0:00:12 - (Matt): Hey there iconsters. Hope you're doing well wherever you are and some of the fun. Awesome team and I just got back from a sunny spot filming some fun new marketing bits for 2025. I can't share too much more than that, but as always, it's going to be awesome.

0:00:27 - (Matt): We can guarantee that.

0:00:29 - (Matt): If you're new here, I'm your host Matt Johnson, where I chat with the Font awesome team members here about icons, design, tech and all things nerdy. We're in the middle of a series with F awesome founder Dave Gandy on work culture, how to hire great people and create a place they're going to love to stick around. And if you missed the first episode, go back and check that out. Dave and I dive into People first hiring, where character tops the list above specific skills. And wouldn't you know it, respect and trust lead to loyalty.

0:01:01 - (Matt): Huh?

0:01:02 - (Matt): Treat folks like adults and give them real decision making power and you can get a whole lot done. So in today's episode, Dave and I talk about what it means to be a quote unquote lifestyle company, which has been used to describe Font awesome in a pejorative way, which is weird. But whether we're a lifestyle company or not, we strive to be a place focused on well, being and growth and not just cranking out big numbers.

0:01:31 - (Matt): We also touch on why venture capital doesn't always fit, especially when it feels like a treadmill only driven by sky high returns. So let's jump in for a fresh look at building a company where people truly love showing up, creating and growing together.

0:01:55 - (Matt): You know, so the other part of this too is that this is not for everyone. You can't. If you're talking about character first, hiring for character first, you're. The assumption is that you have a leader who really values that. Like, you can't force this kind of thing to happen. So you have. It's a first things first kind of thing. So I mean, we're really talking about two different layers. Right. We're talking about the person who's in charge, the person who's leading other people, and then a person on a team.

0:02:31 - (Dave): Yeah.

0:02:31 - (Matt): And I don't know, how can those people find each other? What can people do to. To move in this direction and sort of get their categories straight.

0:02:41 - (Dave): Yeah. What's interesting is when I talk to other people about what it's like to work at Font Awesome, I haven't ever met a single person that didn't immediately want to know more.

0:02:53 - (D): Right.

0:02:53 - (Dave): Like, this does not sound like a normal workplace. This feels Like a workplace where I get to be more of who I am and encourage to be that way. This sounds like, that kind of sounds amazing. To be given a chance to be hired as an adult, treated that way, to be around other people who are fun to be around, who are enjoyable to be around and who are also have like this sense of excellence and drive about what they make.

0:03:19 - (Matt): But there's also the person too, that you know when you're talking to them or you hear the comments, you know, this is not for them. So you said yesterday. It really stood out to me. There are those that would say, well, you know, Fawn, awesome is really a lifestyle company. As if it's a, as if it's a put down. Right?

0:03:37 - (Dave): Yep.

0:03:37 - (Matt): And okay, so who is that person?

0:03:39 - (Dave): Yeah, so this is, this is really funny. So we've, we've, we've chatted with investors before who were like, so would you say that Font awesome is really a lifestyle business?

0:03:50 - (D): Right.

0:03:50 - (Dave): Because people in venture capital have their own ladder. Okay. Venture capital is a very specific model and a very specific ladder. And that model on that ladder requires one company in the fund that they've raised to exit at a thousand x the value. They don't care about 2 x 3 x 10 x. They don't care about that at all. They care about the 1000X because that's what, how their model works.

0:04:18 - (Matt): Right.

0:04:19 - (Dave): So they have their own value system and they are going to make fun of and denigrate anything that is not their value system. I don't, I don't even know that's intentional.

0:04:28 - (Matt): Sure.

0:04:28 - (Dave): But it's the natural result of complete and utter self absorption and arrogance and pride and not all, right. Not all VCs are like this at all. But so they use this. Would you say Phenossome is really a lifestyle business? And my response was, yeah, that's exactly what it is.

0:04:47 - (D): Right.

0:04:47 - (Dave): We absolutely care about the lifestyle we and the people here live. As a matter of fact, that's almost the central piece of this. How do we live our lives? How do we think is right to live our lives and how do we do that in a way where we get to build stuff for other people that helps them out in some small way?

0:05:05 - (D): Right.

0:05:05 - (Dave): We're just icons. We know that we're just icons. We have no delusions of grandeur about this. Right.

0:05:11 - (Matt): It just happened to be a thing like, oh, we can do icons. This is going pretty well because we.

