#593 – Publicly Traded Hobby with Ben Jordan

Ben Jordan: This is the Amp Hour podcast recorded June 14th, 2022. Publicly traded hobby with Ben Jordan.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Ben Jordan, once upon a time from Altium and once upon a time co-worker of Dave.

Ben Jordan: Yes.

Dave Jones: And we have a lot of fun stories to tell from back in those days. Boy, it was crazy.

Ben Jordan: Oh, it was nuts. How are you doing, Ben? Wow, it's been a long time. How long has it been? It's been a long time. Yeah. It's been 10 years, right? It has. It has. Since I left Altium. How long did you stay at Altium after I left? Because you did the whole China move thing.

Dave Jones: Well, sort of and not really. I actually, so that was the first debacle we can talk about.

Ben Jordan: Why not? Okay. We'll get all the Altium stuff out of the way first. How about that? And then we'll move on to what you're doing these days and other stuff.

Dave Jones: Sounds good. Yeah. That was, my gosh, that was a fun time. So I did visit China, but I never actually moved there myself.

Ben Jordan: Right. Okay. How did you get out of that? Because I thought they wanted everyone to move, didn't they?

Dave Jones: They did. And they did ask me to go there.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: But I just, I knew my wife and kids, there's no way they were on board with that. And quite a few of the people had that response. They went home. Because here's the thing. I found myself in the chief HR guy's office at the time, Anand. And he's like, we have this plan. We need to go to China. We're going to relocate to China. China, the reasons we're doing it are this, that, and that, and this, and that. And which basically revolved around getting like massively scaling staff on the technical side to do IoT stuff. But, you know, he's like, we want a few people to go early and some can come later. And we want you to be one of the first. Oh, goodness. And help us sort of, you know, get established. And I'm like, there's no way my wife's going to buy into this. I'm like, well, I start asking all the questions. What kind of funding will there be to help me deal with the cost of schooling in a foreign nation where my children aren't citizens. So, therefore, they can't be taught in a local school. And not that I'd want them to be anyway. Right. Like, are there going to be any moving expense allowances? What's the salary situation? They said, we're thinking through all of that. We don't have any answers right now. But we really want you to commit to this. I'm like, what? There's just no way.

Ben Jordan: From, yeah, people I was talking to at the time when all this went down, that was there. That was almost everyone's response was like, what? Because, like, most people we work with had, you know, families, didn't they?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Well, there are a few that didn't. But, you know, I think the majority did. And, you know, you've got to uproot your life.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Most of us had very young children.

Ben Jordan: How old were your kids at the time?

Dave Jones: My Delta, who's now 18. Oh, geez. She just finished high school. It's unbelievable. Wow. Oh, wow. She was, I don't know what year was this. So it's 2022. We're talking.

Ben Jordan: It was 2009, was it? No, it was 2011.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It was.

Ben Jordan: Was it 2011? Yeah.

Dave Jones: It was early 2011 when they started talking about this.

Ben Jordan: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean, so she was seven or six.

Ben Jordan: Oh, wow. That's a hard age to do it.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we'd only, we'd been living in the States previous to that. And we'd just. Oh, you had. We had just moved back to Sydney. That's right. Yep. And that's the time I met you because while I was living in the States was kind of the time you'd started working for Altium.

Ben Jordan: Yes. That's right.

Dave Jones: I remember you coming over. I want to say 2007 or eight for embedded systems conference. You. Yes. That's right. You came over because we had this massive display.

Ben Jordan: Oh, stand. Oh, it was enormous. Oh God. And how many people? I think we had 50 people go over.

Dave Jones: It was crazy. The cost.

Ben Jordan: Oh my God. Actually, we had so many people, so many staff on the stand that customers couldn't get in. There were.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. It was like, and there were nano, nano board twos everywhere.

Ben Jordan: Yes. Yeah. Did we. Is that the one that we had the industrial version with the stand and the SMS thing? Was, was that the one?

