Episode 385 | Jay Gibb - Opportunity Knocks

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Jay Gibb talks with Dave Rael about software, translating between business and technical, understanding problems, and recognizing opportunities

Jay Gibb is the Founder and CEO of a B2B SaaS company called CloudSponge and a partner at a distributed software engineering consulting agency called Arizona Bay. He and his team have built hundreds of online businesses with entrepreneurs over the last 20 years and he’s an expert at helping non-technical (and quasi-technical) entrepreneurs build new software products and manage technology teams for their ventures.

Chapters: 0:36 - Dave introduces the show and Jay Gibb4:10 - The nature of Arizona Bay and CloudSponge and the problems CloudSponge solves13:16 - Testing of CloudSponge and exposing and sharing the results15:42 - Remote culture before it was cool and into the modern era20:25 - Jay's career progression and growing roles, including advice for growth and the benefits of having technical information on proposals25:30 - Jay's story of failure - spending an entire project's budget on a specific feature (and then turning that failure into a successful product)30:30 - Figuring out what you're building35:15 - Jay's book recommendation38:37 - The things that have Jay most excited45:34 - Jay's top 3 tips for delivering more value49:35 - Keeping up with Jay

Resources: Jay on LinkedIn Arizona Bay CloudSponge OpenInviter Plaxo Ruby on Rails History The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist - Frederick P. Brooks Brooks Zapier IFTTT

Jay's book recommendation: Smart Marketing for Engineers: An Inbound Marketing Guide to Reaching Technical Audiences - Rebecca Geier

Jay's top 3 tips for delivering more value: Listen and ask better questions, investigate frames of mind Look around at the opportunities available Share the information you have discovered