0:05:16 - (Dave): Started the company originally to work with amazing people. Our first product is and will always be the company and the people here, that's the thing that we care most about. We don't even really care that much about what we even make or work on.

0:05:28 - (D): Right.

0:05:28 - (Dave): We were just looking for what can we make that can make us enough money so that we can eat, so that we can keep working with awesome people and keep trying to become more of who we are already.

0:05:40 - (D): Right?

0:05:40 - (Dave): Become the. Become. It sounds so ridiculous to say become the best version of yourself, but, like, that's exactly what the goal here is. That's the point of why we're. And so there's a group of people that have their own ladder that they absolutely need other people to buy into and climb this ladder.

0:05:59 - (D): Right.

0:06:00 - (Dave): As a matter of fact, they'll just make you keep building the ladder as you go up, and they'll stand at the bottom and just say, you're not working hard enough. Right. Like. Because their model only works with a thousand x exit. If you are, if your company becomes worth 10 times what they invested at. Not good enough.

0:06:14 - (D): Right.

0:06:15 - (Dave): And so it's this fascinating thing where this goes back to never climb somebody else's ladder. Know when to get off.

0:06:23 - (D): Right.

0:06:23 - (Dave): If the ladders are going the same direction for a while, this is how you know, this is maybe a good place to be for a workplace. You have goals on where you want to go professionally or even personally. And you know that work is the way you do this. Most people don't work for passion. They work to eat.

0:06:38 - (D): Right.

0:06:39 - (Dave): They work for the rest of the time outside of the job because it turns out work, it's not that fulfilling.

0:06:47 - (D): Right.

0:06:47 - (Dave): It's the stuff outside of work that tends to be the most fulfilling.

0:06:52 - (Matt): So why not let some of that into the workplace?

0:06:54 - (Dave): Why not let some of that. Yeah. Why not understand that stuff happens in life. And when people know that if something happens in life, that the company will be there as much for you as they possibly can. The truth is, though, life is really, really hard. And as much as people want to be able to help out sometimes it's stuff you gotta go through and it's hard. But what the company can do is provide, is make sure you know it's okay.

0:07:17 - (D): Right.

0:07:17 - (Dave): And for you to have seen this happen multiple times and realize that your job's not gonna be gone, you don't need to worry about that. It's cool. We got you. We understand. You've been there for us, showing up every day for years. It's okay. Yes. And this is going to cost us something. Yes. Every day that you're not here. Working costs us money. Yeah. I don't know what other people who run businesses think the job is.

0:07:39 - (Matt): It's kind of part of the deal.

0:07:40 - (Dave): That's kind of part of the deal.

0:07:42 - (Matt): Right.

0:07:42 - (Dave): Ye.

0:07:44 - (Matt): So maybe. So can you. There's a couple different ways we could go. Yeah. I'm wondering if you could.

0:07:55 - (Dave): Yeah. Who this is not for. Yeah, right.

0:07:58 - (Matt): So you. You. So you talked about who it's not for. We could talk about who it is for. But I'm wondering, you know, I. There's a few things I'm wondering, like. So, one, you could go through the line of the things that you talked about day before yesterday. Yeah. I didn't get a very good audio of that, so maybe you could talk about that, but maybe also before that and let me know what you think. Maybe talk a little bit about.

0:08:29 - (Matt): You and Travis had. Had some experiences, and you're like, okay, we. We've started this company. You're getting a start and it's viable financially, and you're having conversations about, okay, so what do we want to do? What were those conversations like? And how did it. How did it go? How did you test your hypothesis? So I guess there's a couple, like.

0:08:50 - (Dave): As a company, like, what we were going to make, or like the kind.

0:08:55 - (Matt): Of company that you wanted to have, Because I imagine that came together in real time, sort of organically, because, you know, it's.

0:09:07 - (Dave): Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Okay, let's do that.

0:09:10 - (Matt): Okay. So this. These ideas don't just come out of thin air. I mean, you guys, you and Travis had to sort of test this hypothesis of what a company could be. So can you take me back to. So, first of all, both you and Travis have had crummy workplace experiences, like many of us do, and you're thinking, there's got to be a better way to do this.

0:09:36 - (Dave): And admittedly, some good ones too. Sure.

0:09:38 - (Matt): Of course.

0:09:38 - (Dave): Some good ones too.

