Jimmy Huber: And welcome to another episode of the Info Tech Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Jimmy Huber. And as you know, this podcast explores the intersection between business and technology. And today I've got a treat for our audience. We talk about a lot of topics on this podcast, and it's always hopeful to have an expert on the other end of this call. And today, I definitely do. Ivan Debick is the founder of BlueGrid.io. And I'm really excited to have you, Ivan, on the show today. Thanks for your time. ivan: Sure, man, happy to be here. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah, you bet. I'm gonna let you introduce yourself, but just for people that might not know, Ivan here has built something from the ground up and he's in the consulting space that I think is there's a lot of consultants out there, but there's not a lot that have built a company, I think, to your scale. So I'm really excited for for our audience here to to get to know you and hear your perspective today. But before we get into it. I'd love to know, you know, your story, how you founded Blue Grid. just give us a little bit of insight about, you know, how you arrived in the scene. ivan: thanks for the intro and for the flattering part of being an expert. I guess I'm striving as everyone should to be an expert, but I don't think I'm there yet with everything in in technology space right now. So fast these days, but yeah, much appreciated. Jimmy Huber: Yeah, well and and now we know you're humble too, so hey, I think that's great. ivan: There you go. Thanks, man. Yeah, so well, I guess the important story starts in 2012 or somewhere around that point. I started working with Chris Joland. It he he started Max CDN in 2009 and I joined 2012. I was leading the support team for actually support organization for this cloud slash CDN company at the time and at some point there was an opportunity for me to convert them from from an employer essentially to being my customer and they were my first customer in consulting space and everything just grew from there. I my as well as our, I would dare to say our connections as well because I didn't build this on my own. I had a I still have a wonderful team around me who's helping me on daily basis. And our connections throughout working with Mac CDN and and customers of MacCDN later grew to actually having this base of really wonderful, smart people, successful people who helped us build what we have today and the way they did that is by being our most valuable customers throughout the years. So Jimmy Huber: Sure, yeah. ivan: I guess that's how it started, and it just grew from there. we started in cloud slash CDN industry, and myself and one of my co-founders, we come from cybersecurity space, so it was natural to expand our consulting from cloud to cybersecurity as well, and software development naturally. So right now we are operating in three divisions. one is software development, one is infrastructure and cybersecurity, and the third one is IT staff augmentation. not so not so fun, but still very important when it comes to developing the revenue needed for everything else to to you know come out from that core of the business, which does not really require your day-to-day involvement as much, but it brings quite a lot of value to actually, you know. tip your toes in in different things and and try out different things with having the revenue generated on IT staff augmentation part. So I guess that's w Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: where we are right now. Jimmy Huber: Yeah, I love that. So you're you're in a bunch of different things here. Let's back up just a little bit. For those that don't know, so C DN Content Delivery Network, right? So you were making sure you know, traffic was flowing, like probably the easiest thing would be like Netflix, right? Netflix or any streaming service runs on a C DN. That's how you have data all over the world faster, right? Good. ivan: We had those. We yeah, we had those as customers as well. so I think the major ones were streaming companies. there was like quantity-wise, I think most of most of the customers that we were able to quickly and easily help were those who had shops or other types of web presentations and web or web apps. essentially and with Jimmy Huber: Got it. Yeah. ivan: with large like static files and well static files are something that's of the most I think the main interest of CDNs out there because you can't check you can't really cache dynamic content. So everything that's hosting a lot of static stuff that was where th that was the customer where we were able to help the most. And I think quantity wise that was like shops, websites, a lot of that kind of businesses. But quality wise or in terms of like revenue generating, I think streaming platforms Etcetera. But mainly, yeah, streaming, I I would say. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're there's a lot of overlap there with with many other things. So I can see as you've grown, like to get into cyber, you know, and even the augmentation for the staffing services. Yeah, we even in our small market in Illinois, we've got competitors that do IT staffing as well. 