Engineering with Intent: AI, Interoperability, and Authenticity

In this episode, Cristina Flaschen, CEO of Pandium, sits down with Ben Marks, longtime developer advocate and open source champion, to explore the evolving role of ecosystems and communities in the tech industry. From e-commerce to AI, their discussion spans the forces reshaping how software gets built and how people collaborate across silos.

From Music to Code

Ben shares his unconventional journey from professional musician to technologist, highlighting how creativity and curiosity shaped his path into open source development. His early experiences show that career paths in tech are rarely linear, and diverse backgrounds often bring valuable perspective.

Why Ecosystems Matter

Ecosystems are not just marketing language. They are real, problem-solving networks of developers, vendors, and customers. Ben and Cristina reflect on how communities form around shared challenges and how platforms like Magento created space for growth through openness and extensibility.

Unlocking Silos with Interoperability

In today’s software landscape, interoperability is foundational. Systems need to talk to each other. Ben stresses that unlocking silos is essential for innovation, especially as businesses rely on tools from multiple vendors.

AI, Specialization, and the Shifting Ground of Engineering

The rise of generative AI is changing how developers approach problem solving. But with more tools comes more complexity. Cristina and Ben explore the balance between AI automation and the need for deep specialization. As Ben puts it, the future of engineering is uncertain. That uncertainty creates space for new skills, clearer value propositions, and more authentic human contributions.

Authenticity in the Age of AI

In a world where code can be generated instantly, Ben argues that personal values and intent matter more than ever. Developers and product teams must ask not just can we build something, but why we’re building it and for whom.

For more insights on integrations, identity, and APIs, visit www.pandium.com.

Transcript

Cristina Flaschen (00:00)

Hi everyone. My name's Christina, and thanks for listening to our podcast, Between Product and Partnerships. If you're with us for the first time, we talk about the challenges and what it takes to build integrations, partnerships, and SaaS platforms. We also talk to leaders working on these problems to learn about trends and how they're navigating the space. Today, we are super excited to have Ben Marx join us. He has a long history of building ecosystems at companies like Magento and Shopware.

Ben, you want to give us a little bit of an intro about yourself and then we'll dive right in.

Ben Marks (00:31)

hey there. Thanks for having me on Christina. Appreciate it. I, started my career like, like some people, think just completely unintentionally. I've been got out of college, played music professionally for a few years, and then just someone roped me into learning how to be a developer. And that led to, you know, led to some freelance work, but ultimately got me connected with some fantastic applications at the beginning of the e-commerce era.

you know, in the, two thousands and I got to work for a couple of great companies in my career. you know, work for them and also work for the ecosystems around them. That's actually really my jam. I'm very much a people person. So it's been a, it's been a, it's been a great career so far, combining, know, the fun of a, a, you know, of a career with, just with the, the just unrelenting award, reward of being with, being, being with and around lots of people.

Cristina Flaschen (01:25)

Awesome. What instrument do you play?

Ben Marks (01:28)

I'm a drummer. Although these days I'm more of just like a percussionist because I had to pack my that was the only thing I had to I regret about my career was I was on the road like 300 days a year. And I had to just pack my drums away. And so now I just do a little percussion.

Cristina Flaschen (01:43)

We have a semi-professional but like a working drummer on staff here at Pandium as well. So I always like to ask, I am not a person that can do any of those things.

Ben Marks (01:52)

As long as you can

appreciate music and support it. Guess what, man? That's all that matters.

Cristina Flaschen (02:01)

Awesome, well, I would love to hear, actually, about your journey from being a drummer to being a self-taught programmer and then to working in ecosystems. Like, maybe if you could give us just, you said someone dragged you into being a developer. Like, how did that happen? Tell me what happened.

Ben Marks (02:19)

Well, think so.

So I think I mean, there's a honestly the origin story. The origin story could probably last the entire duration of the podcast. But real real quick, friend of mine, he and I lived together after college in a double widened tobacco field in North Carolina. Long story there. But he's he's actually he was a race car driver. grew up at Road Atlanta. It's like a picture of him on Paul Newman's lap as a baby. Because Paul Newman was a big race car guy and

he got tapped to do a, to do a racing startup, which was really interesting. And, and I had helped him. I built a wiring harness for one of his race cars. And cause I had done some electronic stuff during school. And then when he got tapped, he was like, well, you did that. So I'm sure websites couldn't be that hard. Spoiler alert, they actually are hard if you have no idea what you're doing. This was like 2003. So, so the web was like the, you couldn't just ask chat GPT how to do stuff.

Cristina Flaschen (03:10)

Yeah, back then for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (03:15)

and in fact, the, the, the resources available even online were, were pretty sparse. but you know, it turns out it, it, I guess it did all kind of make sense. I found my way into, into the PHP world and PHP just celebrated its 30th birthday. and, you know, I, just to, to, to do what we needed doing, I taught myself this, this language really to solve the problem. So it was very problem focused, you know, vector into that world. And then once I was in that world, I realized what

wow, there's a lot of problems to solve. And then it got more towards the e-commerce side of things. And then just over a period, I just did a little bit of web development. and, but there was always, we would build sites for businesses locally, and then there would be this like e-commerce component. And so I just kept running into e-commerce. And then eventually there was a person who moved, moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where I live.

And he was starting an agency literally because he saw Magento coming. He saw e-commerce coming and he said, Hey, these two things are going to be huge. And he was right. He's still a good friend of mine. Kevin Eichelberger, Blue Acorn. And that was, but you know, that was just, that was the tip of the iceberg for me because it got me into, it got me into this, this whole world of, of professionals working together in that open source way and open source certainly well done. lends itself towards,

people connecting over common problems, people just sharing in solutions and trying to add value wherever they can. And then, it turns out between the people working together and the partnerships that develop out of that, it really is quite a force to reckon with.

Cristina Flaschen (04:45)

man, that's quite the journey from a trailer behind a tobacco field to e-commerce.

Ben Marks (04:47)

Ha ha.

Yeah, Yeah. Meanwhile, there's a psychology

degree that, you know, my parents mostly paid for. It's just sitting, you know, getting dust on the shelf.

Cristina Flaschen (04:58)

I mean, I am criminal justice and creative writing and you can see how much I'm using that. But I do, think it's interesting to hear about people's path to technology from sort of that era. you know, I talk about now, like I mentor young women that are like high school age and they're learning how to program in middle school, right? Like technology is so ingrained into everyday life now, but back in the day, was not like that. Like the internet existed.