0:09:39 - (Matt): It's always a mix. But, you know, you guys stay connected. You've been friends for a long time, and I'm assuming that you're having conversations along the way, like, ah, man, wouldn't it be great if we could do something different? Font awesome starts to pick up a little bit of steam, and you recognize. Okay, I think there's a way that we can expand this, keep it open source, do what we love, and keep some people on payroll.

0:10:07 - (Matt): So take me back to, like, what is that conversation? Like, how did you start to build it and think through how to do.

0:10:12 - (Dave): Things different the big experiment was, could we run a company the way we thought was right or is it just not work that way?

0:10:21 - (D): Right.

0:10:22 - (Dave): Does the world just not work that way? Math doesn't work that way. You can't put people first in what you do. It just doesn't work because there's not enough money to go around and it just doesn't work that way. And I think sometimes some workplaces are much more constrained by the resources they have and you gotta make harder choices. We're very, very lucky not to have had to make any harder choices.

0:10:47 - (Dave): We have been around for 10 years now. We've never had to do layoffs. A part of that is also because we ran the company differently. We didn't just ramp up, get as big as fast as we possibly could. We didn't, when raising money, let it burn a hole in our pocket and go and hire too many people too fast. Right.

0:11:07 - (Matt): We definitely feel a pain around here where it's like we can do so much more and oh man, I wish you had a few more resources. So it takes time.

0:11:16 - (Dave): And this is a part of the strategy too.

0:11:17 - (D): Right.

0:11:17 - (Dave): The part of the strategy is only higher when it's painful.

0:11:20 - (Matt): Right.

0:11:21 - (Dave): And it's always very painful.

0:11:23 - (Matt): There's always some pain point by the time we hire.

0:11:25 - (Dave): It's always very, very painful. But the neat thing about that is we've done it long enough to know what we're looking for and to have a really good notion of what we're looking for. But there's. So when we started the company, this was. We didn't know. And you don't know what you don't know. Companies have been. Human civilization has been thriving and creating great places for people for thousands upon thousands of years.

0:11:51 - (D): Right.

0:11:52 - (Dave): Like this is not a, this is not actually a brand new thing.

0:11:55 - (Matt): Yeah.

0:11:55 - (Dave): And so for us, as much of it, it wasn't necessarily did we think it was possible, as much as it can we do it. Are we capable of it?

0:12:03 - (Matt): Your version of it? Yeah.

0:12:04 - (Dave): Because so much of in the world, as you're growing up, especially in your 20s, you start getting some more experience and you're like, I've got some intuition on how I think this should work. And your 20s are kind of really to find out what are you good at? What actually you've got an intuition, you've got experience and intuition. Now what do you actually know better than most people? What are you actually a little bit better at than most people?

0:12:31 - (D): Right.

0:12:32 - (Dave): And because the way, the best way to live life is to find out what makes you unique. Those are also called your advantages. And then you relentlessly exploit every advantage you, every unfair advantage you have until the day you die.

0:12:43 - (D): Right.

0:12:43 - (Dave): This is the strategy.

0:12:44 - (Matt): Right.

0:12:45 - (Dave): And live life along the way. And you know, and so this was. This, I think, turned out to be one of our unfair advantages on how much we just have always actually cared about people. This is our unfair advantage when it comes to product. This is the secret, right? Human centric product design is a thing and it's a craft. And it's very, very well defined how you actually put somebody else ahead of you. And it turns out when you actually make something people want, more people are likely to buy it. This is one of our absolute unfair advantages as a company that we know how to do this. It's in our blood. And in a way, how can anyone not do this?

0:13:20 - (Dave): How is there any other sane way to develop, you know, to develop product?

0:13:24 - (Matt): And that was also a discovery process too because there have been some like, yeah. Things along the way.

0:13:29 - (Dave): Where were we right about this? Does it work this way? I think this is good. I think I have an intuition. I think I'm good at taking a thousand different competing requirements and sorting through them and simplifying them and figuring out a path that makes it simple. Because it's very easy to make products that are complex. Yeah, it's way harder to make things that are simple. I think I'm good at this, am I? What do other people think?

0:13:53 - (Dave): And so the open source project was really like the first. I worked so hard in my, that job that I got fired from. I actually tried to switch over to product design at the company because my training from mechanical engineering is in product design. Human centric mechanical engineering. Product design is what I love to doing because it's so much about people. It's so much about them and placing them first. Because what if math and science and art were great, but what if the thing that gives them purpose and value is actually people?