'Cause it's just kind of a natural progression when you get to a certain point. So I feel like there's a a thousand places we could go here today with with just what you started with. But I think the relevant thing is, you know, our market seems to be changing rapidly. You alluded to that earlier, right? And so I would love your perspective, especially since you've you've got a spread out team, right? I think most of my audience is probably US based, so we can kind of get into our little bubble, right? but I would love to know like the international perspective of where you see the market now. I mean, obviously cyber is a huge thing. It's been around for a long time, and I think even small businesses realize the value of that. But then there's there's AI coming now too, which You know, we were joking earlier that like everyone's talking about AI and it's like almost beating a horse, you know, to death. But I think it's still important and relevant because a lot of businesses don't have it figured out yet or don't understand, I guess, how to best utilize it to actually help their business and not just have, you know, the shiny object syndrome of the next, you know, whiz bang thing that's coming. But it's harder with the iteration of change just compressing like it is to keep up with that, not just as a business, but as a a tech leader, right, in your company, 'cause you're expected to be the expert. So what are you seeing, I guess, in these last six, twelve months? I mean, how are you guys dealing with with the market and all the changes? ivan: The correct answer is nobody knows. Nobody Jimmy Huber: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. ivan: knows where it's going. But I mean so at the very beginning I was I'm not sure if I ever was like a doom theorist when it comes to AI. Jimmy Huber: Sure. ivan: But Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: I had this I had this fear around the nature of the nature of this type of revolution comparing to everything else that we went through so far, historically speaking. So all technology revolutions that we went through so far were replacing manual labor. this is the only one that's different. And that's why I'm, you know, tempted to say I don't know where it's going and how it's gonna What are all the spaces that is going to disrupt throughout time? But what I do know is I think it brings more opportunities than people actually give it credit for. It will Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: definitely, it will most definitely disrupt almost everything, if not everything. On the long term and in the long run, it will definitely negatively affect some people. And those are we are talking about positions that are easily automated, unfortunately. And we are already Jimmy Huber: Yeah, yeah. ivan: seeing that. I think that's one of the biggest effects right now. If we can measure something that's you know happening out there with AI, that's a negative effect when it comes to manpower and positive effect when it comes to speed. With which you are now able to deliver. We are now we're Jimmy Huber: Sure. Yeah, I've Good. ivan: now capable of measuring downsides versus upside of it clearly. Like a few months ago, we I I don't think we were capable of doing that, but right now we can. So I have projects that we are delivering using I can say that is un if your viewers are familiar with dark factory pattern. A few few months ago it was a new thing for me as well. but We are heading that way because the market is asking for it. at some point I think you mentioned like maybe we should talk about like what the market actually wants and what do I see that you know clients Jimmy Huber: Sure. Yeah. ivan: are are changing in terms of like their their ask, their demands and so on. there's still definitely asks and requests for projects that depend on human only. you know, like interaction with our system or just human only development. but more and more I see that they do not care. They just want results. And when that happens, Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: now we are able to spin up, you know, front-end agent, back end agent, DevOps agent, security agent, and all these AI agents are able to work with a software architect, who's typically at the high end of this hierarchy. to to to create a certain a loop back scenario in which all of these AI agents are responsible for their own space of responsibility when when it comes to like developing whatever the product is and qi agents for each of those who are pushing back if something is not done right and in the end you're you're getting the the the finished product right so that's the whole idea of having the dark factory pattern implemented method implemented in in software development I don't think anyone's there yet 100% but The reason why I'm mentioning this is software development industry, service industry is seeing major disruption when it comes to this part specifically. So you're not having a team of engineers anymore, you have one or few architects that are like defining what the actual product is and then spinning all these AI agents who are developing their segment of the story and then in the end you get the actual product. So yeah, that's yeah Jimmy Huber: Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. ivan: exactly, exactly. It's already happening like two months or something like that. I was doing