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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I am so excited for today's episode because we have got an amazing entrepreneur for you to learn from here today.
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This is someone who not only loves the stuff that he does, which you're gonna see he has got some incredible skills from an amazing professional career that he's rolled into his own company and he helps so many other businesses make strides forward when it comes to the technology that powers growth and scalability.
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But on top of that, he actually loves the mindset stuff he really loves and embraces the entire essence of what it means to be an entrepreneur.
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So we're all going to learn a lot from today's guest.
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His name is Ivan Smirnov.
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Ivan is a forward-thinking technology executive with a passion for scaling startups and building next-generation platforms.
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With a career spanning roles at Google, ellude and Smirnov Labs, ivan has architected systems used by billions literally billions and coached founders to align technical execution with their business vision.
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Through his work at Smirnov Labs, he partners with entrepreneurs to transform their startups into thriving, scalable businesses.
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So much fun stuff that we're going to get into today, so I'm excited about this one.
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I'm not going to say anything else, let's dive straight into my interview with Ivan Smirnoff.
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All right, ivan, I am so very excited that you're here with us today.
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First things first, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much, Brian.
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Such a genuine pleasure to be here.
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I've been looking forward to this all week.
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Yes, honestly.
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Likewise, listeners always love a little bit of behind the scenes.
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You and I have exchanged some voice memos before getting on this call today, and I've researched your business and the work that you do.
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We've exchanged many emails, so this is a ton of fun.
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Let's kick things off by going beyond the bio.
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Who's Yvonne?
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How'd you start doing?
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all these cool things?
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You know?
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Fantastic question.
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It's really funny how life works out.
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As Steve Jobs said, you can never connect the dots looking forward.
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It's only when you turn around, look behind you, you see how it happened.
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So my journey to entrepreneurship actually started much earlier than even I sometimes remember.
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Specifically, I was 16, living in Los Altos, california, the heart of Silicon Valley, and through my school program we had this really nifty partnership with a partnership called Junior Achievement and essentially it's a program that takes teenagers, sticks a bunch of them in one room and has them create a company from scratch.
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So we ended up deciding to create duct tape wallets and bought a bunch of duct tape.
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Everyone pitched in.
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We started ramping up production and as part of that process we actually had to set up a corporate structure to incorporate issue stock and set up leadership positions.
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So I ended up running and winning the co-presidency with another gentleman and we spearheaded the company together and that was my very first exposure to figuring out marketing, understanding conversion rates and all those other fun aspects.
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And from there it's kind of been this fun relationship with entrepreneurship where I took some time to.
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You know, go to UC Berkeley, get a degree strategically, go to Google to kind of learn from the best in the industry, and then I pivoted back into the startup space to start to apply those learnings and actually build out cool technology and just play.
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I mean, that's really what life is right You're here to optimize fun, to learn, to grow and to build, and I've been blessed enough to have those opportunities to really ramp up, learn and then start applying them to real companies and helping other folks achieve their dreams.
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Yeah, I love that overview, Yvonne.
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There's so many things that we're going to unpack in today's episode, but I want to start with the fact that it seems like you were so intentional about your career growth, about your skill development, obviously about the environments that you enjoy.
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You bring up play, that you clearly enjoy working in and operating within.
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I want to hear some of those insights because you, working within the world of startups, you've been at, let's call it, the biggest startup in the world, which is, of course, google.
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We don't think of it as a startup these days, but part of their magic is they've encapsulated that startup environment at scale, at the enterprise level.
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What are some of those things that you've seen inside the world of Google and these other startups that you think contribute to a really scalable and successful and impactful environment?
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Absolutely great question.
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So one of the main reasons I decided to go to Google after graduating was the way I look at it is.
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Google is effectively an industrial PhD.
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Where you are there, you are building products that are serving literally billions of users, and it was a wonderful opportunity to learn from the very best and see the epitome and pinnacle of 16, 20, 25 years of engineering with the best minds on the planet.
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So one of the things that they do really well over there is a really methodical approach to the products that they build, and the biggest value that they instilled in me that I actually apply in my other platforms as well is focusing on the user, because oftentimes, as engineers, we're artists in the soul.