Ben Marks (05:01)

Good.

Cool. Awesome. Yeah.

Cristina Flaschen (05:22)

But even, if you look at the late 90s, it was like kind of hard to even get on the internet. So you had to kind of find your way there either because probably you were surrounded by it through like your parents or you wanted to solve a problem and that was like the way that you were gonna be able to do that. So ⁓ you don't like, didn't like fall into it in the same way of having the exposure at a really young age, which I love to see now. Like middle schoolers can program better than I can for sure.

Ben Marks (05:38)

Exactly.

Yeah,

the tools are great. And certainly everything's changing now. you know, it's just, it, it, I'm not, I'm not quite a, a doom, a doom person or a naysayer when it comes to AI, things are going to change for sure. But I think more people, certainly the technology is being democratized and more people are going to bring more of their, just their own talents into spaces where they wouldn't have been able to otherwise because maybe because the, tech, the programming had been a barrier. And I,

I choose optimism at this point that we'll see more and more people bringing more more inventive things into spaces.

Cristina Flaschen (06:20)

Do you still program?

Ben Marks (06:23)

I occasionally open up my editor and just look at it. No, I mean, I, I, yeah, I do still look at code every once in a while. I'm not actively programming. Well, actually that's not true. I have begun programming again because I just left my, my previous employer and now the work that I'm looking to do, it actually involves building, building some web and app interfaces, for the things that I want to accomplish. one's a community initiative and then one is

is a more commercial like payments focused initiative. yeah, you actually still have to do a little bit of work there, but man, it's gotten a lot easier than it used to be. That's for sure.

Cristina Flaschen (06:57)

Especially when it comes to prototyping and just like getting something to riff on I 100 % agree.

Ben Marks (07:02)

Like, zero

to MVP is, it's almost an insult to those of us who had to program both ways uphill.

Cristina Flaschen (07:09)

Yes, but in the snow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, there could be a whole, I'm sure we could do a whole episode about like that transition. We definitely talk about it a lot here, but I fully agree with you that getting to that first jumping off point is much easier than it ever was before, So in line with thinking about sort of how technology has advanced over the time that you've been working in ecosystems first, I would.

Ben Marks (07:11)

In the snow.

Yep, yep.

Cristina Flaschen (07:33)

Maybe ask you in your own words to define when we're talking about ecosystems, what does that mean? And what are the shifts that you've seen working at some of the real like best in breed kinds of companies working on ecosystems?

Ben Marks (07:46)

Yeah, well, I actually this is a really good question because there I catch myself switching between community and ecosystem quite a bit. And probably if I were in school, I would maybe even I would look into that. Look into those two terms and see like, hey, is there is there actually like I could probably do like a dissertation, maybe just parsing the difference between the two. But I think I tend to use them interchangeably, I would say community.

Cristina Flaschen (08:01)

to those two terms. Is there actually like, could probably put it like a presentation, maybe.

think I tend to use them interchangeably. would say community,

Ben Marks (08:11)

from like ecosystem I look at because I guess maybe I have a, I've had a biology minor and I look at ecosystems as like sort of the totality of the, you know, the physical space or, know, the space in which things coexist and the resources available to them. And it's kind of like, for me, ecosystem is a little bit more objective. And community is a little, it sounds a little, it's a little bit more intentional.

Cristina Flaschen (08:12)

like ecosystem I look at because I'm a minor, I look at ecosystem as sort of totality of the physical space or the space in which things and resources are made. And it's kind of like for me ecosystem is a little bit more objective and community is a little bit more intentional.

Ben Marks (08:36)

It's, it's a little bit more.

like, you know, the, community kind of, for me, that term encapsulates the people who are, who are actively trying to add value. but, but, you know, really it's all about the people and their organizations participating together. And, you know, for, for all intents and purposes, I think they're relevant. I think they're important because what happens in communities ecosystems is, you know, whether it's two people or two businesses, they get together.

Cristina Flaschen (08:51)

for all kinds of purposes, I think they're relevant, I think they're important because what happens in community speaker systems is, it's two people or two businesses, they get together

Ben Marks (09:02)

And if you think about

Cristina Flaschen (09:02)

and you think of...

Ben Marks (09:03)

it from economic standpoint, it's like, you know, I throw a dollar in, you throw a dollar in, but then when we, we do that intentionally, like with intent, all of a sudden the value generated from that is somehow more than $2. It's a real one plus one equals way more than two situations. So, you know, I saw this happen. Uh, honestly, Magento started, the founders were very clear. They started this, you know, circa 2007 and they just, it,

Cristina Flaschen (09:16)

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Ben Marks (09:31)

the, if you can go on the web archive, they, they, you can maybe even find some of the old blog posts they would put out there. They were really trying to

just ignite a spark. just, just, just, just put something out there and hope it, it, it caught. And of course it did. And they went from like zero to 50,000 sort of people paying attention to them in almost no time, well ahead of even having a commercial offering. And it's all, but it's all about, it's all about understanding the problem that you're solving.

Cristina Flaschen (09:48)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (09:57)

identifying that there are lots of people who want to solve that problem. And then, you know, and then let them self organize around it. But you but of course, if it's a if it's a company led ecosystem or community, you have to, you you have to, you have to have a sort of a clear mission. And you have to sort of balance curating that ecosystem, but also letting it

sort of find its own way, at least in my experience, there have to be other approaches to this. But when you're talking about self-starting and flywheel approach, it really, goes down to having a strong sort of central theme and then letting the people bring their own innovation, intuition and intention to it.

Cristina Flaschen (10:43)

So it sounds like part of what you're getting at is the idea that was sort of antithetical to a lot of enterprise or like what we now call B2B technology of that era. The idea of being like an open platform, right? Like open source has existed for a long time, but the idea of being a product that is going to promote interoperability or like allow people to play nicely with you.

Ben Marks (10:57)

Sure.

Cristina Flaschen (11:05)

was much less common in like the early 2000s, early mid 2000s. If we look at like, you know, the SAPs, the Microsofts of the world, there's all these products that really existed very proudly to be a black box, right? Like there was this idea, I think of the monolith still massive consolidation. And I always, when I think of e-commerce and why...

they have such a mature concept of ecosystem. I always think about Shopify because of them like planting a flag and saying, hey, we are actually going to build not just an ecosystem of like users and open source developers, but also an economic element. But it sounds like you're saying maybe Magento, and I don't know the origin story of Magento well enough, maybe they were the ones that actually were ahead of the game there.