research on Cloud Code, and how they built it, how Anthropic built, you know, Cloud Code and and etc. etc. And at that point, I think it was like 80 or 80 something percent of the code base of the Cloud Code was created by the Cloud Code. So it's Jimmy Huber: wow. ivan: it's it's building itself, you know? Jimmy Huber: Yeah, that's that's even crazier. So like, do you see cause for a while there like the statistics came out that you know twenty-some percent of the whole internet was AI, you know, created. And so AI was learning from itself. And it's like, hey, is the snake gonna eat its own tail and the quality is is gonna tank? And I don't think we've really seen that fully yet. It's more like what you said, where hey, it's it's actually iterating and getting better faster. it's it's going the other way. So how do you You extrapolate that out. I it's hard to speculate. Like you said, nobody knows, but if I'm, you know, a college graduate or somebody looking to be a you know, a level one developer, I've got a got a problem right now. 'Cause what my ivan: yeah. Jimmy Huber: job would be two, three years ago is now not even needed really. If I'm a tier ivan: yeah. Jimmy Huber: two or or like a senior developer, this is great. I can do all these things without waiting on these these junior de devs, right? But that's a transition that I don't think people saw coming this fast, right? ivan: yeah, definitely. And that by itself is a topic that requires at least an hour. So so Jimmy Huber: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ivan: up until so pre-AI, we had, as you explained yourself, so we had companies who were able to employ juniors or just like beginners playing from the from the college, college graduates, right? And then help them become, you know, like 10 years from that point, senior engineers, right? And it makes sense because you have a low entry point for investment side of the story when it comes to like organizational strategic approach to creating your engineering team. And on the other hand, you had the opportunity for the actual candidates or college graduates to, you know, jump into the workforce and see how it's going and to learn and to develop themselves. So Jimmy Huber: Yeah, yeah. ivan: Post-AI, we definitely have this problem where it's not the matter of whether senior engineers are eager to help or work with someone to bring them up to speed. It's more like who wants junior developer now? Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: Where will these people have the opportunity to advance themselves? They are right now they are jumping on so of of course, I mean they will still be learning everything that they learned so far throughout first to fourth year of like college education, and they will all learn still like what, JavaScript, Python, all the usual stuff. And at some point, if not already, they will be learning prompting. They will obviously they will have to know how AI functions in the background because I think that's a very important thing to know before you Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: actually start using AI for whatever reason you know benefit. And so but prompting will obviously be something that people will learn, will have to learn in the college to be capable of joining the workforce force or joining the organization company xyz and being capable of actually delivering tasks. It's just otherwise I don't see how it's it's it's it's not it's not doable. We have to adapt our educational system now Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: to it it sounds ridiculous, but yeah we have to teach them prompting. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. For sure. I mean, it's almost like the in the nineties, you know, when the internet and T CPIP and all these things were not commonplace. Like they were just coming about. And so, you know, you were excited to get an email. You know, it's just it was just a completely different world, but now it's just normal, right? But that took, you know, ten, fifteen years or more to kind of really roll out. And now most everybody has everything they want on their phone, right? Like there was an iteration cycle there, but it it took a while for our brains to wrap around it, I feel like. This is just ivan: Yeah. Jimmy Huber: coming out of nowhere, it seems, to the to the general public, and it's just so much at a faster pace. So, you know, what at Blue Grid, how did you approach this? Because I'm sure you were getting, you know, level one, you know, devs as as as you grew. And now you've got, like you said, these these engineers are defining things and basically managing agents to do all the grunt work, right? Or the the the heavy lifting and then just just managing that outcome. So that's a huge, you know, jump. And one side of it is, hey, there's a huge opportunity. But the other side is, man, if if you're not willing to immediately change and adapt, you're gonna fall by the wayside. And that's kind of that's maybe pretty hard for, you know, a 22-year-old or something that thought they had their their ducks in a row to just jump into that. So how are you guys dealing with with all those changes, you know, internally to make sure that you're, you know, staying ahead, but yet you're not leaving all these people behind