0:14:24 - (D): Right.

0:14:25 - (Dave): That we make these things for people. And what if there was an intersection of all three things, Art, technology and people. And it turns out that's what great product design is.

0:14:35 - (Matt): Right?

0:14:35 - (Dave): That's what it really is at its core. And I think, you know, my 20s, I think I have a knack for that. I think I'm going to got lots of thoughts and opinions that are kind of different from a lot of what I see.

0:14:46 - (Matt): Right.

0:14:46 - (Dave): Am I any good at that? And so font awesome. The open source project was really the first sort of data point on maybe, maybe some of that intuition is right. Maybe there's something that I. That I know uniquely well. You're not uniquely well, but abnormally well.

0:15:03 - (Matt): Sure. Well, the great thing is that all this sort of comes together. You're talking about. You're really talking about serving the needs of people, people first. And again, I mean, that's. Can be.

0:15:14 - (Dave): Yeah, it sounds. It sounds so flippant and trite, but it's.

0:15:18 - (Matt): But it's true. Like, you're talking about design in that way, but you're also talking about a workplace and building a company in the same way.

0:15:24 - (Dave): Because it turns out the most important product you have as a company is the company that is actually a product. And the people who work there, the people who give you 40 hours a week and hopefully not too many more of their life, they're giving you that.

0:15:39 - (D): Right.

0:15:39 - (Dave): They're giving you literally years of their life that we don't have that many of. That's a real precious thing. If you don't know that's your first product, this is not for you. If you didn't already know that, this is probably not for you. This whole, like, consider people first. Create an environment where they thrive.

0:15:59 - (D): Right.

0:16:00 - (Dave): If you didn't already know that was the job intuitively, this may not be for you. And you probably should get far away from this job. You should probably walk. For the sake of everyone else around you that has to work for you, you should quit right now and you should go away for the sake of everyone else.

0:16:16 - (Matt): Yeah. Yeah. Well. And you know, this. This discovery process, though, too, it truly is. There's no kind of going along with that. You know, the person that this is not for. This is also a discovery process for somebody that is, like, curious about, wow, could I do my company different or could I work at a company that's different? And how do I find those values? It's gonna be a trial and error kind of thing because every company's different and every group of people's different.

0:16:44 - (Dave): Every skillset that you have is different. And how that plays out. Like, we're really, really lucky to have Travis here. That man is so much fun to work with. Yeah, right. This is not something you can just become. He just is. Right. But that's one of his unique things that he does well.

0:17:01 - (D): Right.

0:17:01 - (Dave): Like, I am not always the most fun to work with.

0:17:04 - (D): Right.

0:17:05 - (Dave): This is. This is. This is how it works. Right. But if you understand how when looking for a co founder, to find someone that balances you in certain ways, it's kind of amazing. But also like man, some of life's just serendipity, some of life is just happy accident and in fifth grade, moving a block away.

0:17:22 - (Matt): Yeah, right. I'm glad that you said that though too because when we're talking about this may not be for everyone, this is not, there's no program or anything for this. It's just a set of kind of principles and philosophies. But you've got to have, you do have to have a, a sounding aboard a person that is different than you so that you can be rounded.

0:17:46 - (Matt): Yeah.

0:17:46 - (Dave): Whether you're, whether you're starting your own company or whether you're managing a team, you need someone to be able to talk to who is not sort of organizationally incented to have a different, like to give a different opinion than the one that you, the honest one you want to hear for yourself.

0:18:03 - (Matt): Right.

0:18:03 - (Dave): And so if you're managing you, you need sort of somebody, somebody who's maybe a mentor or even a peer from outside of the company that you can go to and get advice. Because sometimes when a 65 year old man, when you're 20 years old and a 65 year old man tries to fight you at 30,000ft in the air, sometimes up in an airplane, sometimes you just need someone to tell you you're not crazy.

0:18:22 - (Matt): True story.

0:18:22 - (D): Right?

0:18:23 - (Dave): True, true story. Sometimes you need someone just there next to you to tell you you're not crazy. And the value of this in life, to have someone that knows you and cares about you that will also tell you the truth when you are crazy.

0:18:36 - (Matt): Right.

0:18:36 - (Dave): This is of infinite value in life.

0:18:40 - (Matt): Yeah.

0:18:40 - (Dave): Because sometimes we don't know what it is.

0:18:43 - (D): Right.