Ben Marks (11:45)

Yeah.

Well, let's I mean, let's not forget. mean, so tell me, look, it tremendous. Gosh, I mean, amazing respect for for the for the company for what they built. And you know, humble beginnings, you know, German, you know, Canada loves to go snowboarding, wants to sell snowboarding stuff. I'm being a little reductive here. The story the story has been well documented, but

Cristina Flaschen (12:06)

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Marks (12:11)

you know, they're the don't forget their mantra for many, many, many, years, arm the rebels, right? Because they were the they were the ones actually sort of going against the the industry, Star Wars, the the, IBM WebSphere. And because basically, if you wanted e commerce, if you wanted e commerce, in the early 2000s, you were dealing you were you were necessarily like, like, bellying up to a very big table, very stodgy.

Cristina Flaschen (12:22)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (12:34)

boardroom kind of enterprise experience and and the vendors absolutely were walled mean the the the most firmly bounded black boxes out there right and that was intentional and by the way I don't knock that because I think At the time that's simply what existed. We just weren't we didn't have there was no precedent for massive online Self-organizing collaboration just wasn't a concept

Cristina Flaschen (12:43)

Yes.

Ben Marks (12:57)

This is actually one of the things that the Magento founders figured out actually from a previous project called OS commerce, which was an open source e-commerce platform, actually how I taught myself how to program and then spent years unlearning because it was very early. But that was, that was a truly collective initiative that didn't have, it was not a, it wasn't a corporate thing. Um, but

Cristina Flaschen (13:04)

which was an open-sourcing company.

That was a truly collective initiative that didn't have, it wasn't.

Ben Marks (13:21)

you know, I think you, you, know, in order to get started somewhere, in order for an industry to come into existence, you almost do have to be a little bit protective and you have to carve out the space and organize all the resources. And, ⁓ you know, and then, you know, not about the same time, Magento and others, and there had been other platforms around at the time, were, were coming around. Yeah. This was when, this was when Shopify was doing its thing. And, you know, Shopify, Shopify is an interesting store because the, the, the tech

Cristina Flaschen (13:30)

and then, know, about the same time as the gentleman and others and there had been other classes around the time.

Ben Marks (13:48)

I think the vision was well ahead of the tech and what was possible. So, you know, for a SaaS offering like, you know, like Shopify, you part of the, part of the real advantage there and the real, like one of the big selling propositions is that you don't, don't have to worry about, they black box the right parts and then they split off and make available and create space for communities to grow around them. And I would have to say that, you know, based on my experience, Shopify has done a tremendous job.

Big commerce is another is another provider that you know in all of my travels and the literal hundreds of You industry events. I've gone to I always I always hear great stories about their partnership efforts and these things are very these things are very intentional because You dollar for dollar, know the licenses are really the spice Well until you figure out that you're a payments company like Shopify eventually did and maybe big commerce will one day

Cristina Flaschen (14:29)

I love them.

Well, until you figure out the entertainment company, like, shop and fly, which is the next thing.

Ben Marks (14:43)

But, you know, like your licensing is your, is your spice, but, but they, they, realize that there is, just like in, in, in, you know, in the magenta world or open source world, the, all of those enterprise dollars, it's, it's, it's like an iceberg, you know, everything that the, that the, that the industry and the analysts see all that value and valuation and everything, that's all above the water, but that all sits, you know, on top of, know, this, this three fourths or more.

Cristina Flaschen (14:45)

But they realized that there is.

Ben Marks (15:10)

or four fifths even of the of the mass of that ecosystem is below the waterline. And you have to be aware, even as the company that is or the vendor or the vendors that are responsible for that, that there's all of this economic flow happening below the waterline that you don't get direct access to. But that is absolutely okay, because that is what supports everything above the waterline. And so the more effort and intent you put in there,

Cristina Flaschen (15:23)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (15:37)

the bigger the piece comes above the fold.

Cristina Flaschen (15:40)

Yeah, so it's interesting to think about. I obviously we live, I live in a world of all integration, right? So talking about that black box thing I'm well familiar with because a lot of enterprise systems, even legacy systems now still don't really want to play well with others. And our entire business is based on this idea of interoperability as being, you know, the leading wave in all kinds of technology in every vertical, although e-comm is I think a little ahead of the curve just in terms of the maturity of the market. And

I wonder if you think there's going to be any kind of massive shifts in the way these companies think about ecosystem. to add a little more context, if you look at something like a Shopify, they have a pretty rigid set of standards to get in, to be like a premier app. Obviously there's some flexibility, it's humans, right? But they have...

world out, this part of the world for themselves where they can say, we are the big fish in this relationship. Like you have to conform to what we're doing. And then like on the open source side, it's like the polar opposite of that, right? In any industry, it's kind of like, do what you want, make a pull request, whatever. ⁓ and like the, users will come if it's good. And I'm, curious if you think that there will be, especially with generative coding and the kind of varying degrees of quality, but the large amount of things that are possible, if there will be changes.

Ben Marks (16:41)

Yeah.

Cristina Flaschen (16:56)

in how these sort of like foundational companies think about this stuff. And I'm saying this like riffing on it as I'm speaking. I'm really just curious your thoughts.

Ben Marks (17:05)

That's,

mean, this is all we can do at this point, Christina. We're not, we're you like me are, we're furiously shaking the magic eight ball and, and, and, and, know, the scope of the response, whatever it is, is valid maybe for the next 10 minutes. And then something, you know, know, monumentally like a tectonic shift or another sort of sub industrial revolution happens like, so this tech is everything's moving so quickly.

Cristina Flaschen (17:07)

Yeah.

Truth.

Ben Marks (17:27)

you know, there's, for those of us who, who remember the.com bubble and I was, I lit, I graduated undergrad, 2000. So I remember that era really well. You know, this, lot of the stuff feels well, what's happening now feels very much very similar. There's, there's, there's, there are bubble-esque elements. mean, the biggest valuation ever, biggest, fastest valuation ever. forget her name, but she's, she's, she, know, CTO coming out of,

Cristina Flaschen (17:51)

Mira.

Ben Marks (17:52)

Yes, yes. and, you know, $2 billion value or

$10, $2 billion funding on a $10 billion valuation with literally just an idea. But, but everyone's looking at it going like, okay, well, the right people, this is the right moment and the right people are in the room. makes me wish I'd actually gotten into this space instead of e-commerce, but that's, that's, that's a whole different thing. Now, as far as where things are headed. So if we think about, and if we want to maybe make it a little bit more, you know, on, on topic here, the, you know, if we're talking about

Cristina Flaschen (18:05)

makes me wish I'd actually gotten this.