that, you know, are already employed and two, three years ago, you know, thought they knew what they wanted. ivan: Right. so it's work in progress, obviously. and I mean the the way you said it is something that we strive for, but we are not there yet. So we don't have engineers who are just sitting around and managing AI agents. That's where we are obviously have to be at at some point. Jimmy Huber: Got it. ivan: but the capacity for well, actually, let me let me answer it this way. Of all engineering capacity right now, I think we are around 20% in this agentic already. The rest is already Jimmy Huber: I gotcha. Yeah. ivan: the the the the rest of the engineering capacity is still working on pre-AI well not pre-AI, pre-AI projects, but still very AI enabled. So from Jimmy Huber: I see. Sure. ivan: everyone, like from from people who are working in administration up to you know, engineering support teams, middle management, up to myself, we are all AI enabled, like 100% of the people. the way we approach solving different problems now that depends on like you know what the problem actually is. If you're in engineering, then are you working on a project that's even allowing like for example some some customers do not want AI hooked up to their stuff. You you you still have to develop traditionally like using frameworks and stuff so no AI involvement. There are still those. Jimmy Huber: That's interesting. ivan: And I said like of all the capacity that we have in a company like 70-80% is no traditional software development still. Jimmy Huber: Okay, so it's a process. We're not just flipping a switch here. It it's being phased in. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. ivan: It's inc well y you can't do that. It's impossible to flip a switch. If you if you do flip a switch then you'll have to let go eighty percent of your customers who do not care for, you know, what AI actually brings on the Jimmy Huber: I gotcha. ivan: table. So Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point because yeah, I guess I'm I'm used to being in the small and mid-sized business space where it almost is like either they're all in or they're they're not, you know. Whereas yeah, if you work ivan: Yeah. Jimmy Huber: an enterprise in the larger companies, that adoption rate I would think would be, you know, a lot slower. So how has this changed, I guess, your your strategic growth mindset as you you know continue to look you know into the future? Do you see this ramping up even more or how has that, you know, affected, you know, your your company culture and kind of where you're leading your company? ivan: Yeah. it flipped 180 degrees, I think. Yeah. our strategic point of view now was from setting up more and more demos to switching our mindset towards what we are actually selling. We're not selling the same thing anymore. our infrastructure Jimmy Huber: Sure. ivan: and security division now is selling a lot more automation and intelligence within what we already did. So we have to change our entire what do you call it sales deck for this particular like infrastructure and security, what do you call a vertical or division? Software development Jimmy Huber: Sure. ivan: I I mentioned that's like cr I think craziest thing that we had to do is just like start thinking so differently that we are starting from the ground up right now. Not just us, I mean Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: everyone in the service industry when it comes to software. We are starting Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: from the ground up. I see a lot of like trendy posts out there, like I managed to replace my entire sales team with cloud AI and this is how I did it. Bullshit. It's it's we are not there yet. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not reality. Sure. ivan: It's yeah. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah. I think I've I've agree with you. I mean, even in our small market, like we're almost selling processes and more operational like goals, and we're just using the technology to do that versus, yeah, two, three years ago we were still talking about, you know, EDR, MDR agents, and it was all technical and security and all that, which is still here, but it's really switched. So yeah, I agree. I mean, starting over Your deck, yeah, your your slide deck is not the same as it was a year ago, even. and I think that's healthy on some way because a lot of I think business owners just want to see that shiny object, right? They just want to get the trend and like get ahead of the game, and they don't realize that unless you have a system and a process in place to deliver whatever you're trying to do, AI could almost make it worse. You know, you have to start with the fundamentals and the basics. And I think as tech leaders, That's a huge part of our job is to lead people that way, right? Not just our staff internally, but our clients. So do you see an acceptance of that or or are you I mean, it sounds like some of your customers don't want any AI, so there's that part. But the ones that are at least open to that, are they understanding those pieces or are we still trying to connect the dots? ivan: Yeah, most are open. there are some that for compliance, security compliance reasons, they do not want or I mean their