportunity? No. But there's. So I guess an example of what I would be saying, one of the one of the things that's really limiting using AI to actually break down with the program is that script maker is not a text document. You can't you can't like copy the text out of it, paste it into chat . Say change the script and add this other code and then paste it back. Yeah. There's still a workaround. Yeah. But a risk would be, oh, we're going to add a button and not asking for a feature.

5:45Got it. We're going to add and asking for a feature. Adding adding the button says, oh, switch to fully text. Yeah. And then the whole exact script would be there in text. OK. That you could then do that. Yeah. And then that would be a risk because for a lot of developers, they would make a great thing. One type of all of a sudden, the script came. And that's where I immediately rely on the combination of the executives that are that's their category one. I went to Giuliano and Peter. I'll look to our customers and our partners to get the validated feedback based on what should we prioritize? Our risks and how how how much tolerance do we have for these risks?

6:23Yeah. I will certainly not make any decisions in a vacuum like that. Sure. And I feel well supported. Must be brutal having all the partners who all want different things, but there's no two companies who understand. It's crazy that you're the first person in no matter what role I've been in, it's ever even acknowledged. And I was just thinking about that yesterday, like the list of things that people have asked me for and how how how many of those things are have tension on each other. It's crazy. That's like in going in one direction, you're you know, you're not serving somebody else's desires or whatever. So that's where it does become really important to stay disciplined, understand what you know, what is what is our direction and and generally, I'm sorry, don't I'm not you've noticed I avoided that.

7:10Thank you. Yeah. I'm not gonna fall into that trap. But what's our direction? Where are we headed? And stay consistent with that to the extent that we possibly can, because just as many people want us to. Keep pushing the boundaries of where we're going with, you know, integrations, or with, you know, kind of the web based technologies we're bringing to market, the same number of people like stop doing that just stay in FileMaker and, you know, no matter if you if we say we're doing things over here, people over here feel like maybe we're giving up on this. If we're not doing enough over here, they think we're not, you know, taking advantage of the opportunities of the market.

7:42So yeah, there's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I think a long time ago, I sort of realized that happiness. For me, it would be like sharing the features that I really, really want with no expectation that are going to be implemented. I think a lot of developers kind of get frustrated because they have ideas, which are really great ideas, but aren't integrated because you can't do it. Yeah. So it's just what I found is that, well, first of all, I mean, as obvious, I'll state it. We have, you guys count on us to, to generate revenue and to be profitable so we can continue investing. I mean, I just want a full project. Well, you, let's see, you live a different life. There's a lot of people that aren't quite in the same position to be fair though with training.

8:27What I'm really trying to do now is to empower sort of the next generation. I get people coming to my classroom in their twenties and thirties, you know, not the 50s, 60s, but at the sort of the core of the thing. So that's, those are, and those are people I would love to help them make a living. I did a recording with a dude today who's 17. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you and I talked earlier about it and I've shared with you my energy for doing a much better job of kind of crowdsourcing, leveraging the experts in our community and creating a platform for them to become more visible, to help accelerate us through our ability to bring more young developers into our platform.

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