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We wanna build cool things, we wanna bring them to the world, and oftentimes we end up creating solutions in search of a problem, and by putting focus on the user, you're putting on the hat of a person who might not have your situation, life, your skillset or your approach to things and you're really asking yourself what can I build that will serve this person in this particular persona?
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How do I make this easy for them Understandable?
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How do I have this deliver value?
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And I think that's one of the things that Google has done incredibly well over the decades is having this strong focus on the user.
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You end up optimizing products that actually truly delight, rather than just squeezing out shareholder value, and I've tried to apply the same mindset during my time at Allude and now Smirnov Labs, with the consulting and coaching that I'm doing with my partners, where we're talking about okay, what are we building?
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Who are we building it for?
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How do we make this absolutely delightful?
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Yeah, really well said.
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I want you to go deeper there, because it's not often we see someone with your technical prowess and your love for technology, but it seems like maybe equally or even more so, you love the human side of things, you love that solution focus, and technology appears to be merely the vehicle through which you deliver these transformations, these solutions, this growth that you're after.
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Talk to me about that balance, because it must be rare, ivan.
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You must be aware of how rare of a breed that you are in this world.
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Thank you so much for those kind words.
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You're absolutely correct.
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I think that a lot of times as engineers we want to build incredibly cool things and we get so deep into the technical side that you know, with engineering we have our own terminology for everything.
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And the cool part about the engineering parlance, as you say, is we can condense information fidelity so much that if I just say a single word like okay, bgp issues, that conveys three weeks of headache and an understanding of who I am, the problems that I faced, but means absolutely nothing to someone who's not in the technology space.
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So over the course of my career I've really been thinking about the human aspect as well, because if we just build really, really cool technology, sometimes they can almost end up isolating folks who are not in the technical space.
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And that's not what I want to do, because in my eyes, technologists are like modern day wizards.
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We are building floating castles in the sky, but unlike you know, a painting that is beautiful to look at and evokes emotion.
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The castles that we build, they do stuff Like how cool is that we have a computer chip which, when you think about it, is silicon?
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It's sand.
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We are talking about sand.
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That is thinking that I can take concepts and actions that I want this sand to do, say some magic words, and then something happens, like a light turns on or the system talks back to me or I have something painted on the screen.
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When you stop and think about it, it's absolutely magical, and the question that I like to ask myself is okay, how do we turn that magic into everyday joy?
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We've seen this with Apple, with the iPhone right, we have a brick of glass and sand that brings so much value to folks, with photography, with images, with connection, and I really always had this strong passion to figure out how do we make life for humans better.
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And this kind of also pivots into some of my interests with, you know, singularity and the potential merging of technology and humans in the future.
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But it's really a question of okay, how do we build cool technology that makes life more fun for everyone and kind of lets everyone else be the magicians?
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We're sort of seeing that come through these days with, for example, self self-driving cars.
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Right, you put in a destination, you get driven somewhere.
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You tell that to someone 50 years ago that would sound like absolute magic, and yet here we are.
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So I just I find so much love and passion for building things that matter to people.
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That's the reason that, with a lot of the clients that I work with, we're building consumer focused applications.
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It might be b2b, but it's still people looking at it.
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There's a reason I'm not going deep into, let's say, some of the work that the hedge funds are doing, because I am more interested in bringing magical delight into the hands of everyone ivan, so much goodness in there.
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It reminds me, societally we always say that term of with great power comes great responsibility.
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What I'm hearing from you today is you're obviously a very big dreamer and we're going to get into the mindset stuff behind an incredible entrepreneur like you in just a little bit.
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But where I go with that is that you have great powers.
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There's so many things that you can bring out of thin air.
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You're talking about the artistry behind it and that makes me think about.
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With great powers also comes a lot of question marks, and I think the hardest thing to work with is truly a blank slate.
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You have a blank canvas in front of you and, yeah sure, figuring out the problems is one thing, and then even understanding the solution is one thing.
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But creating the picture, creating the thing from scratch, using a keyboard, using a computer, a bunch of ones and zeros how the heck do you navigate that?