request is at at the the I'm speaking from my own experience. So the project that projects that we onboarded demanded like twenty thirty percent were okay with whatever AI is doing, and then we were we were like thumbs up, this is our agentic approach, we can totally do that. like 70-80% were skeptics but like out of those 70-80% let's say that two-thirds are probably willing to and obviously are willing to implement AI in their workflow and they're successfully doing that but here's the kicker again only those 20% are open to say hey guys this is what I want build it I don't care how And then age a agentic approach is what we use to do that. These other guys are dare to say more careful, or maybe even worried, whether it's just like security stuff worries them or just they're not compliant anymore, if their investors are asking them to be, and etc. etc. But the difference is they are not outsourcing decision making to AI, they are not outsourcing no human in the loop type of development. And that's very important. So they want speed and efficiency, but there has to be a human in the loop because legally speaking, AI cannot put its signature on a paper that something was done the way it's supposed to, etc. etc. So yeah, I Jimmy Huber: I see. Sure. Sure. ivan: mean even with the agentic and and dark factory stuff, you can you you still have to have a human who is you know putting their signature, but then this person is taking on themselves the responsibility of entire team of AI agents on what's actually delivered. in most other cases for the for the for our clients who are open for using AI but not blindly jumping into it I would say they have strict rules of like what AI should be doing. And this is the crucial part and I think it also helped us form our philosophy when it comes to what we actually sell when we approach to our customers with AI solutions. The reason why I mentioned that is I think this is this is important part that a lot of people and organization organizations are skipping and it's Philosophy of how we we use AI is important and it will differentiate winners from losers in the long run. Replacing Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: people, replacing manpower is not the way to go. In the long run, all big ones, you know, big consulting companies. that we're not gonna mention right now, but most of us know who they are that laid off like 30% of something people, and that's like you know, Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: dozens of thousands of people. I don't see a benefit unless they are unlocking the shares, you know, for reinvestment in the AI or something else, whatever. So having healthy AI adoption philosophy, I think it's important for the long run. And ours is Look what is repeatable, look what's what people are wasting time on repeating constantly and automate it. Do not outsource decision making to AI. Have human in the loop from entry to exit point. So I took a little bit of detour, Jimmy Huber: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, we've we've talked about that with ivan: but Jimmy Huber: No, I I love that. I mean, 'cause you're you're describing, I think, the the conundrum that we're in right now as an industry. And yeah, I think abdicating you know, the thought leadership to AI is completely not the right way to go. It can be a thought partner, and we've talked about that on other episodes too, but yeah, a human still needs to be, you know, on the the pulse, right? And have their their Whether it's signing off on something or having the final call. And then you're the AI is is just another tool. And the people that grasp that, I think, sooner will go further. And yeah, as as a as an owner myself, I mean, yeah, we're it's hard to understand the concept of hey, I don't just want to get rid of a third of my staff to save money in the short term and just use AI tools because, like you said, in the long term, it's just not it's not right and healthy. I think long term if you realize that hey, you are gonna be a lot more productive, but you can do more with the current staff that you have, give them the opportunity to learn and step in and grow into, you know, the the new pieces, I think that's a lot more beneficial long term. ivan: Yeah, definitely. I mean we I can already see that some b some companies are rehiring after they figure it's that, we made a mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah, oops, sure. Yeah, which is good to see. I mean, because yeah, that it's just very volatile, it seems like, more more so than than before. So what's your advice for for someone who's who's maybe, you know, earlier in their career, they don't have a a baseline of the good old days or whatnot in the you know, two thousands or twenty tens. how do you help them navigate that? Maybe it's a junior employee of yours or a a client that's maybe on the smaller end that's looking to scale. what have you learned in the last, you know, six to twelve months that's your your best, I guess, tip on your experience for for them? ivan: I think you asked me like four questions there. Yeah. Jimmy Huber: Sorry. Just trying to frame it. advice for for younger entrepreneurs is what I'm getting. ivan: Okay. hire slow fire fast. Jimmy Huber: Ooh, I like that. What do you mean by that? ivan: Yeah. I