Dave Jones: That's it. People. Yeah. And the gimmick at the stand was, oh, send a, send a text message with these X and Y coordinates to this number. And it will move, it will move the camera angle and change the color of the LEDs.

Ben Jordan: Right. That's right. Yep. It was, that was a pretty cool demo. It was fun. I thought that was really good. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I remember like all of those shows that we used to do for embedded systems conference that the technical people like yourself, Mark Hubble as well, who designed, who designed the whole stand. Cause he was a mechanical guy.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. He's the one who did the housings as well. And we did a road trip together from the HQ all the way up there. Cause all the stuff that we had, we had all the cases and everything and it wouldn't like, and we could, and they were so fragile cause they were like prototype fiberglass shells or something. I don't know what the exact material, you know, it wasn't tough ABS or anything. It was like prototype, like hand sand and everything. And they were so brittle that we couldn't risk transport in them. So we, so we rented a van and we, you know, carefully packed them up by hand and loaded them in the van and we went for a road trip from, uh, we were in near San Diego down there. What was it? Carlsbad. Carlsbad. Carlsbad. And then we did the road trip all the way up the coast to the, to the Silicon, uh, to the, uh, trade show. Yeah. And that was, yeah, that was fun times.

Dave Jones: Oh goodness. Yeah. So I think that's probably the first time I met you was actually when you were there to do that road trip.

Ben Jordan: Right. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Cause I was still, I was a FAE.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Okay. Because I, I mostly remember you, remember you from back in Sydney. So when you came back. That's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So 09. Yep. Nick asked, Nick tapped me on the shoulder. He's like, Hey, I want you to come back to Sydney. You'll get to have influence over the product.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: I want you close to the developers. Matt Schwager was sort of talking to me a lot as well.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: And for those who don't know, these are Nick. Nick was the founder of Altium. He's.

Ben Jordan: Founder and CEO. Yeah.

Dave Jones: He's, he's been gone since 2012, I think. 2012. He got booted.

Ben Jordan: Yes. After he got booted in a hostile takeover from his friend Aram. Anyway. Yeah. And the board. Once he had enough shares, he, uh, yeah, that was a strategic blunder on his part, but I don't know how much we want to go into that. What is Nick doing these days? I haven't heard a peep out of it.

Dave Jones: I haven't either. Have you got any idea? My understanding via somewhat reliable channels is. And by that, I mean, people who actually left when he was booted people. There were some people who left to join him in a new venture.

Ben Jordan: Oh, did they? Okay. I didn't hear about that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. My understanding was he stayed in China and founded a new company just to focus on IOT frameworks and other things. And it was.

Ben Jordan: Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think there might've been a hint that. Yeah. So you don't know what ever happened to that?

Dave Jones: As far as I know this, he's still doing it. It's going, but his customers are largely Chinese manufacturers of consumer products for the domestic market there. So it's like, well, I feel like I'm never going to see the results of any of that stuff because it's all contained.

Ben Jordan: It's all, it stays in China. Yeah. For those who don't know, there are tons of native markets like this, China, South Korea, places like that, that they're very, you know, they have their own chips. They have their own industries and they have their own markets and everything. And they'll only make and market within their own industry. There's meters that you can, that you can only buy in China, for example. Like, you know, there's whole industries of test equipment that you can only buy in these countries and, you know, they just don't sell them outside. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: I think I visited four times in the, in the three or four years that they actually did have a HQ there. Yep. A win was it? It was probably, it was really only a year and a half actually, but it was, they made this massive move and people like you, Dave, were given the choice, you know, we want you in China or you can find another job.

Ben Jordan: Oh, well, I was one of the half of the company. Was it half? Yeah. It was half of the company booted. Half of the company were given their marching orders. I was one of them. So I didn't even get a choice. So, oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Actually, I think, I think I remember that day and I remember you emailing me or chatting me just saying, you know, in the internal, I am just saying, Hey, I've just been let go and I'm like, dude, now's the time to, to really put everything into, I forget what I said to you, but I just thought this is going to be great for you because I know you're going to just focus on YouTube. Yep. Focus on the website and the forums and look where you are now.

