Building in Public

The public build log of a no-name, not-writer, not-quite-software-engineer undertaking new challenges. The goal of this build log is to transparently capture the processes - tangible and intangible - and the experiences of a first-timer. Like a missile, I know where I am because I know where I am not (and weirdly enough multiple generations of my family have worked on these guidance systems). Let me introduce myself.

Who I Am

My name is Marcus Guttenplan, and I’m a software engineer. A self-taught, scrappy builder with two art degrees. I have spent the last decade shifting between products, experiencing firsthand both small and large scales of impact. First working with brilliant ex-govvy engineers that just wanted information to be free, tracking state-sponsored hackers at a tiny startup (now part of CloudFlare). Then, as a technologist up through to director of technology at an experiential advertising agency, maturing all stages of a nascent software offering building the experiences that some of the largest tech companies use to tell and sell their stories to customers. Most recently, I have spent 4+ years as a senior engineer at AWS, where my time has been focused on scaling AI products and working closely with leadership to push all of the levers to decrease costs and increase revenue. Alongside all of this work, I have continued to build and architect for customers as a consultant.

Despite this experience - impossible to imagine for someone with a photo and an HCI-style design degree that put themselves through college working service jobs - I yearn for something that makes more of an impact for more people. I want to build something of my own, and I want to solve real problems for the everyday people that are out there trying to make their own impact.

That’s why, after 10 years of farting around, I want to build a company.

The Stage

I’m an outsider here. I’ve hustled up my own consulting clients and self-sustained for periods doing it, but I’ve never really started a company. I’ve tried, halfheartedly, after someone from TechStars reached out about interviewing. I’ve watched close friends do it firsthand and succeed, and the common refrain is that starting companies is a high risk/high reward gamble. It’s a tightrope act without a safety net, a crapshoot in a shitstorm, throwing darts at invisible dart boards. I don’t have real stats offhand but ~99% of companies will fail, if not more. One of the strategies that builders take to create a safety net of relationships is to “Build in Public.” Others go full stealth, worried that their ideas will be stolen and brought to market faster. While those are valid concerns, I come from a different school of thought: it’s a lonely journey and like John Stuart Mills says, ideas are meant to be free. The secret sauce comes from perspective, framing, and unexpected connections. Ideas themselves are cheap. Anyone can come up with ideas, but how they’re framed and how they’re executed upon make the ultimate difference.

Why now? Why me? What? How? These questions are a healthy dose of existential interrogation that we all need to stay grounded in reality.

The world feels like it’s burning, the market is rough, the economic outlook bleak, both nationally and internationally we’ve never been more divided. And that is exactly why now. We are at an inflection point. Collectively humanity is faced with a multitude of critical problems, many of which may literally be life or death. While technology can definitely be destructive, it can also streamline, augment, and enable people to do better work faster. Since that first job out of grad school working with alums of the intelligence community, on to close work in airgaps at AWS, I have always believed in civic duty. I may be a no-name, not-writer, not-quite-software-engineer, but I also have the ability to build things that can help people. Full transparency, there is obviously greed involved: if a company can make a profit helping other people make even more profit doing work that benefits the greater good, then why not? The name of the game is force multiplication, with every level of interaction magnifying and accelerating the impact of the previous.

The goal is to do this all correctly, to fight the engineer’s urge to just build, and to find the problems and the customers that can truly make the difference. This is not a solo journey. It’s a web of friends and family, collaborators, customers, and patrons.

What’s Next

The crew is introduced. The stage is set. From here, I will go on to define “The Program” and “The Script,” the “how” and the “what.” The script will focus on the problems areas that I’m most interested in, the process of deep diving into the industries and markets, the investigation of problems, and the definition of customers. The program encompasses the tools and strategies that I’ve learned over the last decade, and will build upon the script to define the waypoints needed to actually solve the problems. The script touches upon all of the things required to build a product the right way, and the program will focus on how I aim to achieve it.

Both the script and the program are intertwined, in a feedback loop with each other. Changes to one will affect the other, and I expect a theme of this build log being the constant interactions between the two.