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Because there's so much, you said, artistry in between.
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There's a million different ways to solve these problems.
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How do you start channeling all of those different powers into focus, into a solution, into something that you can actually build?
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Absolutely great question.
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So I think it's a two-part answer the ethical side and then the strategic side.
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Let me start with the strategic.
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So a really important aspect of this is thinking about the problem in a structured manner, right?
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So if someone says, build me an application that does X, y and Z, I could jump right in and start writing code.
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But I want to understand the structure and the nuance and the interaction between the person and the product or solution that they're building.
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So we need to understand how are folks using it?
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What is the value that they're getting out of it?
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What does the system load look like on the servers?
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How do we keep the cost down for the user, for the person?
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How do we think about the overall experience?
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And what's interesting is, in order to really succeed in the space, at least in the technical side of things, is it requires a massive breadth of knowledge.
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And the cultivation of that breadth of knowledge is something that I've really strategically approached over the course of my career, because oftentimes folks will specialize on one particular domain, but it means that they don't understand the other aspects that are also part of the overarching solution.
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So, specifically, if someone is really good, let's say, with front end development.
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They might write amazing UIs that will wreak absolute hell on the backend server due to misconfigured load.
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Same thing with the backend systems.
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We might have an amazing backend system, but if you don't think about the security is going to get hacked and now your client data is gone and potentially your code base as well.
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So I like to look at things holistically, kind of using airplane analogies, right, like, let's look at the 30,000 foot view.
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What is the shape of the problem overall?
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Are we flying over a lake, an island, a country?
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What is it?
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Then we kind of get one level lower.
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What are the components that we're building?
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How do the different cities connect each other with the roads?
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And then, one level down, we can start talking about the architecture of the cities and think, okay, if the person is walking here and there or, in our example, if they're using this application, how easy is it to get to where they need to be to do the things they want to do?
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And it kind of requires this interesting jump from the lower levels to the higher levels and back, because when you're building something, you're trying to optimize for the folks building the thing, the business owner who might need some insights and, at the same time, the needs of the consumer while respecting their privacy, charging a reasonable rate, making sure that it's scalable, and that kind of pivots into the ethical side.
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So you're absolutely right, the power of programmers and just tech in general.
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It is insane.
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We build systems that people carry in their pockets, that have the ability to bring great value or, to be honest, you know great pain with some of the things we've been seeing with social media or some of the other aspects, and I think it's really up to each individual developer to decide where their fine lines are.
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There are certain companies that have reached out to me that wanted me to work with them that, for personal reasons, due to my moral code, I actually politely declined because I don't believe in the technology that they're building.
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I don't want to support the pervasive surveillance and some of the other darker things that they're attempting to build and I don't want to be involved and if anything, I will be on the other side of that battle where I will tell everyone about ad blockers, I will tell folks how to secure their systems, because I don't believe in having technology have such deep roots into people's lives in such an invasive manner.
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I think it needs to be a trade-off where, if folks are giving their data to a platform, they need to understand that they're giving that data and have a very clear trade-off of okay, I'm giving this data, but I'm getting something back.
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Case in point I have my Google Maps history turned on because it is convenient to me to remember where I've been, when I've been there last, and have the algorithm optimize my routes.
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Other platforms all disable my location sharing because they don't need to know, so it's a very personal decision.
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Yeah, not only that, ivan, but what I'm hearing from you is really that blend of strategic and tactical thinking.
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This is something that I so admire in great CEOs and great founders and great entrepreneurs is that ability to zoom in and zoom out.
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And I want to go there with you because it just seems to me like, even whether we're talking about business, whether we're talking about technology, you recognize that difference between strategy and tactics, and the best way that I ever saw described was from the world of chess, where a grandmaster once said strategy is knowing what to do when there's nothing to do.
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Tactics are knowing what to do and there's something to do.
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If there's a piece on the board, tactically you take the free piece, but strategically, what's that longer term vision?
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Talk to me about how that factors into the way that you think, because I'm fascinated not just by how you think and what you think, but I really want to understand that, the way that you think.
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That is a really, really good question.
