navarre.aiClarisTalk AI · the FileMaker AI podcast
Live from EngageU :: Claris CEO Ryan McCann
Live from EngageU in Malmö, Sweden. Episode 1 of 3. Two years ago Ryan McCann was a brand new CEO and we recorded a podcast. So we did it again, right after a keynote where Claris showed its new agentic development tools and opened sign-ups for the developer preview. I told him I think this is the biggest change in the life of a FileMaker developer since FileMaker 7. Maybe bigger. Ryan is "cautiously optimistic", and then he says things like "we can take off, but we have to move with urgenc...
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Transcribed by machine (whisper, large model), 3,833 words. Names and product terms are sometimes misheard; the audio is the record.
I have a vision for this company, for this community, that we are going to get to a totally different level. I think this is the biggest fundamental change in the life of a FileMaker developer in the history of Claris. There's a moment here for us that if we make the right bets, we can take off, but we have to move with urgency. Welcome to Claris Talk AI. It's Matt Navarro with the first of three episodes live from EngageU, Malmo, Sweden. I'm here with Ryan McCann. Hello, sir. Hey, how are you doing? Two years ago, I believe it was, you were a freshly minted CEO, yeah? Yeah. And you and I had a podcast then. We did. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. And now we get to catch up again. Yeah. Thankfully, nothing has changed.
Zero. It's the world is upside down. Yeah, it is. Okay, I'm going to lead off with something. So in the keynote and some other things, some sessions we've seen here are some new things coming from Claris that I've been saying are as big as anything that Claris has done since seven, but I think it eclipses that. I think this is the biggest fundamental change in the life of a FileMaker developer in the history of Claris. And I go back to the beginning. Yeah. Are there people saying that? Yeah. I'm, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic about the potential for the developer community, for our customers, for what this means for our path forward. I feel like we have a durable advantage with our backend. I think that the investments that we're making that are going to enable the speed and power of development through the way we're embracing agentic tools for the front end is game changing. But at the end of the day, what really matters is what you guys are doing. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what you guys think, what our customers think. You know, I think it's actually maybe
other, as you're saying it, I think there's several different lines on the graph coming all at once, right? So the developer community is going to embrace it. It's just so immediately accessible. Yeah. And it ties so well to a lot of other things that we've already been doing as developers. Yeah. And using AI as a all day, every day cloud coder myself. But then some of the other lines on that chart are how is it going to actually affect the quality of our work, the measure, how much work we can put out? How is it going to, you know, that line of what we can do as file maker developers compared to the rest, you know, the other industry, the things that I think maybe you've even used the example of like, you know, people saying, oh, yeah, my cousin's son is a, does Claudia, we're going to just replace the whole database with something he built or something like that. I think you've used that example. Yeah.
Yeah. In your blog post. Which is great. Yeah. I thought there was something that I saw that was great. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah. So you, so great. He can do some coding. Who do you think is going to do a better job, him or me, to build your application? Yeah. I think any single customer say, oh, yeah, yeah, you understand my business. I think it's going to be you. Yeah. I, you know, I've got my hands all over this. You know, my background is not professional development. So I'm a little disadvantaged in that area when it comes to being able to. Yeah, you manage bars, right? Basically. Yeah. Yeah. No, you have, we talked a little bit about your background. You've been in many different tech companies and you've been at Claris for over a decade.
Yeah. I think it's 13 years. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly on kind of in market-facing roles. The last five, six years has, I've moved a lot into kind of operational, organizational, cross-functional transformation stuff. So, you know, I, I, I don't have a professional development background, but, I, I, I want to experience these breakthrough technologies from the perspective of a person that runs a business, from the perspective of a person that's trying to solve his own problems. And so a lot of my confidence comes from what I've personally experienced with our tools and with a lot of other tools. And there's so much to unpack, you know, relative to where the market's going, where technology's going, what our place is in that. But I will say that the reality is that in small and mid-sized businesses, and I touched on this for a brief second during the opening session, there, the, the constraints remain, right? The, the barriers to entry still exist. What is happening is the floor.