Ben Jordan: Yep. And look where I am now, still doing the same shit 10 years later. But no, it's been, it's been great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's not one video. There's not one video where you're not smiling and laughing about something.

Ben Jordan: Oh yeah. I totally enjoy it. I know. Yeah. It's great.

Dave Jones: Just think about that. Like what if, just what if a thought experiment, what if every human in the developed world just decided to do what they were passionate about and figure out, figure out how to make a living from it along the way, how much happier would everyone be?

Ben Jordan: I know it'd be great, but yeah, like I just still can't believe I actually make a living from just bumming around in my lab here and just doing what I would have done anyway, which is make videos, you know, like, you know, share content and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the key that I've been doing my whole life. I feel like, you know, I've read so many self-help books and all this cause I've been, there are. Yeah. I've been desperate to improve things for my whole life. Like many of us. Right. Right. And some of them are just parroting what someone else said. Some of them have legitimate good advice in them.

Ben Jordan: Oh yeah. But it's hard to just like take it on board and follow it, you know, because everyone's different. Everyone's got different circumstances and abilities and passions and, you know. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, and, and fear stops people. And sometimes it takes a life event like getting laid off and the same, the exact same thing happened to me this year in January. I was given notice by Autodesk. I'm like, okay.

Ben Jordan: Oh, okay. Yes. Cause so you moved. So when, when did you move from Altium to, did you move directly from Altium to Autodesk? I did.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It happened during COVID like summer 2020, pretty much exactly two years ago.

Ben Jordan: So did they poach you or did you approach them?

Dave Jones: They poached me.

Ben Jordan: Oh, okay. Yep.

Dave Jones: Smart. But I was, I was really ready to do something else by then. Right. Altium had grown to that level where, you know, companies, they get successful and they get to a certain size where suddenly now we have to hire managers from somewhere else to come in and hopefully get us to the next, next level. And usually what that means is they'll make arbitrary changes because it's what they, they want to show that they're doing something. So, yes. So there's that, but then there's also Bill and I've talked about this on our, on our.

Ben Jordan: Oh yes. For those who don't know, you do a podcast with Bill Hurd, a former.

Dave Jones: Commodore.

Ben Jordan: Test on The Amp Hour here. Yeah. Yeah. Of Commodore fame and all beyond soon. Yes. So we'll, we'll all hang out in the next couple of weeks. Yep.

Dave Jones: Dude, that's going to be so fun. I can't wait.

Ben Jordan: Yep. Excellent.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, so on our live stream, we call it the Coriolis effect, but it's just on Bill's. Bill Hurd is the YouTube channel. One L in Bill.

Ben Jordan: Yes. That we, which is always very confusing. Bill, come on. Just change it to two. Be consistent.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, we talked about this because the same thing happened at Commodore. Like. Right. They got so big. They got so popular. They were really successful. And then suddenly it's like the founder of the company wants to retire. So what do you do? You either sell it or you employ new management to take over. And you turn it into Dilbert land. It totally became Dilbert land because they hired some guy who was previously the VP or leader for the IBM PC junior.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: And he came on and was managing Commodore Amiga stuff. Right. You know. I don't know all the details, but things like that happen. And, you know, technically on paper, the people have a good resume, but they start making changes. You know, it doesn't always happen like this. And it's, I'm not saying all of Commodore failed because of one guy. It was a, it's a combination, right? It's always a combination. Sure. But basically decisions are made based on how they did something at their old company. Not. And it's like. You're right. But this isn't that company. And it's not that product. And it's not that customer. Right. Altium's kind of, they're doing okay, but, but they've kind of plateaued a bit. And I feel like. Yes. Right. Some of it's to do with this, but some of it's also like, I saw people come in from say, you know, Henry Potts came in from Mentor.

