Member Spotlight: Vance Faulkner

What do you do?

I run Blackbird Studios, a consultancy that helps companies build new software products. Blackbird is a remote company composed of software engineers spread across the US. We work with a lot of startups to build their MVP or larger companies looking to launch new, innovative products.

Blackbird has been around for ten years, but I only recently became the CEO in November. The old founder/CEO was ready for a break, and I was interested in starting a similar company of my own, so we agreed on a plan for me to take over. Since then, my focus has changed from engineering to actually running the company, including sales and partnerships. I still write a fair amount of code, though.

What’s your take on AI’s impact on the industry?

Everything is changing so fast. There’s a lot of hype, but it’s clear that the economics have changed and aren’t going back. AI is reducing the implementation costs of certain tasks dramatically. AI is great for prototyping, pair programming, catching bugs, grunt work, and much more. The hype comes from a misunderstanding of what it takes to build and maintain complex products. Oftentimes, the biggest constraint is not the speed at which programmers can implement well-defined features; it’s the ability for the entire team to align on the problem they are solving and the specific approach they want to take. I think things will continue to rapidly evolve, but we’ll need to figure out a whole new set of best practices for this new paradigm to fully take advantage of it.

What’s the most common mistake I see founders make?

Blackbird has built around 50 new products from the ground up, and I’ve been involved with many of them, talking to the founders about what they are trying to do and guiding them through it. Founders often get too emotionally attached to their idea and fail to see it as a set of hypotheses that need to be validated. For example, the founders spend too long building an MVP that is too large, only to find out that the initial customer response is tepid. Perhaps you realize the customer doesn’t care as much as you thought they would about the original problem you were solving, but accidentally uncover a tangential problem that isn’t addressed in the market. At that point, you need to pivot, but the question is how much runway you have left. In general, I think founders could benefit from following the Customer Discovery process and Lean Startup methodology.

What does collaboration between software engineering, designers, and product owners look like at Blackbird?

Good collaboration is the key differentiator for Blackbird. We only work with engineers who are great communicators and able to think like a product owner. The problem we are trying to avoid is a “just give me the specs” mentality, where design and engineering are done in silos. Design can benefit from a technical perspective, which can speak to feasibility, cost, and implementation options. Engineers can make better implementation decisions when they understand the big picture of what the feature is trying to achieve.

How does being a part of Flywheel support the way you work?

I’ve been a member of Flywheel for 8 or 9 years now and am always recommending it to other remote workers. Being able to work in a great space with other interesting people, many of whom are also in tech, is important to me. I am also very thankful for how much Flywheel is doing to support the entrepreneurial community here in Winston-Salem. I’m hoping that some companies that are in Flywheel now may grow and be important members of the business community in the coming decades.