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I think the initial approach to that is to cultivate the intensity of your focus, because where you put your time and attention is incredibly important.
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And it's almost a battle with yourself because, to your point, tactically, there are certain parts of my job that I love that if I had the opportunity, I would spend all day hacking on this one piece, but that wouldn't really drive the overall benefit.
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So I think, realistically, it comes down to keeping in mind the broader picture and understanding why are you even doing this?
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Because if you think about it with entrepreneurship, you have to be insane to be an entrepreneur.
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I'll be honest, you really do.
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Because you're taking something incredibly uncertain, you're placing all your bets on it and the old joke goes quit your 40-hour job week to become 100 hours a week as an entrepreneur.
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So there's a reason you're putting all this time and effort into it and it requires a lot of discipline to think okay, where do I need to strategically shore things up?
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And then, where can I pop up and essentially let go of some of the perfectionism?
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And I find that that's one of the useful kind of benchmarks that I can use is when I noticed that I'm getting something to the state of perfect and it's a lower level item in the overall picture, it means I'm spending too much time on it and, I'll be honest, it hurts because I can be a perfectionist.
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I want to make sure everything is at 100%, but at the end of the day, you have to keep in mind the broader picture, and usually it involves balancing the business objectives with the physical realities of your situation, because no matter what business you're in, you have finite time, money or headcount.
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One of those factors is usually limited, even a behemoth like Google.
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They're bounded by time.
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There's certain things that just take time to do.
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If you're a tiny startup, they're bounded by time.
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There's certain things that just take time to do.
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If you're a tiny startup, you're bounded by time.
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So it comes down to the ruthless prioritization where you have your goal in mind, it aligns with your values and what you're trying to build, and everything else that is secondary.
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You have to consciously deprioritize, and the hardest part about that is typically the things that are on your list.
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They're not actually bad things.
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They're objectively useful task items that will deliver value.
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But the key is learning how to say no to the good things so you can have the time and energy to say yes to the great things.
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Yes, I love that Such important entrepreneurial lessons and that's why, ivan, I always tell people I have the coolest job in the world, because I get to talk to amazing entrepreneurs every single day.
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And, with that in mind, what I really appreciate about the way that you show up in the world is not just as a subject matter expert, but you're also one of us.
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I always remind that fact to listeners, because they're listening to you talk about these solutions and technology and all of these important topics, but at the same time, you're also growing your business.
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So when I hear you talk about limited resources, limited headcount, limited time, these are real life challenges that you also face in your own work.
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Talk to me about some of that, because you've already introduced us to some of the mindset behind it.
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For you, it's perfectionism, ivan.
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What are those real life considerations that you sit with as you think about the impact that you wanna make in this world through your work, as well as growing your own business, as well as, of course, helping your clients grow as well?
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Absolutely great question.
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I think it really comes down to incredible resource management, and when I say that, I'm actually applying that to my entire life.
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There's a reason that a lot of the successful entrepreneurs that we know they have an incredible gym schedule, they're sleeping well, they're eating well.
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Because the first thing you have to prioritize is making sure that this machine, this carbon body that you are in, is optimized as much as possible, because if you're underfed, you're not healthy and you're not sleeping well, it's going to be incredibly hard to have clarity of thought and focus on the things that matter.
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The second aspect is discipline.
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I have an absolutely insane calendar.
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It's hard to show over a podcast, naturally, but I have every single half an hour chunk of my day planned out, and what this does for me is it is incredible freedom, because it looks crazy, but at the same time, whenever an event comes in, I'll put it into the future and then I'll forget about it and then I have the time and energy to kind of move into all of this.
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So you have to prioritize, you have to make sure that the fundamentals are there and then, when it comes to growing a business, you have to remember that anytime you make a decision, you are making a vote with your time, with your energy.
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Right now I am here with you.
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This is the single most important thing that I'm doing right now.
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I'm not thinking about anything else.
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I'm fully present.
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After this I'll have something else and I'll be fully present there.
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So if you're half-assing it, where you're sitting on a meeting but you're thinking about something else, you're not present.
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You're going to lose efficiency.