Ben Marks (18:20)

how the space where partners play and how partnerships work. So something there is a difference here between an approach like an open source platform. I won't call out Magento specifically because there's also like Adobe there is kind of a steward and of course they have their own thing that they're Like Shopify, so one of the tenets of those of us who work in this sort of ecosystem and platform world is that on a long enough timeline,

Cristina Flaschen (18:32)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Marks (18:44)

platforms tend to eat their own ecosystems, right? you can basically ecosystem, like all people coming in, that's raw material, that's resource, that's what biology you'd call an R-selected population, but eventually you start hitting resource limits and that's where you start getting K-selected and you start feeling this compression. Businesses need to always, the balance sheet always needs to improve, more profits, more profitability and...

Cristina Flaschen (18:59)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (19:09)

So that's when ecosystems, that's when platforms tend to start to like elbow out into their, their ecosystem. And I think one of the things that is that one of the factors that is, is new that I haven't seen yet in my career is in this world of, of, well, you can say like generative coding and vibe coding and, and, and, you know, rapid MVP and prototyping. but I think the platforms themselves are able to, you've got fantastic engineers and I forget.

the billion plus dollar figure that Shopify spends every year in R &D. So they have this stable of incredibly talented product and engineering staff who now have just this amplifying capability of generative of even thinking about agentic workflows and

Cristina Flaschen (19:40)

So they have this stable of incredibly dynamic product.

Ben Marks (19:58)

being able to reduce some of the burden and overhead of product ideation, of code management, of deployment management. Like, you're really going to see more and more of an unlock in terms of what companies can actually do as long as they get it right. So I think it gives a platform like Shopify, who have a much closer control over much more of what happens in their world.

Cristina Flaschen (20:02)

you

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (20:23)

It gives them a frightening for me, a frightening ability to do things. And I say this, like, think about recharge. So recharge are some folk, fine folks that I know. And for a long, for the longest time, recharge was like, if you wanted to do subscriptions, which by the way is phenomenally difficult.

Cristina Flaschen (20:39)

I know it sucks. I've used Zora

and all these other kinds of tools. It's not easy.

Ben Marks (20:42)

subscriptions,

especially just generic subscription functionality for across all sorts of verticals and geographies. have to have, have, you have the customer, have the, you have the, the, the, authorization, the, the, the terms of the authorization, the platform, the merchant, it's all very, very difficult to like triangulate or quadrangulate on and

Cristina Flaschen (20:46)

Yeah. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (21:04)

recharge, but recharge, you know, they did this and they figured it out and they did. And then Shopify eventually, and they had a close relationship with Shopify, but then Shopify said, Hey, we've got a subscriptions API and everyone has to do this. And I know there were plenty of people who were looking at that moment saying, well, they just kind of elbowed in on their territory, but look at where recharge is today. They've grown fantastically. O'Sheen, is, is, is he's actually, O'Sheen is on,

is on LinkedIn. And if you're not paying attention, you should absolutely follow him. Follow everything that's happening at recharge. he's been very, very open, very transparent about, struggles, challenges, successes. And it's interesting to see that, you know, how, you know, both Shopify via Toby and even recharge via O'Sheen have, have leaned into this moment. They didn't say, Hey, we're going to get rid of all of our staff and our balance sheet is going be great. They say, no, we're going to encourage people to start using these tools and

Cristina Flaschen (21:46)

They didn't say, hey, we're going to get rid of all of our staff, our balance sheets. They said no. We're going to get the original.

Ben Marks (21:54)

learn how to do what they do better. And that really is the crux of this moment. There will be some fallout, but I think in general, we're in a really good moment for businesses to increase. there will be winners and losers, but in general, think the companies that are going to win, it's the same story. The companies that will win on the long term are the ones that going to realize that walled gardens only work up to a certain point. And then the benefit that you carve out

Cristina Flaschen (21:55)

Mm-hmm.

and

Ben Marks (22:23)

or maintain by having that walled garden,

it hits its limit. And then you actually have to figure out how to get new energy, new money into that ecosystem. And the way you do that is by opening things up. And I think also every wall that a vendor tries to throw up these days is easily torn down. Because if I even think about like the Twitter, well not X, but I still call it Twitter, because it'll always be Twitter to me.

Cristina Flaschen (22:35)

Mm-hmm.

It's Twitter. It's Twitter.

Ben Marks (22:49)

⁓ You know Twitter Twitter

had some awesome tools like tweet deck Twitterific and right you've already forgotten it because they just they got they got they got their kneecapped because the platform said no no we need to keep people on platform because we're just like you know a long enough timeline everything else everything becomes like an ad network

Cristina Flaschen (22:54)

yeah. Yeah, tweet check, of course.

Ben Marks (23:11)

And so they wanted to protect that data. Well, now we're not that far away from, know, Hey, my agent can just impersonate me go and grab all of this stuff. And then I could pull it into another context and do interesting things with it. So AI, you know, I hate saying AI just as a catchall, but, it's, pulling everything outside of the walled garden. So you really have to just figure out interoperability, figure out how to facilitate cooperation and integration rather than the opposite.

Cristina Flaschen (23:18)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Marks (23:38)

That is my recipe for success in the future.

Cristina Flaschen (23:42)

I also feel like, and for our audience, there's a lot of folks that are probably in smaller companies than something like a Shopify size, right? And a lot of those companies, not even like very small, but mid-market, are definitely fearful about their own competitive moat in a world of generative AI and what if, and also these large companies that can look at what you're doing potentially and try to eat your lunch and all this good stuff. And where I come from when thinking about that,

when I'm talking to other founders is that like being highly specialized is the thing. And like really leaning into the things that you know and are good at, continuing to do that. You have to like, you definitely have to evolve, right? Like if Shopify releases a pandium, like we got to figure out what we're gonna do there. But like, there is also the element of just being really good at the thing that you're good at. And that is not necessarily like the depth.

or the width of your product, right? It's not about like the amount of features that you build. It's about how well you understand your problem. And that is what keeps users, right?

Ben Marks (24:41)

features have never been easier or cheaper to conceive, implement, deploy. A feature-focused message, I think, has been stale and a recipe for stagnation now for a little while. And I would say that's even pre-ChatGPT moment. ⁓

Cristina Flaschen (25:00)

It's just a ton

of software. Like everybody has everything.