Ben Jordan: Interesting.

Dave Jones: And Henry's very, Henry's very clever and also very much a bulldog. And there's other people came from Solidworks and Dassault.

Ben Jordan: Wow. They brought them all in. That's interesting.

Dave Jones: Like I look at any one of the high level management they brought in and they're all very talented, clever, experienced people. And I wouldn't say they're bad in any way, but it changed the culture of the company and the company companies. They get this size where. Okay. Now you're a specialist.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: So you, you swim in your lane and you don't do these other things you used to do. I can't do that. I have. I discovered. I turned 47 in December of 2021.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: And after my 47th birthday was diagnosed with ADHD and I'm like. Oh, what? Really? Far out. That's why I struggled in high school.

Ben Jordan: I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't know that was a thing to get diagnosed lately for something like that.

Dave Jones: That's interesting. It is a thing. Like I, like that's a whole other story for the second beer, but. Right.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Dave Jones: No worries. Because, you know, that involves relationships, marriage, you know, a whole lot of things. But.

Ben Jordan: Oh, yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: The point is I did discover that and I'm like, bloody hell, that's why, that's why I hated school so much.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: And I realized that's why Altium was able to keep me for 16 years. Because Matt Schwager, Matt Schwager was my boss. Most of the, in most of the roles I had. And Matt knew me well enough somehow innately to know about every 18 months to two years, I need to change Ben's title and responsibilities. Right. And they let me do a bit of everything. If I felt like writing an article or recording a video, they let me do it. If I felt like. Yeah, it's cool. If I felt like going to PCB West and presenting a paper and doing a talk, they let me do it. Yep. But by 2016, 2017, I started being inserted under other middle, mid-level managers who are like wanting to control what I was spending time on and limit what I, limit my freedoms to do these different things. I'm like, I can't, like, this is, I just got, I literally was, I didn't know it at the time, but after seeing therapists and things and realizing and looking back. Oh, wow. I was depressed. I was depressed for several years.

Ben Jordan: Wow. That's, yeah, that's tough.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I hated life. Right. I went through all the pain and trouble of migrating my family. Yeah. I like doing a lot of the things I do. I like making content as well, like you. Yeah. No, you're, you're so passionate. See, I wouldn't have guessed all this. I like all that. Yeah. Well, it's different when you're facing a camera and you've got to get something done. And I'm like, where's like, I've seen this company go from $26 million revenue to almost 200 and a share, a share price in the penny dreadfuls. You.

Ben Jordan: Oh, 10 cents. You were there. Oh God, I could have bought a 10 cents. Why didn't I? Why didn't I?

Dave Jones: Remember that day we were having lunch in the cafeteria in Sydney and the share price that day was five cents. And we were all saying.

Ben Jordan: Oh, was it five? It's five.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It was five around the time Morphic was acquired. And we're all saying, man, if I just had a hundred grand right now, I'd just buy tons of stock.

Ben Jordan: I know because it was less than the cash value. The company had more cash in the bank than the entire share price was worth, like the entire market capitalization. And the company had no debt. It was like, it couldn't go lower. I know. Like it literally couldn't go lower. Wow. Unbelievable. And I still didn't buy. I still didn't buy. But, you know, but back then Nick was still running the company and the whole China move. And then, you know, when I thought about buying, you know, it was like the China move thing. And I thought, oh no, they're just going to drive the company into the ground. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It could have gone either way. There was.

Ben Jordan: It could have gone either way, but oh geez, it was like, it was less than cash value. It was unbelievable. Yeah. It was the buy of a lifetime. It was just, and now it's like, yeah, for those who don't know now, it went up to what peaked at like $45 or something. I think it's back down to like 30 or under or something, but still.

Dave Jones: Oh man. And then. The gains are incredible. It's ridiculous. So all of that, all of that to say, that's why I lasted there for 16 years because Matt Schwager was a good boss and he knew I needed, he knew I thrived on variety. So, but the moment he wasn't my manager anymore.