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So, having the clarity of thought, having the focus to be present and the fundamental understanding that you've picked the most important thing you could possibly do for this day, that really drives huge value, which again kind of highlights the fact of prioritization.
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Any entrepreneur will tell you they probably have 30 hours worth of tasks for a day and you only have, you know, 10, 12, 16 hours, however long it is that you're working, and if you're not prioritizing correctly, you'll be questioning yourself and you'll be working on the wrong things.
00:18:54.396 --> 00:19:02.699
So having the clarity to understand what is the most important thing I need to be doing right now and fully committing to that is incredibly important.
00:19:03.519 --> 00:19:07.530
And, to put some kind of tactical spins on it, it's also important who you hire.
00:19:07.530 --> 00:19:13.611
So hiring people oftentimes like there have been times where I have turned down free talent.
00:19:13.611 --> 00:19:17.451
I had an intern approach me and they're like hey, well, can I work for you, I'll do it for free.
00:19:17.451 --> 00:19:18.836
I had to say no.
00:19:18.836 --> 00:19:27.259
The reason being is because the time I would spend on coaching and up leveling that intern would not yield me an ROI on the value that they would bring.
00:19:27.259 --> 00:19:37.853
This was essentially kind of volunteer time on my side where I could up level them, but it wouldn't serve my business and while I'm a huge fan of volunteering and mentoring, at that time I didn't have the capacity, so I had to say no.
00:19:38.534 --> 00:19:50.580
And some of my best hires are the folks who can take a situation, analyze it and come to me with answers, because if you have an employee that comes to you and says, hey, this isn't working and this sucks and this sucks, that's useful information.
00:19:50.580 --> 00:20:05.336
But you probably already know that because you're looking at your business, the really key hires that you can find are people who will look at a problem, go do some research, come up with three scenarios and come to you and present those scenarios and let you make a choice.
00:20:05.336 --> 00:20:08.432
Scenario A costs this much of time, money and effort.
00:20:08.432 --> 00:20:11.298
Scenario B is less, but it has these trade-offs.
00:20:11.298 --> 00:20:28.010
Scenario C is this, but it has those other trade-offs, and my recommendation is scenario B, and what that means is now you've successfully delegated not just the task itself but the reasoning and motivation and understanding behind a solution to that task to an employee who then comes to you and lets you pick.
00:20:28.010 --> 00:20:33.152
And those folks are very hard to find but, man, when you find them, they're worth their weight in gold.
00:20:33.815 --> 00:20:42.162
Yeah, I love that perspective and these real life stories from you, yvonne, because what I'm hearing when you talk about being fully present, it's why I avoid switching costs.
00:20:42.162 --> 00:20:48.178
Everyone always asks me how we manage a five-day-a-week show, and I tell them for example, my typical recording day is Tuesdays.
00:20:48.178 --> 00:20:51.420
When I wake up on Tuesday, I'm only in one track of mind.
00:20:51.420 --> 00:20:56.976
I'm only focusing on interviews that day, and so I'm not thinking about the email that's gonna throw my day off.
00:20:56.976 --> 00:20:58.854
I'm not thinking about scrolling through social media.
00:20:58.854 --> 00:21:00.938
None of those things even factor into my mind.
00:21:00.938 --> 00:21:05.448
So I don't have those switching costs, which allows me to perform at my best in interviews.
00:21:05.828 --> 00:21:19.074
And along those lines, what I think that's fascinating about the way you talk about your schedule and being present in all of those things is it's not just about having it on your calendar, yvonne, it's having the discipline to stick to it.
00:21:19.074 --> 00:21:28.315
That's what I find, having talked to as many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs as I have, is everyone can tell themselves what they're going to do today, but you have the ability to follow through.
00:21:28.315 --> 00:21:35.057
Talk to me about that lack of deviation because, let's face it, you and I both exist in a world where things change.
00:21:35.057 --> 00:21:38.531
Fires happen in different capacities, whether it's business or life.
00:21:38.531 --> 00:21:45.299
How do you manage those things while also being incredibly disciplined about what you've decided you want to get done?
00:21:47.103 --> 00:21:51.434
I love that question, so here is the ultimate hack that works for me.