Ben Marks (25:03)

Exactly. so,

you know, and certainly in this day and age, it's just, it's so easy to do this stuff. You really have to think about, you have to think about, you know, who it goes back to the fundamentals. They're like, what is our brand? Who are we solving problems for? How are we solving it? And if you focus, like if you go back to these fundamentals, like ground yourself in the problem that you're solving, because then at least you can say like,

Cristina Flaschen (25:14)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (25:24)

I think the problem that we're solving has evolved or who we're solving it for has slightly evolved, but you're still leading from a place of understanding. And that means that you can make these smart decisions. again, you're never gonna be able to build it all. And merchants, well, I say merchants, but anyone needing a solution, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, whether it's education or entertainment, it's all about.

Cristina Flaschen (25:26)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Marks (25:49)

composing these effective solutions. And you shouldn't have to build it all yourself because other people have been building the thing that you need to do. Like if I'm a media company and I need to reach out, I need interaction with my audience, there are platforms, plenty of platforms that are really, really good at that. So just rely on them, but you have to be able to integrate with them and you have to unlock the data in your silos. You've got to figure out...

Cristina Flaschen (26:03)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (26:14)

how to fully enable all the tools in that full stack that constitutes the solution that you are providing your audience or customers.

Cristina Flaschen (26:24)

I agree. Interoperability, again, is obviously like our entire bread and butter. when I think about, like, so my background way back in the day in the early 2000s was ERP, right? So I was doing from paper and pencil to the computer. It wasn't even to the cloud yet. It was to an on-prem, but like Windows-based product, right? No green screen. And that was still during the days, I think, of this like monolithic idea. And we look at like something like a Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, one of these big products.

Ben Marks (26:27)

you

Hmm.

Cristina Flaschen (26:49)

Like they have modules for like literally everything. Like there's like your master planning, there's your accounting, there's your HR. And you would think these companies that have been iterating on these products with huge, massive, the Fortune 50 companies of the world would have like nailed these things. But they haven't in every instance. Each of these tools has their own like specialization, but a lot of them are still plugging in a Sage or plugging in a product manage inventory management system or plugging in something else.

And if that doesn't speak to like, number one, how fast technology evolves and number two, the benefit of some of that specialization, I don't know what does, right? Like if you can't, if you wanna use a cloud-based solution that's three years old for your accounting instead of using the SAP accounting module that's been around for, I don't even know how many decades, that means that it's not just about.

It's not just about the number of lines of code that you're producing, right? It's about the ability to innovate, the ability to pivot, and the ability to be, in my opinion, like really understand your user and be specialized in something.

Ben Marks (27:53)

Yeah, I mean, you, you, so it's more and more, it's going to be about adaptability. It's going to be about observability insights. And if you're investing in these kinds of legacy offerings, and, and, which don't feel it's not inherently awful if you are stuck doing that, because nothing moves slower than trying to evolve like accounts, receivable accounts, payable in business. that's because that's, that's the end of a very long chain or the beginning of a long chain. But you know, you have to start

Cristina Flaschen (28:13)

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Marks (28:19)

realizing that every dollar, a euro or drama that you're investing in these things is actually investing a little bit. You're sort of like adding gravity to your own inertia. And I would love to see people starting to realize that you can start to swap out some of these things piecemeal. And it's interesting actually how, if we're talking about the big behemoths in the room, let's talk about like what Salesforce just announced with Slack.

Cristina Flaschen (28:37)

It's interesting actually how...

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (28:46)

They just, they, did the opposite of what I'm doing. I, you know, somebody should call me and ask my opinion. no, it's, because they're saying like, you know, Slack, you know, we are not going to make any of your Slack content that your organization is paying, you know, a phenomenal amount of money to, to, to, to use. We're not going to make, we're actually, we're going to prohibit.

Cristina Flaschen (28:52)

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (29:09)

you pulling this into other systems. We're going to, and, you're not going to be able to use this because they want they're, they're, they're like doubling up on their wall. And I, uh, 100 % if, if I could, if I could figure out a way to, um, bet place bets against that, I would put all of my money against that because it doesn't matter. People, there will be ways for people to pull this stuff out, uh, because

Again, they see the data, they see the value, and any kind of AI approach is going to be an unlock there. And people are going to see like, hey, ⁓ I'm getting left behind. Someone over here using a different provider, differences like they actually have agility and capabilities that I don't have because you all are actively getting in my way. And I think if people, again, are indexing on

Cristina Flaschen (29:42)

and people are going to see like, hey, I'm getting left behind. Someone over here using a different environment. They actually have agility capabilities.

Ben Marks (30:00)

openness, whether it's the tool, if I'm a tool maker being open, or I'm a user, a customer, how open are my tools and how interoperable can they be? How much can I integrate? Because and then also, we haven't even talked about the other dimension here, which is that the end customer of these, of all these solutions and integrations and stacks, like

their habits, their approach is also evolving. mean, I was just at PayPal's headquarters like a little over a month ago, looking at real live agentic shopping and shopping and actual purchasing flows. I mean, they exist and they're scary good. And it's interesting, from, again, back from the platform standpoint, you now see in this modern era, it doesn't really matter whether you're using

Shopify or this platform or this platform, because as far as when I, when I'm interacting with Google Gemini and I say, Hey, I need, I have to solve this problem. I'm going hiking this weekend, you know, in this place and it's an overnight hike, go out and outfit me. That tool will go do that. And it will do that irrespective of what platform these, these catalogs are on and

We're seeing an evolution of the end customer as well. And so that just goes to underscore the need, I think, to make sure all of your tools are talking to each other and you're not being sort of held in place and effectively held hostage by the solutions that you've chosen. You need to be agile.

Cristina Flaschen (31:32)

Yeah, it's interesting too with the AI, like the kind of bubble that we're in or the hype cycle that we're in with the AI stuff specifically, because to your point, I think it has trickled down to like the consumer, right? Or the non-technologist, the non-tech worker, right? Like I, as a person who's worked in tech for a billion years, looking at some of this AI stuff, it's definitely like given me a little bit of like circa...

16, 18 blockchain vibes where it was like everyone was just talking about using the thing, using the thing. And like nobody, not nobody, but like, do you really need it? Like, let's like, it was just so hot, but that was really hot for us tech people and like finance folks maybe with crypto. It didn't trickle down to like the vast majority. Like if I went out in the street right now here in New York City and asked most people during that era about blockchain, they wouldn't even know what I was talking about, right? It's not even that you couldn't explain it.