Tell me more about that. Like which barriers? Developing and deploying production systems that run your business. So the time and the complexities of, yeah, sure. Okay. So what, where the, where the floor is absolutely dropping is ideation, creativity, prototyping, exploring what's possible. Like I can explore what's possible, not only with really important use cases, but things that I've always wanted to automate, but just weren't approachable, right? Just the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. And I've taken on a few of those different use cases with a variety of different tools that are available in the market. And I keep on going. I keep running into that same, you know, staring off the edge of that cliff. Am I going to now, you promise that if I share this, that X so-and-so is not going to see so-and-so's data, right? Like, are you, are you, I'm asking AI these questions and I joke with myself, like, I know you've never lied to me before. So are you going to, is this going to work if I do this? And, and anytime that I get into an environment where I'm sharing important employee-related information, I'm sharing financial information. I mean, there's stuff that I deal with that has to do with compensation, that has to do with employees, you know, tiers, that has to do with our markets and stuff that I don't want others, it's sensitive, right?
Yeah. And I stop. So when it comes to exploration, ideation, prototyping, there's really sky's the limit right now. And it allows me to get way down the path of how I'm thinking through solving a problem. But I am, I remain convinced that you're going to need to get an adult in the room. And by an adult in the room, I think of this community. I'm going to walk back on one technical thing, just, just because it's a change I think that's happened in AI. So the way that I was approaching AI, I don't know, a year ago, was actually to be sending all of the payroll and financial data and all the other stuff in, in the call. So in the actual API call that you would make, you would say, these are my employees, these are their salaries, analyze if this is right or not. That's not how it works now.
Yeah. So now the way it works is you make an API call and you have all that data. And API, it first takes a look and analyzes the shape of the data. And it makes a call that says, here's the shape of the data, write a program that gives me the result of the query, my query. And then it returns the program, which then runs on the data. Nothing critical has left. Yep. There's no, yeah. I guess I'm not telling you anything you didn't know. Anyway, that's, that's an important change that I think a lot of people are missing. Yep. That I think solves a lot of the worry. I think it does, yeah. It is scary. And guys like you, Matt, you know what, what, what is a risk. You know what's possible. You understand deeply how these technologies work. You know how to protect businesses. Guys, normal human beings that are, doing their jobs and their functions, marketing, sales, operations, whatever, they don't.
80% of Americans don't like AI. They have an unfavorable opinion of it. Yeah, that'll pass. You think so? I do. Other countries, it's much more strong. But I think it's going to, and I think that it's just, it's the momentum is going to drag people through that, right? I mean, there's, there's so many gains. And all it takes at the end of the day is when you start to see your competitors breaking away and, and you don't have a choice. Like I either embrace this or I just don't make it right. So that momentum is going to carry people through this. That combined with advancements in technology, the ability to manage these things in a, in a, in a, in an increasingly secure and private way, all of those things will get us through that. But it's like anything else, man. Yeah. There's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Some of it's founded.
Yeah. Oh yeah. It's considerable. I mean, some of the stories that have come out from breaches are scary. Yeah. Um, and. AI tools to, to, you know, for the hackers to, uh, do those breaches, let alone accidental things that are happening in labs on unreleased models. Um, it's crazy. Yeah. It's actually, you know, I can't spend too much time there because I mean, I've, I've, there have been a lot of, uh, you know, evenings where I've sat and thought through, okay, if that's true, then this is true, then this is true, then this is true. And it can take you to a pretty, uh, pretty weird place. So, you know, it is scary in some ways, but I think that, you know, there's so much, um, opportunity for advancement that I choose to spend my time there.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. Like, okay. And I think that's where I really inherit a lot of my positive, um, feeling about it. And then also just my daily work, the tools making and bringing to the community, which gives me so much joy. I've told you, I'm having the most fun I've ever had as a FileMaker developer. And that's been, it was really, we had a chat about that yesterday. It's really encouraging for me. You know, you represent a persona in our community that is obviously very advanced, deeply credible. You also, you know, from what my experience has been in talking with you over the years is you took a responsible approach, right? A conservative, somewhat conservative approach to this. But it sounds to me, based on the conversation I've had and some of the stuff I'm seeing you put out, that you're one of those folks that's kind of breaking away right now. So just watching your journey, and I think you represent, you know, what's possible for the broader community as they feel more confident in embracing these technologies, whatever's holding them back, whether it's just, you know, taking the time, getting educated, maybe it's some fear. Eventually, you start to catch fire.
