Andrew Amann Podcast Transcript

82
Headshot of CEO Andrew Amann

Andrew Amann Podcast Transcript

Andrew Amann joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.

Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.

Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Andrew Amann. Andrew Amann is the CEO and co-founder of NineTwoThree, an award-winning AI web and mobile product studio for established brands and funded startups. As a product design, engineering, and marketing firm, they’ve successfully launched over 150 projects.

Their proven playbook has helped companies such as Consumer Reports, Experian, and SimpliSafe.

Well, good afternoon, Andrew. Welcome to the show!

Andrew Amann: Thanks for having me! I appreciate it.

Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time hailing out of that Boston area. I’m in Kansas City, so we’re just an hour apart, but I’m glad that we were able to make the time and jump in and have a great conversation.

Andrew, I’m going to jump right into your first question here. Your company NineTwoThree has launched over 150 successful projects for major brands like Consumer Reports and Experian. Can you share the key elements of your playbook that consistently lead to success in product design and development?

Andrew Amann: Sure. So, we kind of look at projects in a spectrum of what type of clients are good for us to work with.

And when you look at it that way, there’s two types of product market fit. The first one is that the client needs to understand where the right type of agency for the task that they’re asking us to do. And the second one is we need to be a product market fit for the client. Right. And what that means is we need to have the right culture, the right team, and the right experience to solve the problem that they’re asking us to do.

So, when you look at a two-sided marketplace like that, not everyone’s perfect customer for us. We like when there’s a product manager on the other side that has the power to make decisions. We like when there’s an internal engineering team, somebody that can implement the project after we complete it and continue to take on the work.

And then we, lastly, really enjoy projects working with innovation labs. We like working with different types of startups that are going from 0 to 1, but we truly like to say we work with funded startups and established brands. And that is why the double-sided marketplace is very important for us, because if we find the right client and we can build that product from zero to one for a funded startup or an established brand, we think that we’re the right person at the right time to build a product that can scale to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

So, as I said, it’s the balance of finding the right client, but it’s also a balance of that client being ready at the right time and looking for the type of agency that we’ve curated over all these years.

Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And, you know, I’ve not only heard that, but that is important. Obviously, you want somebody that can see eye to eye what you’re doing, and you have somebody on the other side, the other team that is actually there to help mirror some of those activities and make sure you’re on the same page.

So, I really do appreciate how you can select your clients in that way. Andrew, NineTwoThree operates as an AI web and mobile product studio. What trends are you seeing in these areas and how do you integrate emerging technologies like AI into your product design process?

Andrew Amann: Sure. So, the first trend we’re seeing is from 2022.

There was a lot of money in the marketplace and there was a lot of venture. I would say Series A and seed money being thrown into the marketplace to create products. It was kind of a heyday for us because we would be on many calls a week throwing a lot of proposals into the space to build 0 to 1 product that people are trying to.

Capture a market or capture an audience in that time period. It’s changed since 2022. There, a lot of the money has dried up in our opinion from that seed and series a, and people are looking for long term profitable projects. One of the biggest trends we’ve seen is the mobile app industry becoming more of a commodity.

It’s no longer a specialty to be able to build mobile apps at the excellence that we’ve done for 12 years. It truly is a commodity where there’s a lot of agencies in that space building a lot of mobile apps. It became a very hot spot, kind of like house building right after a while. A lot of the houses start looking similar.

And with material design and Apple’s human guidelines driving the train of how apps should be designed and handled when your thumb glides over the screen. A lot of the apps and designs have fallen into that same pattern of this is how we design a back button. This is how we design a forward button.

This is how we design login screens. And so, with that said, I think the introduction of AI has really jump started the market into a place in which. You can have that innovation edge again, but you can also be unique and you can have a skill set that not many other agencies have now. Lucky for us. We’ve been building apps for eight years.

And so, it’s not new to us to, you know, do a time series analysis to do data science and the engineers and the data science that work for us have solved problems together for eight years. And so, when we, you know, solve problems for consumer reports, it’s not like we’re pulling members together to try to link them and see if they can, you know, gel and have that feeling of scalability.

We truly know which members work together and we truly know which projects in the past have guided us in a way that gives us that extra edge against other people trying to build similar products. And when we launch Consumer Reports, especially in the market of a chatbot world, we believe we have one of the strongest conversational AI products in the marketplace.

You look at the Wall Street Journal, you look at New York Times, they’re all attempting these styles of conversational AI based on a knowledge base. But I truly think what Consumer Reports has, and what a lot of our other clients have, is cutting-edge technology that is not hallucinating as much as you’re used to with chat GPT.

And when you combine those things together, I’m very proud to say that we are a leading AI agency here in America.

Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And thank you for sharing that I didn’t know you went back as far as eight years and probably on designing applications. But you definitely have your hand on the pulse. And I appreciate what you’re sharing.

Because obviously, in order to provide that type of service or platform for consumer reports, you’ve got to be well ahead of the game, which you certainly are. I appreciate that. Andrew, NineTwoThree has won multiple awards. Can you share some insights into the culture and leadership practices that drive innovation and excellence within your team?

Andrew Amann: Sure. Yeah. The recent awards that we’ve won that we’re most proud of is we’ve been on the Inc 5000 list for four years in a row. And the reason why we are even on that list is a system we’ve implemented called EOS. And if you’re not familiar, there’s a famous book by Gina Wickman called Traction, and it is a business operating system designed for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

We implemented that in 2021 and due to the war over in Europe, we delayed it all the way until 2022. But by the time we started, and had it ramped up and started to implement it into our business, we saw massive growth and massive culture adoption that equated to 92 percent retention rate in 2023. And we actually had 100 percent retention rate in 2022.

And what that means is when we get the right people on the right seats, driving the bus, yeah. We’re all rowing in the same direction and all those metaphors you can pull from Jim Collins means that this process really works. I’m proud to say that people like working here. We do internal scoring systems, and we have different measures to understand if it’s a good place to work and if we can improve.

And it’s not like we’re doing anything special. We’re not doing beanbags or pool tables or unlimited vacations. We truly just run a business where we have challenging problems. We solve those challenging problems, and we provide a place for people to work and continue to have challenges and solutions to those challenges.

And they feel good. They feel like they’re progressing in their career. They feel like they’re progressing with the market. And I think because we’re also leading the industry and a lot of these AI trends, I think they’re also feeling the bravado or whatever that word is, is like that feeling of excellence.

And so, when we launch something, it trickles all the way back down to the QA engineers, the designers, the project managers, and they had a fingerprint on building some of the coolest products that have been released in the last year.

Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Sometimes you do need to bring in some outside help for some of that culture building and collaboration.

But what I think you have, there’s something special. You design some really innovative products, and everybody’s included. And I think there’s a lot of energy and excitement around that. So, I appreciate the share and Andrew last question of the evening with AI being a critical part of your offerings.

How do you see AI transforming product development in the next 5 to 10 years?

Andrew Amann: I think the biggest move that’s happening is large language models are going to be on the phone. And once that happens, there’s going to be a privatization of that large language model inside of your phone itself. And when you bring a large language model to a local phone, you now have the power of basically an AI assistant in your pocket.

But that AI assistant is going to know things about you that no other AI system knows about. And so we’re going to be able to do things with that, like schedule calendars with the family, link up maybe a bank account, maybe use our information from social media to tell us if we’re on it too much, or we’re truly going to have that Sherpa or that guide that’s alongside us at all times that only knows about our information, that knows our private conversations and messages and, and text messages and emails and can help us along the way.

I think there’s going to be a crossroads with two companies, Microsoft and Google, combating against Apple and Facebook. And what Microsoft and Google are doing is trying to remove the device from your pocket and have a mysterious connection to the internet somehow, whether it’s on your wrist or whether it’s in your pocket still, but really passive.

And I think what Facebook and Apple are doing is trying to put it on your face, trying to put it in front of you, putting some goggles on, and we don’t know which one’s going to win yet. Which experience is going to be the better AI experience for us to adapt to and be human with? And so if you’re sitting on the couch next to somebody else wearing goggles, is that a human experience?

I’m not sure. If you can remove the phone from your pocket and keep a clip on your shirt, like we’ve seen with some of these newer products, is that a better experience? I’m not sure. But I do know that once we localize these large language models, we start training the information on the individual person that the owner of that model is supposed to answer to.

I do think the world’s going to shift into a cohort analysis, strategic marketing ad platform, like all those things are going to go into the way of how we individualize the specific ad for the specific person and create an experience on the individual level. And I think AI is the solution for that.

And I think that’s what’s coming in the next five to 10 years.

Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Really do like you breaking down your prediction as, as you said, you know, we don’t know which way it’ll go, but obviously when everybody can afford a personal assistant in this case, right? Imagine being able to handle all your other miscellaneous tasks throughout the day or night while you’re sleeping.

I think that’s pretty cool for sure. Yeah. And then of course, the marketing, you got geofencing, you got AI, you got all this stuff working. You’ll be able to do a much better job of targeting your customers with what they want to buy. So really do appreciate that, Andrew.

Andrew, it was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.

Andrew Amann: Sounds good. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Brian. And thanks for the conversation. And I look forward to listening to more of your podcast.

Brian Thomas: Bye for now.

Andrew Amann Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.

Subscribe

* indicates required