Ben Marks (32:11)

Yeah.

Nope.

Cristina Flaschen (32:25)

So I think this is a little bit different because it's everywhere, right? Like it's absolutely everywhere. We did a great podcast that we recorded earlier that should be coming out soon with a woman who works on a lot of open source, like standards committees. So we talked a lot about security and AI and like this interoperability, like what are these agents doing? Like, what are they talking to? How do we know what they're doing? And...

You know, I'm kind of have two minds of it, right? Like on the one hand, I definitely agree with you that like the more places your data as a consumer, as a buyer, as a whatever can exist, the better outcomes you're going to get from these AI tools. But on the other hand, that is like, definitely gives me a little bit of like the heebie-jeebies about a lot of things, especially being an integration company, right? Like we're moving data all day every day and thinking about auth and scopes and governance and all this stuff. And

That is also a really interesting part of all of this, right? Is that like that, like my mom is not thinking about that part of this, but she is probably thinking about AI in some capacity. She probably sees commercials for it. I don't know. I'm just like, I'm riffing again, but it's it's like such an interesting thing that it's so deeply technical, but it's really gotten into the common vernacular very quickly.

Ben Marks (33:35)

But the because the utility is there. mean, you know, know, blockchain didn't matter. I remember going to the big some of the big web and programming conferences in Southeast Asia at times that you mentioned like from like 16 through 18. And I couldn't get people like, you're from the PHP world. I don't even want to talk to you. Everyone was all in on JavaScript, blockchain and blockchain, this blockchain that like, well,

Cristina Flaschen (33:56)

Web 3!

Ben Marks (33:58)

like, well, this is a blockchain back

logistics thing. Yeah, prove you know, that way, you know, that something goes from here to here. And it's exactly what it says it is. I'm like, well, someone can't open the box and change the thing like, I just I saw

Cristina Flaschen (34:09)

Don't even get, don't

even get me started on serialized goods and blockchain, like physical goods. Like I could go forever.

Ben Marks (34:13)

Yeah, I just, I saw, I saw a lot

of, you know, solution looking for a problem. I mean, I know I, I always, I always appreciate the enthusiasm. let's, let's, let's do that. But also I, I've also seen, you know, it just, sucks when, when, know, intention and attention and resources are, are, are, kind of in an unmerited way, sort of deflected or,

Cristina Flaschen (34:19)

my god, so much.

Ben Marks (34:36)

pulled over into an area like basically all of the money and time and attention that went into that just distracted from, you know, actually getting real business done and building real things of real value. It's just that but and so you could you could almost say like is that happening in this moment? And of course there is as you mentioned that there's there's a type of around this everyone knows there's a ton of hype around this. But there's also plenty of substance. I mean, I when it first really kind of clicked for me was months and months ago. Yeah, I'm almost 50.

We've got a 30 year old and he it became obvious to me now He was an early he was an kind of early entrant into the crypto world but he Basically, realized he has only been using chat GPT for search To answer questions everything he does like he's actually there. They're at the vet today with their Senior dog who you know, he basically was feeding in lab results

Cristina Flaschen (35:29)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (35:29)

He's

he's, you know, and, problem statements and everything else into chat GPT, like sort of figuring out probabilities and, and, courses of treatment. And, this, like that kid doesn't Google anymore. You know, he, he Googled when he was in college, he does not Google anymore. It is all, it is all AI it's interactive. And this was actually one of the smart things, I think it was the Microsoft team at, at the PayPal event. and that's online, by the way, it's PayPal dev days, really, really worth, I think going back and checking out those videos.

Cristina Flaschen (35:40)

Yes.

Ben Marks (35:57)

But the Microsoft team said something really sharp, really pithy. And that was, you know, that essentially what's happening now is people, instead of going for scroll-based solutions, it's all goal-based. So it's really, people are coming at it, not knowing, you know, knowing that they're, that they can just purely go from like, I have this thing I need to solve for. have the situation I need to handle. And having this natural, almost Socratic interaction with the whole of the web.

Cristina Flaschen (36:23)

the whole of the

web to figure this out. Instead of, now I need to properly.

Ben Marks (36:25)

to figure this out instead of, well now I need to properly formulate

my thoughts and ask the smart questions and then maybe refine and then go and look at resources. I do worry that...

Cristina Flaschen (36:38)

I was just going

to ask, how do you feel about that? I have very mixed feelings. ⁓

Ben Marks (36:41)

So I worry, actually,

I just saw a thing on, I think was on LinkedIn, where there's this sort of idea that basically thought is being homogenized because actually in the, think the position, I only scan the article, essentially saying that the AI tools tend, they're not, they're generative, but they're basically, they're still operating within the bounds of how they were trained, sort of creating new things and creating,

Cristina Flaschen (36:57)

AI tools tend to, they're not, they're generative, but they're basically, they're still operating with the balance of how they train.

Ben Marks (37:06)

just being creative and sort of, and I guess extrapolating from what they know out into the world. That's part of the problem. But also I do wonder about kids who are able to just say, you don't have to sit there and think deeply. Sit with yourself, think deeply about a problem. I think this is actually like the next level up.

the next orbit above, you know, us of a certain age who just have a hard time with like the entertainment that is available in your hand on your phone. It's like, I just, I could say, wow, I spent two hours scrolling and I could have been doing something meaningful. I could have been exercising my brain. This is actually, this problem is going to get a little bit worse. And I don't, I don't know as a species how we're going to handle this, but I think, I do think also if I was, if I had

Cristina Flaschen (37:42)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (38:00)

a fresh kid, fresh baby, I would say, look, you you're going to spend time, you know, encountering problems, thinking them through solving for themselves, going out into the world and playing because you have to have, I think the kids that have a general specialty, like general perspective. mean, I think, I think specialization is important. And I think specialists should, as you were saying earlier, lean into their specialties and really, really,

Cristina Flaschen (38:16)

I think specialization is important. I specialists should, as you were saying earlier, lean into their specialties and really,

Ben Marks (38:29)

really be able to offer something over and above what someone could figure out by working with a a gen AI tool. But also I think there is having a ⁓ broad ability to pull things together and that because at the very least you're going to be able to write smarter prompts and then you're going to be able to do things with the responses that you get and move on to the next idea, the next prompt or the deeper sort of the deeper motion, the deeper analysis.

Cristina Flaschen (38:36)

So I think there is having a broad ability to pull things together. that, yeah, because at the very least, you're going be able to write smarter problems. then you're going to be able to do things.