And you were sharing with me some of the, I'm sure you've talked about it in your podcast quite a bit, but it's fascinating, the things that you're doing today. And where you see, you know, where FileMaker maintains advantage, right? And what the opportunity is for- Which I see more and more, frankly. Yeah. Yeah. And with the new agentic tools that Claris is releasing, a lot of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that I had about what was going to happen with Claris' future just evaporated. That's cool. From experiencing the power of what those things actually do. Yeah. I know this is your podcast, but I'd love to hear you expand on that. Well, how much can we say about an unreleased product?
That's a good point. Well, it's going in a developer preview. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess it definitely is out there. Yeah, it's out there. Here's my take. So what we'll be able to do really soon is do 100% of the work of a FileMaker developer through a prompt in Cloud Code. So creating a database, creating layouts, applying styles. So you can say something like, go to my website, find my colors and fonts, create layouts for such and such things that match those colors and fonts using whatever they look like. Yeah. Create the standard scripts. Create the standard scripts that do this. Go get, you know, the structure and then make the tables and, you know, fields and relationships and the layouts that match. And what you haven't heard much talk about is data. The new tool actually can also read and write data.
Yeah. So you can say, go out and get me, you know, some sample data and then bring it in so that I could work with it. And then, oh, yeah, yeah. Now that we're ready to go into production, go get my actual data from Google Drive, my previous FileMaker, from my whatever else and put it in. And not that you want to do 100% of it, but you could do 100% of it in Cloud Code. And all of that work would just save so much time. And then what's really amazing is because we as FileMaker developers are so in love with the script workspace, which is just like one of the core best things, you can prompt some change to a script. Like, oh, yeah, yeah. Go into all of my scripts and document them based on what you've learned from the save as XML file and from what you've learned from my scripts. And then, yeah, yeah. Go into all of my scripts and document them from reading my whole website and what we do as a company and also from this narrative. And then you can just watch the documentation appear, literally. It's cool. Or I was, you know, seeing much more practical things like, you know, debugging. It's like this script is not working right. I don't know what's going on. I think it's some problem with something really deep in the, you know, the API call. Those are not fun to debug. Yeah. Right. But then you can just research it and fix it and just watch it.
And it just saves you so much time. It's a lot of joy. It's a lot of joy to see the kind of things that people are going to be able to do. So what kind of, how is this going to evolve your trajectory as a lifelong FileMaker developer, trainer? Like, where do you see this taking you? That's a really good question. You're going to be me now. You said you were going to try this. Is that okay? Am I allowed to do that in your podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think, no, I mean, well, the point of this is... The community needs to hear from people that are out in front. Yeah, definitely. So, and I'm Claris. You're on the front lines. So I think it's important.
I've had a few different careers in, with FileMaker, right? I started a vertical market company and shipped products and grew that too big and sold it. I'd actually done horizontal marketing. So I actually created a tool that we sold thousands of copies of that was a music thing. Shipped on CD in 1995. That's exciting. And then created, you know, started and built AppWorks and grew that and sold it. And through all of that, I look back and realize the thing that gave me the most joy was actually training and sharing and like being the, you know, having that role of really kind of spreading my excitement and feelings of FileMaker. So that's what I do now. That's all I do now is meet with individuals. I've been working a lot with several of the partner companies to train their staff.
Because a lot of the programmers haven't had a much and had enough time to learn, you know, all the new AI tools. So I will, you know, meet with the set of, the set of staff that haven't done it because always some partner companies have a few people who are really into it. But those people maybe aren't trainers or they don't have time because they have their own billable needs to get met. So that's one thing I do. I also do one-on-one training with a lot of people. And I've been really busy creating this new set of tools that I've just released three of and just a minute ago finished a session showing them to people. So that's super exciting. And those new tools dovetail perfectly with the new changes coming.