Ben Jordan: Then it all went to crap. Huh?

Dave Jones: I had someone as a boss for a couple of years there. It was like, yep. We could not agree on anything. Right. It got so bad. I'm like, just kill me now. So. Yeah. And then, then, uh, started work, went back to marketing, did some stuff for Lawrence. That was kind of cool. Lawrence is a good guy for the most part. You're listening, Lawrence. I do still love you a little bit. Don't burn those bridges. I knew I needed to change. I needed to do. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Same with everyone.

Dave Jones: And, and right around that time, like COVID working from home, I'm like, this is pretty cool doing road trips with the family in that summer.

Ben Jordan: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Nice. And I got pinged by one of the leading product managers at Autodesk for Fusion 360. I'm like, I could get behind that. That's a pretty cool product.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: And I had other friends who'd previously been at Altium who had, who were on that team, like Matt Bergeron.

Ben Jordan: Oh. Oh yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Andy Ball, who God rest his soul passed away.

Ben Jordan: Oh really?

Dave Jones: Uh, in October of 2020. Not from, not from COVID. We still don't know. I, we still don't know. It was a sudden thing like heart attack or something. Gosh. I don't know if you ever got to meet him. He was one of the PCAD developers.

Ben Jordan: Yes. Yes. I think. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Super cool guy. Yes. I do remember. Super cool guy. I really miss him.

Ben Jordan: Wow.

Dave Jones: But you know, things like that happen. Things like COVID losing friends. Absolutely. And you, you reevaluate life, right? And your choices. You think, what the hell am I doing? Giving the best hours of every day to allow, this is funny. It goes back to our last Twitter conversation to allow some other guy to drive a Ferrari. Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Anyway. Oh boy. My, like, cause I was only at Altium for, I was only there four years, you know, which would like in the scheme of other people that have worked there. Cause most of it, you know, a lot have had worked there from like the old Tasmanian days.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah.

Ben Jordan: You know, that was just like nuts because for those who don't know the history of Altium, Nick Martin was at the University of Tasmania. Was he a student or working there? He was. I think it was.

Dave Jones: My understanding is he was working there as a lab tech.

Ben Jordan: Right. Something like, yeah, yeah. That rings a bell. And yeah. So he was working there and he decided to write his own CAD program, which is a ProTel at the time, which was a ProTel Auto Tracks. Right. Well, no. Was it easy track to start out as easy tracks or.

Dave Jones: I think the very first version, I don't know what it was called exactly. I think it was just called ProTel. And then later on. Right. Yeah. But I could be wrong.

Ben Jordan: They added the Auto Tracks thing and. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So he built that from 83 to 85.

Ben Jordan: Yes. And wrote it in Turbo Pascal.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Ben Jordan: Turbo Pascal. And were they, when you left, were they still using Delphi for part of it? Yes. Or had, yeah, they were. Okay.

Dave Jones: And at my knowledge, they still are for some part.

Ben Jordan: They still are using Delphi. Are they the only company left in the world using Delphi? Oh my goodness.

Dave Jones: No. Delphi. No. Delphi keeps getting developed. But here's the deal. It's primarily used by banks.

Ben Jordan: Oh, that's interesting.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Why is that? That's just a cultural, historical thing?

Dave Jones: I think it's historical. And the reason is Turbo Pascal and then Delphi as a follow-on, which is the windowsized drag and drop sort of. Right. Yes. It has an exceedingly accurate fixed point math library. And banks love that.

Ben Jordan: Oh, banks, they want every last cent. They don't want little digits left over. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They want very, very careful rounding algorithms, which is ironic because the database in the Altium PCB editor has rounding errors.

Ben Jordan: Yes. Yes, it does.

Dave Jones: Isn't that funny?