00:21:51.434 --> 00:22:03.333
You have to think about this where right now, we are in the present moment, but there is a series of past me's that led to this moment, and there's a series of past me's that led to this moment and there's a series of future me's that follows from this moment.
00:22:03.333 --> 00:22:28.116
And past you and future you need to be on your mind and to be your two best friends, because oftentimes the pattern that we see is a negative spiral where present you is paying down the deaths of past you, who maybe didn't sleep, stayed up too late, didn't hit the gym, ate some junk and you're paying down the debts of the past and you don't have the energy to invest in the future, which means tomorrow, when future you wakes up.
00:22:28.116 --> 00:22:33.760
Present you hasn't done anything for them and you're in a negative spiral where you're constantly paying off old debts.
00:22:33.760 --> 00:22:56.001
If you shift the mindset to thinking about future you as your absolute best friend, and your past you as your kind of younger self that you're approaching with love and understanding it changes everything, because now you're cashing in on the favors and the buildup and the foundational work that past you has done and you're collecting that and you're investing in future.
00:22:56.001 --> 00:23:04.665
You and I'm thinking about this almost on a daily basis because, of course, sometimes I look at my calendar and I just want to say I'm not doing this, I don't want to do this.
00:23:04.665 --> 00:23:12.199
But then I understand that means that past me will have double the work or, sorry, future me will have double the workload the next day because of something I didn't do today.
00:23:12.199 --> 00:23:19.557
And it's that willpower and understanding that I'm not just accountable to myself, because it's easy to lie to yourself and be like it's just me.
00:23:19.557 --> 00:23:28.173
I'm accountable to this other entity, this future me, this person who I love, that I'm doing everything in my life for to build a better future for them.
00:23:28.173 --> 00:23:30.403
How could I possibly backstab them?
00:23:30.403 --> 00:23:32.451
So of course, I'm usually dead tired.
00:23:32.451 --> 00:23:36.268
At the end of the day I will still go to the gym because that is investment for future me.
00:23:36.268 --> 00:23:40.900
And now, having been going to the gym for some time, I appreciate the effort of past me that's done that.
00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:50.640
So, maintaining that relationship it is so important because every single action that we take it's a vote for a future.
00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:52.848
And you know there's some graphics floating around on the internet.
00:23:52.848 --> 00:23:58.082
If you improve by one percent a day 1.01 to the 365th power.
00:23:58.082 --> 00:24:00.186
That is a 37x return.
00:24:00.186 --> 00:24:05.897
If you even take a tiny one percent step every, you'll be 37 times better off in a year than you were today.
00:24:05.897 --> 00:24:11.878
And the inverse of that is, if you lose a percent a day Seems not significant, just a percent.
00:24:11.878 --> 00:24:12.942
What could possibly go wrong?
00:24:12.942 --> 00:24:17.232
Well, 0.99 to the 365th, that is 3%.
00:24:17.232 --> 00:24:23.243
You will lose 33 times your resource if you lose just a percent today over the course of a year.
00:24:23.243 --> 00:24:25.394
So you have to vote with your actions.
00:24:25.394 --> 00:24:27.942
You have to think about what's next and what's coming up.
00:24:28.670 --> 00:24:29.093
Boom.
00:24:29.093 --> 00:24:39.877
I'm going to use that as a natural segue, yvonne, to talk about the future, because obviously, in your line of work, you're not just looking at current technologies, but you're always looking at that technological time horizon.
00:24:39.877 --> 00:24:42.202
And here we are at the beginning of a brand new year.
00:24:42.202 --> 00:24:44.719
So much is going to change here in 2025.
00:24:44.719 --> 00:24:51.500
And, yvonne, I certainly can't imagine I hope that you can imagine a little bit more than I can from my vantage point what's to come this year.
00:24:51.500 --> 00:24:53.314
We've got AI as a big player.
00:24:53.314 --> 00:25:00.616
There's going to be so many new things on the horizon with regards to the way that social media works, the way that the web works, the way that our mobile devices work.
00:25:00.616 --> 00:25:04.243
Ivan, what is it that you're looking at ahead of this brand new year?