Yeah. So the basic idea there, and I think a lot of people are on the same page with other tools they're using. Now that you'll be able to do, you know, agentic development with FileMaker, a single prompt conversation. We'll be able to synthesize things together from all these sources, right? So not only the sample data, but like, you know, what I'm doing is building a, like a sidecar server next to FileMaker that does all the things that are difficult or impossible to do directly inside FileMaker, you know, have it have multiple different SQL databases, run Python scripts, make API connections to other things. And it's an always on server that you don't necessarily want to have FileMaker server do that job. So you can have other things, have web hooks into that.
And then it can directly connect to FileMaker and do all that. And it just makes it for an amazing set of things we can offer to our clients. That's my approach. And I think there's a lot of other, you know, similar parallel ideas or whatever. And so I'm quite excited about that. And now that they're shipping, I'd really love to actually get more, you know, get some more marketing. The 13 or 14 people who listen to the podcast, maybe. I'm sure they will. Yeah, I'm sure there's more than that. There's more than that. Yeah. But it's not, you know, 10,000. Yeah, anyway, that's what really motivates me, Ryan. So it's really cool to see your energy and enthusiasm. I think it's, I tend to be a cautiously optimistic person, right?
Yeah. It makes me sad. Well, look, man, these are strange times. They're exciting times. There's a lot of unknowns. But I have a lot of confidence in what we're doing because we validated it in the right places. And I think that to me is really fundamentally the most important thing that I have tried to bring to this organization is you got to earn it. You got to prove it. Before we start getting on stages and talking about things, we have to have a discipline methodology for how we start bringing things to market. So the stuff that we're making much more visible today is stuff that I feel like we've gotten through those gates. And it's exciting to see it, you know, start to scale and expand.
Yeah, for sure. But I don't think I'll ever be, you know, too bullish on anything. You know, it's the world is... Leave that to me. Yeah. The world is changing fast. Yeah, it is true. In my case, I think I just choose to see it in a bullish way. I'm not blind to the scary stuff. But I'm just trying to use it to make my life better and kind of live in that zone. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the thing that's really interesting about this time, unlike anything that I've ever experienced or been through, is that the breakthroughs are happening so quickly. The change is happening so fast that you have to be on your toes. You have to operate with some level of... Maybe it is fear. I don't know. Some level of fear. But, you know, fear is a really powerful tool if it's channeled directly. And it creates a sense of urgency.
It creates a sense of urgency that I think is absolutely necessary, not just for survival during times like this, but also just for us to thrive as an organization. I have a vision for this company, for this community, that we are going to get to a totally different level. That is what I believe is possible if we make the right bets given the assets that we have to work with. Right, Manny? You tell me. Listen, you've got an organization that's got this long track period of success. You've got a loyal community. You're part of a bigger brand that is based on trust. During a time like this, you're at the epicenter of technology and innovation. You've got all that to work with. You've got a thousand startups that are just trying to make their name matter in the market. There's a moment here for us that if we make the right bets, we can take off. But we have to move with urgency.
And it's... I mean, you know, Clarus has been single-digit growth or whatever and, you know, they've been the Volvo for the database. It's like steady, not a big risk-taking, but delivering really meaningful tools and keeping backwards compatibility to the beginning. Nobody else does that. And that's been an amazing thing for the community. That's why you have customers who have been using it for, you know, for 10, 20, whatever plus years. How do you innovate at the speed of... AI in the market while staying true to what got you to where you are and what's kept you where you are? You just did. You are. I hope so. I think so. You know, we should have probably led off with the fact that an announcement was made in the keynote that you can now sign up...
For the developer preview. For a developer preview of the new developer agentic unnamed tool. To be determined. I'm calling it the FileMaker Agentic Development, the FAD. FAD. FileMaker Agentic Development. Yeah. No one thinks that's funny. I think it's funny. I think it's funny. Yeah. Because it's not a FAD and this is here to stay. I think so. Yeah. Always excellent talking to you. You too, man. All right. Thanks. Enjoy it. Yeah. You got it.