Ben Marks (38:54)

And that's where you'll unlock some, value. But at this point, it's kind of an arms race of thought and generative capacity. You, you just have to kind of stay ahead of where everyone else is, or you will be, kind of subservient to what everyone else is doing.

Cristina Flaschen (39:10)

And maybe that's by design, who knows? And one thing I was thinking as you were saying that, thinking about like, maybe the specialization that someone has is that they are a generalist critical thinker. And like that is kind of a scary thing for me to think about. But like your specialty is that you're not, you know, you're not illiterate with the AI, but like, you know, you have literacy outside of some of these tools. And I don't know if I want to live in that world and hopefully it won't get to that point where we're...

Ben Marks (39:13)

Who knows?

Amen.

Cristina Flaschen (39:38)

still here to see it. But you know, with all of these new tools, there's there's trade-offs. Like when you get acceleration, there's always going to be a downside to that. And this is like a massive amount of acceleration that we're seeing. And these tools today are trained on us, right? And like the acceleration of how some of these GPT type products,

Ben Marks (39:39)

Yeah.

Cristina Flaschen (40:03)

how they turn into or don't like sort of the darkest parts of us is something that I'm interested in watching as well. Not to get like really dark on this podcast, but it's reading the internet, right? And the internet is written by people and there's some stuff on there.

Ben Marks (40:19)

Well, if you, if you focus

on, so if you think about what the, what the P is in GPT, right, that's it's pre-trained, right? So it's, it's, the scary thing is when these tools are, you know, get to a point where they're by design or sort of through self discovery and we get a little bit closer to like AGI, and, they are, they are starting to create their own analysis and sort of treat their own analysis as sort of first order.

you know, essentially like this is, this is just part of my training set. I don't see this as anything different than what I've been trained on, but it's, it's there being sort of there. They, they are then learning from their own self exploration and creating stuff out there. mean, I, hell, half the time I'm on Reddit. come, I eventually, I usually will come across a post or a comment, very often it's like, sometimes it's a post and I'm like, is this like an AI agent trying to understand something better? Because

Cristina Flaschen (40:46)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (41:07)

If it's not happening now, for sure it will because it wants to basically it's going to take this empirical approach to understanding itself and its own analysis. know, I think if we, back to the human side of things and, you know, assuming that we're all still here in 20 years, I think this is an interesting moment for people who are really intuitive and can

Cristina Flaschen (41:25)

think this was.

Ben Marks (41:31)

intuitive and empathetic. And I'll say, I mean that I don't, don't, I don't say that as a, as though it's a virtuous thing, but I just think that, if you're, if you're generally empaths tend to be very, fairly intuitive and the sort of they put themselves in another, in someone else's shoes. And, I think people I have seen in myself and other people having some interesting success prompting.

because you ask a question of the great GPT gods and you get an answer and you say, what's, it's a little bit, it's like 80 % of what I want. But then you get an idea of like, I think I know where this thing's coming from and I'm going to refine that. Now in the couple of years that I've been working with with his generative tools, it's, I think I've seen them evolve. Like basically they get things right, mostly right quickly. And then are able just with the subtle

Cristina Flaschen (42:00)

Mm-hmm

Yeah.

Ben Marks (42:21)

follow up question,

really able to zone in on what it is you want. And certainly the deep research tools are, I don't know if you've played with those yet, they're shockingly good. now that's one thing. If we talk about your business, degenerative, it makes it possible. think about what it takes to integrate solutions. can effectively say, hey, whatever GPT you are,

Cristina Flaschen (42:32)

That's one thing. If we talk about your business, generative, it makes it possible. So think about what it takes to integrate solutions.

Ben Marks (42:45)

with whatever coding abilities you have or this other tool has, we combine these two things. Here are, here's two API, you know, documentation for two API, two companies endpoints, and, you're for full, like full surface area of their APIs, make them work. And we're, we're, kind of close there. It's scary.

Cristina Flaschen (43:01)

Stay tuned, man. You

don't know what we're releasing in the middle of July. You have no idea. Wouldn't you want to venture your guess? And okay, so this actually goes into a question I did want to make sure we have time for and then I think we're to have to wrap is around exactly that, right? So thinking about engineers and thinking about the future of engineers and how we're getting a little bit of democratization with

Ben Marks (43:06)

I couldn't, I wouldn't want to venture a guess, Christina.

Cristina Flaschen (43:29)

coding, I have my own feelings about the quality of that and where that's going to lean. There's also another resurgence of lot of workflow management tools because you don't need to be an engineer anymore because this is the fifth iteration or the hundredth iteration of not needing to be an engineer that we've seen over the last 20 plus years. I'm curious, number one, for folks who are engineers that are listening to this or have engineers that are friends that may be freaking out.

from your vantage point as someone who has a programming background and has been in the space for a while and spent time with AI, number one, if you think that, what you think that job looks like in the future, and number two, from like ecosystem and platform design and things of that nature, like do you think that there will be more or less of a need for...

like engineers and engineering best practices specifically within that industry. So question is like, engineers gonna need to exist or do we think that these tools are gonna totally replace them and how long will that take? And number two, like what are the changes that you think are coming within like ecosystem development specifically as a result of some of this stuff?

Ben Marks (44:37)

Two, I think I'd say two different answers and sort of levels of ability to answer. I'm going to start by saying, I'm really glad even though I didn't strike out, know, set out into the world coming out of college to be an engineer. I don't, I'm a little bit frightened for people coming, if someone grew up, you know,

As a five years ago, just saying, I'm going to get out of college and I'm going to be a software engineer. And then I'm going to get real world job experience. I'm going to build myself from a junior coder up. Uh, I don't know that that, trajectory is certainly changed, uh, now. Um, and I don't, I don't, I don't, I'm not as optimistic for, for that approach. Um, but then you sort of begs the question, well, you know, do these systems become self

Cristina Flaschen (45:02)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (45:24)

you know, sort of self-maintaining and you only have like architects because it's pretty rare that someone can just become an architect without having done the work and, you know, designed the systems at a small scale and then grown up and all of this. I think there has to be a real world, a certain amount of real world experience in order to do that. So I I am, I hate to say it, but I am, I am a little bit concerned for, for what happens with that.

Cristina Flaschen (45:43)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (45:50)

class. And that may be one of those things that become cyclical. And we realize like, we're gonna, you know, we find a new way to empower and create space for for junior people to exist so that there are bottom rungs on a ladder up which you can climb. ⁓ Over time, you know, it is is the case that engineers will be engineers will be doing more we will all be doing more.