0:18:43 - (Dave): Sometimes we're the one that's wrong and we need somebody to tell us, yeah, man, that's not a good choice.

0:18:47 - (Matt): Yeah.

0:18:48 - (Dave): That's like, yeah, you're the one who's crazier. But most of the time you just need somebody to be like, no, I don't know what's going on there, but no, good, good, good on you.

0:18:57 - (D): Right.

0:18:57 - (Dave): That was a good choice.

0:18:58 - (Matt): Yeah.

0:18:59 - (Dave): And you need that next to you. If you are founding a company, one of the reasons that you, that I think you're going to do way better with a co founder is because there are going to just be times of uncertainty in life and the thing that is going to make the difference in a startup with highly capable people who have a knack for these things. Right. If it's not you, you want to.

0:19:25 - (D): Right.

0:19:25 - (Dave): If you're the kind of person that you've got all the right ingredients here. You and your co founder have the right ingredients here. What you need is to not die. You need to be around long enough that you can find product, market fit and you can make it all work. That's what you need. Right? And someone next to you that's going to tell you when you are crazy or not is of such extreme value. And this is the thing we've seen, Travis and I, over and over again is that when one of us is frustrated and down, the other person can talk reality to us, we can talk reality to each other.

0:19:57 - (Dave): Perspective, right? So frustrated by this thing is just driving me absolutely crazy. I don't know how this. Right? And you and a. You need someone to be able to talk to, invent to, who also knows this. The entire scope of who you are to recognize this is out of norm for you, right. And knows how to. How to recognize that and to help talk sense back in.

0:20:16 - (D): Right?

0:20:16 - (Dave): Help talk, help bring reality back into the situation for them to see.

0:20:19 - (D): Right?

0:20:20 - (Dave): Because a great friend is not just going to tell you nice things, right? A great friend, a good friend will tell you you're not crazy. A great friend will tell you you are crazy right now. You got to stop that. That's a bad choice.

0:20:31 - (Matt): Right?

0:20:32 - (D): Right.

0:20:32 - (Dave): The best friends are the ones who will tell you that stuff and who have a place in your life long enough that you will listen to.

0:20:38 - (Matt): Yep.

0:20:40 - (Matt): Okay. And that wraps up our latest dive into the ethos of people first culture here at Font Awesome. Today, Dave and I broke down what.

0:20:49 - (Matt): It means to be a quote unquote.

0:20:51 - (Matt): Lifestyle company, why treating people as adults just works, and why we're okay with labels like lifestyle business, even if some folks in venture capital might throw it around as a put down. After all, we're building a place where people actually want to show up and work and grow. In the last installment of this series, we'll get into the secret sauce of finding a co founder or team member who compliments your quirks.

0:21:20 - (Matt): Someone who tells you when you're spot on or. Yep. When you're totally, totally off base. So stay tuned for that and get ready to dig deeper into what it takes to thrive in a company that's focused on people first. All right, it's time to roll credits as we always do. But before we get to that, if you enjoyed this episode of Podcast awesome and you think a friend or colleague could benefit from it, will you do me a favor?

0:21:49 - (Matt): Just copy the link and send it to them right now. Say, hey, pal, I've got a podcast that you might want to check out that I thought you would think was informative or interesting. So if you could do that for us right now, that'd be awesome. So, as always, this podcast was produced and edited by yours truly, Matt Johnson. The podcast awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin, and the audio mastering was completed by Chris Ends at Lemon Productions.

0:22:30 - (Matt): In the last installment of this series, we'll get into the secret sauce of finding a co founder or team member who compliments your quirks. Someone who tells you when you're spot on or, yep, when you're totally off base. So stay tuned for that and get ready to dig deeper into what it takes to thrive in a company that's focused on people first. All right, it's time to roll cred, as we always do. But before we get to that, if you enjoyed this episode of Podcast awesome and you think a friend or colleague could benefit from it, will you do me a favor?

0:23:07 - (Matt): Just copy the link and send it to them right now. Say, hey, pal, I've got a podcast that you might want to check out that I thought you would think was informative or interesting. So if you could do that for us right now, that'd be awesome. So, as always, this podcast was produced and edited by yours truly, Matt Johnson. The podcast awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin, and the and the audio mastering was completed by Chris Ends at Lemon, and the audio mastering was completed by Chris Ends at Lemon Productions.

0:23:58 - (Matt): And the audio mastering was completed by Chris Ends at Lemon Productions.