Ben Jordan: Oh, goodness. That is hilarious. Oh my God. Oh my goodness. And so they're still using it, but they did move part of it to C++ or something, didn't they? C Sharp. Yeah. I thought they were in the C Sharp, right? I thought they were in the process of transferring it, but they're still using some of it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I think like there's just a multi-year because if you have four or six million lines of code, it's going to take some time to redo everything in a different language.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Oh, it's nuts.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. And it was practically impossible to find anyone. When they're hiring programmers, you couldn't find anyone with Delphi experience. It's like that wasn't even a job requirement really. It's like, you haven't heard of Delphi? Fine. Are you good? And then they'd actually test you, test your skills as a programmer. Yeah. And then you'd go, yep, good enough. You can learn Delphi, you know?

Dave Jones: And then people go, geez, what have I done? Do you remember a guy? So back when you and I were in Sydney, I was there mid-2009 to mid-2011. Yep. I should talk more like the Aussie that I am, mid-2011. Yep. And in that time, there was this really, really shit-hot embedded developer guy, Ben, I want to say, what was his last name? Starts with L.

Ben Jordan: Oh. He was, oh, God. Yes.

Dave Jones: He was writing drivers and firmware for the JTAG adapter. He was the one? Not Ben Wells. Ben Wells was in charge of that team, and he was also amazing.

Ben Jordan: Oh, okay. Because I was going to say, Ben Wells is the one who hired me. And I vividly remember my first interview there. I had several, but my first interview was with Ben Wells. And I went into his office, and he's just got his feet up on the desk. He's got bare feet, and he's got, you know, like, and I thought, this is a cool company, right? This is like, yep. And he eventually moved to Google. I don't know if he's still there. I believe he is. Hi, Ben. Yeah. Yeah, you think? Yeah. Yeah, hi, Ben. Yeah, but yeah, I thought that was a cool company. This guy's just, you know, shorts and bare feet walking around the office. You know, I thought, yeah, this is great.

Dave Jones: Well, you know, we're in the northern beaches.

Ben Jordan: It's northern beaches of Sydney, yeah.

Dave Jones: So you can imagine a bunch of Aussies, some of them were people who'd immigrated to Australia, but they all lived in the northern beaches and surfed. Yep, yep. And they were brilliant, brilliant software people.

Ben Jordan: Oh, everyone at Altium was the top notch. Yeah. You know, I've never worked at a company where everyone there knew what they were doing. Right. You know, like you. Yeah. That was something.

Dave Jones: And I think that was actually a kick-ass secret weapon skill that Nick Martin had. And I don't know if he even knew that that was his thing, but he had an ability to sniff out good people. Yes.

Ben Jordan: Yep. And good, passionate people as well. Yeah. Yeah. You just, you know, if you come in and you were, you know, you were the stiff upper lip management, you know, strict, rigid type, then you were not, no. You wouldn't even make it through the first interview. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. I just found that remarkable. It was just, it was absolutely incredible. Like, cause I, I used to come from big, you know, companies that work on, you know, big military stuff. And like, you know, I don't want to say half of the people there, but you know, like it was like, they were useless. They were like, you know, they couldn't tie their own shoelaces. I don't know how they got a job, but somehow they, you know, given positions of, you know, and somehow things got done, but yeah. Yeah. Very different at Altium.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was something super cool. And, and I, I think maybe that was something I'd seen, you know, in my later years there, when I got depressed, perhaps that was one of the things I could see was changing. That there were.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: There were some really good people coming in from outside, but there were also some people who were just kind of had no wind in their sails, let's say. And frankly. Yeah. For me.

Ben Jordan: No, that's very different.

Dave Jones: For me personally, it's, it started making me one of those people. I'm like, I don't know if I want to get out of bed and go here in the morning, you know?

Ben Jordan: Right. Yeah. No, that's, that's when you got to pack your bags and go. Yep.

Dave Jones: Totally. So.