Cristina Flaschen (45:59)

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Ben Marks (46:14)

software, mean, just as by its very nature has allowed us to do more than we could before. think back to the days when there certainly weren't cell phones and at best there might've been green screen terminals, mainframes, like we're able to do so much more. In fact, I just saw a panel of some of the AI Illuminati.

Sam Altman and others. And the question was like, Hey, you know, aren't you guys basically destroying everything? And I was like, well, I mean, Excel was probably the biggest, you know, sort of job killer industry changer of software in, you know, in, you know, in like last two generations, they're not wrong. And so you start to get to the point, okay, like, what kind of industrial revolution is this? And of course, that the answer to that question depends on what your job is, right? Because, you know, like,

Cristina Flaschen (46:43)

was probably the biggest sort of job killer, changer of software.

and so you start to get to the point, okay, like what kind of industrial revolution is this? The answer to that question depends on what you're

Ben Marks (47:03)

going back to the industrial revolution metaphor, think is perfect because the proliferation of gasoline and fossil fuels and the machinery that could use them, someone's job was to clean up all the muck, the stuff out of the streets. And that job was obviated when

Cristina Flaschen (47:23)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (47:26)

when automobiles took over. like that person really felt the industrial revolution, but the industrial revolution, it brought in an era of prosperity that the world has never seen before. Now granted, again, if we go back to fundamentals, that's just the unlock, the availability and unlock of tremendous resource. So we basically went from, we'd kind of hit a limit, boom, unlimited. We could do all sorts of stuff. Now,

Cristina Flaschen (47:48)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (47:49)

So I would, I would say that there will be engineers, there will be plenty of engineers. They will be doing more. They will be doing things differently. I don't know what this looks like in terms of people actually writing, writing code by hand and changing things like right now you can, you can get a good headstart. I could say, Hey, I want to use, you know, my wall to say, I want to build this web app like this out of symphony is probably going to deploy here. And I can get a good bit of the way there. I have to have the experience to know which parts are good, which parts I need to throw away.

Cristina Flaschen (48:17)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Ben Marks (48:18)

on a long enough timeline, probably isn't going to matter. Just like the bits, the middleware or whatever the bits, the orchestrative bits that might work in your world. These things are just going to be available and it's not going to necessarily be like it has to be perfect and optimal because

when the second you realize, this is a little suboptimal, you ask some GPT a question and get it to give you the right thing.

now I think I feel a little bit better about how things are going to be for orchestrating communities and ecosystems because, the, these tools are not, they're still not, they, can't replace, human intuition of, of, of large human systems. Now they can come up with strategy. They're really good. Like the deep, deep research is amazing at coming up with the analysis, the strategic approach and the vision. mean, you can, you can ask.

Like Gemini, deep research question, like, want to, I, I've given this set of parameters about this ecosystem and it's, the goals of the companies behind it. Give me a two year plan and it'll give you good bits. Now, of course, you still have to have the intuition for how that works. So I think, you know, people on sort of more on my side of things, coordinating and orchestrating groups of companies and individuals. The picture's a little bit rosier for now, but again, you know, even in my job.

the kind of work that I do, if I'm not availing myself of these tools, you know, at the very least I'm leaving value on the table. And certainly over a five to 10 year timeline, there are going to be people running up the ladder or wearing a basically wearing a jet pack and blowing right past me. So whatever you're doing today in your, in your, in your career now, or the career you want to have, you should certainly be paying attention to how you can do it better or with more insight.

Cristina Flaschen (49:32)

failing myself on these tools. At the very least, I'm leaving value on the table. And certainly over five to ten years' there are going to be people running on the board for more.

Ben Marks (49:59)

using the tooling that's out there.

Cristina Flaschen (50:01)

I agree and I think it's also important to think of it exactly as you just described as a tool. Not the tool, not the only tool, but it is a tool. A very powerful tool, but I'm all about personally pragmatism, like use the tool for the job. If that tool doesn't exist as a founder, you know, like that's, you as an engineer, like maybe go try to build it, but if it does exist and it's sufficient.

use the things for what they're built for is sort of my philosophy on life. And I think that this is a broad tool, but it is a tool.

Ben Marks (50:28)

And if I could offer one more bit of advice, even to myself, because I'm kind of terrible at this, also, I think it's also important now maybe more than ever to engage in self assessment, like, you know, keep a diary, write to yourself, and then share, share the story about what you're doing, whether it's on LinkedIn or wherever it makes sense or in an internal company, you know,

messaging app, just sort of like you should be you should be talking about the concrete things that you're doing, because there is a question about authenticity and originality and effort. You know, I, right now, I think people can still kind of tell if you're putting something out there, you're the work product that you have is largely just derived from from you issuing a three sentence prompt to something, or you putting in the effort, you bringing something to table. So you really have to

Cristina Flaschen (51:03)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben Marks (51:18)

you, think you really have to focus on what can I do, that can't be done yet. I mean, actually I wouldn't do it quite that way, but basically you have to focus on where you, you personally with your skill and your personality or adding value, and then you have to remember to tell that good story to other people. And yes, I mean, for sure, I do need to remind myself to do that myself.

Cristina Flaschen (51:37)

Yes, it's hard. It's hard to force yourself to show up more authentically on the internet, especially for those of us of a certain age where a lot of that is like sand in the mouth. But I will let my marketing team yell at me about that later. And I think we are at the top of time here. It's been so fun chatting with you, Ben. Where can folks find you? And we'll also drop a link in the description. But where's the best place for them to find you?

Ben Marks (52:02)

Yeah, probably the best place to find me right now is actually just LinkedIn. I have my own thing that I'm working on, but I'm pretty visible online. My handle on LinkedIn is just BH Marks, but you can find me, Ben Marks, formerly of Shopware, formerly of Magento, and currently trying to find himself in this new, brave world.

Cristina Flaschen (52:23)

Aren't we all? Well, thank you very much again. Thank you listeners and viewers for watching. If you're interested in more content like this and all kinds of broad things, check out pandeam.com. We've got a blog, we've got the podcast, we've got videos, we've got worksheets, we've got everything. And again, really thank you. It's been such a great time chatting. Maybe we'll revisit this in like a year and see where we were right or wrong. And yeah, I'll see you out there on LinkedIn. We'll keep commenting on each other's stuff.

and I'm sure you will find yourself out there. I'm sure of it. Thanks. And feed.

Ben Marks (52:52)

Thanks, Christina.