mean I made like the the the biggest mistakes I've made were not in financial, they're not in who was the client that we decided to work with. It was not a bad client, it was not bad financial structure, it was always bad hire. And when you have a bad hire like That's that's the worst thing you can do for yourself. not having a proper process in place to vet people, not what can not by what can they do, but who they are. Cultural Jimmy Huber: Yeah. ivan: cultural fit for candidates, for people you you are actually building something for next whatever number of years is very important, and I think people are young entrepreneurs are not really that keen on on thinking deeper on that topic but it's man, it's very expensive. as I said, most of my biggest mistakes and most expensive mistakes were bad hires. So Jimmy Huber: Yeah. I think every business owner can relate to that. I know I can. And it it hurts the most when you're the smallest. If you're going from five to six employees, that if it's the wrong one, that's killer. If you're fifty to fifty one, that could that could maybe be, you know, mitigated a little bit easier, but it's the same concepts. Yeah. And so getting off on the right ivan: yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean it Jimmy Huber: foot is huge. Go ahead. ivan: even even even if you're like hundred plus people, you still have the same problem, but it's less visible and you s and you think it's not there. I'm just I'm just gonna s Jimmy Huber: yeah, that's a good point. ivan: yeah, exactly. I I'm just gonna say this. We all had this one person, at least one person, which was awesome in what they do. But nobody was able to work with them and and and it's just, you know, it it wasn't Jimmy Huber: yeah. Yeah. Not a good culture fit. ivan: exactly bad cultural fit and you were like, I'll I'll deal with it when this project is done. Or I'll deal with it in whatever quarter of the year when this or that is done. You never do. You deal with it when it's too late. So that's why I said Jimmy Huber: Yeah. Yeah. ivan: hire slow, like figure out you know, whether of like all the candidates you're interviewing, who's the best fit for you, who you can see yourself trapped with two hours in the elevator, and you're actually gonna have awesome time. Hire that person. You can teach them skills. You cannot teach them to be human beings. So Jimmy Huber: I love that. Yeah. Culture first and then the technical part can come later. And yeah, ivan: Exactly. Jimmy Huber: I I think that's true for for most businesses, if not all, right? And yeah, I f I feel like we just only skim the surface. We definitely have to have you back, Ivan, to to kind of continue to follow along your journey. And maybe I'll pick a a more narrow focus for our next episode so we can get more deeper into the weeds. But I think hopefully our audience has pulled some stuff from your experience today because you do have, I think, a good perspective on not only the the culture that we're in, but kind of how to deal with some of these things that are are just changing so fast. if somebody wants to get a hold of you, Ivan, I mean we'll definitely put your LinkedIn and your website, you know, in our show notes. But if somebody maybe just wants a conversation, you know, to see what it's like working with with Blue Grid or, you know, getting your perspective further, what's the best way to get in touch with you? ivan: yeah, well LinkedIn, but lately I think LinkedIn is becoming very cluttered. LinkedIn and we'll add Calendly link, maybe. I think those Jimmy Huber: sure. ivan: are two best ways, I think so far. yeah. If you're not if you're Jimmy Huber: Okay. Cool. Yeah, no, we'll definitely do that. ivan: if you're not pitching anything, LinkedIn is still a good place to be. So LinkedIn and Calendly. Jimmy Huber: There go. Yeah, it is it is interesting. And ten years ago LinkedIn was it, man. And now it's like everybody's pitching in LinkedIn. It it's it's interesting how the ebbs and flows of of sales and ivan: Yeah. Jimmy Huber: like actually getting communication done moves around. But ivan: Yeah. I mean I don't have anything against pitching, but I have a a lot of against like pitching constantly, even though I tell you I'm not interested and then I have to block you and Jimmy Huber: Yeah. You gotta read the room. Yeah. So soft skills sometimes are are the bane of our existence in in the tech space. We're really good at fixing problems, but it's the people part that seems to sometimes be lacking. but yeah, no, ivan: Yeah, exactly. Jimmy Huber: thank you so much for your your time today. Hopefully our audience you know could could pull some some tidbits out of our conversation. And yeah, I definitely do want to stay in touch with you. I I think you've got a great perspective. and it's it's only gonna change more, right, as we go into the rest of this year and into twenty twenty seven. It'll be interesting to see how things settle. I don't think we're we're plateaued yet. I think there's still more volatility coming. So having these conversations and keeping that dialogue going, I think is is really important. So I really appreciate it. ivan: Sure, man. Thanks, thanks for your time and thanks for having me, obviously. I'm happy to be here. Jimmy Huber: Yeah. You bet. Take care.