Ben Jordan: My, my memory of Altium is that it was like, I was just stunned by the lack of management, so to speak. It was just like, like it was a very flat organization. Like it was like, it's almost as if I didn't have a manager, you know, I was just expected to do stuff. And, and I'd, and I'd deal with Nick, like actually directly, you know, like it wasn't uncommon for him to come around to your desk and say, work on this, you know? And then you just drop everything you did and you worked on this. And yeah, you know, it was like, or, or you came in in the morning. Did you ever have this? You came in in the morning and then you discovered that at 2 a.m. in the morning, Nick had changed your code and checked it in. It was like, yep, that was hilarious.

Dave Jones: It was like, oh my goodness. I like to call that, you know, it's, it's the entrepreneur slash startup business model. And, and he, he carried that on for 20 years.

Ben Jordan: For 20 years. I know.

Dave Jones: It just kept working at least to build the product. It did maybe not, maybe not to grow the revenue.

Ben Jordan: Well, yes. Cause building the company.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Well, cause I, I always, I'm all, I was always of the opinion that to Nick Altium was just like a, and ProTel slash Altium was just like a hobby company for him. You know, he, he didn't really care if it made huge amounts of money. Cause the decisions they were making weren't, weren't to my mind, weren't based on good. Say, you know, what's best for the business or it certainly didn't work out that way anyway.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I felt like he still had, he still had a very deep product focus and I kind of felt the same way. Yeah. I often thought this is a publicly traded hobby.

Ben Jordan: Yes. Right. A publicly traded hobby. Maybe that could be the title for today's show. Publicly traded hobby. Oh yes. I like that one. Okay. Publicly traded hobby.

Dave Jones: That the interesting thing was for all the technical people that were there, myself included, that was inspirational. And I actually, Oh yeah, I know. It was great. It was, I could put my shoulders into that and push, you know, because I'm like, yeah, this is cool. What we're doing. Yeah. And maybe, maybe from the development standpoint, it should have been kept that way, but perhaps from a business standpoint, you know, let some, some other operations person do that, you know, and. Right. But it all changed. And then.

Ben Jordan: Well, I, I, I, a friend of mine who actually brought me over to Altium because most of the. That's Steve Howell. No, no, that wasn't Steve Howell actually. It was another one who shall remain nameless in the hardware team. He, he, he, he didn't last there long, but yeah, but like three, three of the four guys from the hardware team, we were all ex, uh, Tally's, sir, sir, sir, sir, uh, guys from, you know, we were all from the same company. So we all ended up on the hardware team.

Dave Jones: So maybe it was you who brought Steve Howell over then.

Ben Jordan: No, I think no, no. Steve was the first.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. He was the first one to come over and then he brought over this other guy and then he brought me. Oh, okay. So that, that's how we formed the hardware team, but he didn't last long because he was more, he's a really good friend of mine. Really, really, uh, great technical guy, but he was more, you know, he came wearing a tie every day and, you know, like he was more, you know, really strict corporate, you know, like really serious focused kind of guy, which is what you want in a lot of, you know, companies and stuff. And he thought what a $4,000 development board. This is ridiculous. You know, and he lasted like nine months, six months or something. I'm not sure how long he lasted, but yeah, he, he had words with management did not like that. He didn't like that. It was a $4,000 development board. Like, and I was totally on board, right? I went, yeah, like $4,000 development board. Who's going to spend that? I don't think anyone's going to, yeah, I don't think anyone's going to buy this, but I kept my mouth shut, you know, whereas he didn't. And they eventually, you know, made it difficult for him and he just, he left.

Dave Jones: I think I know who that was, but I won't, I won't say his name. We'll follow up after and see if I'm right.

Ben Jordan: Anyway, he's a, he's a very good friend of mine. We might actually get him on the amp hour one time. Anyway, very good technical guy, but yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: He, he wasn't, he wasn't, yeah, the fit. Basically, if you want to work it out to him, you had to believe in the vision.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: And that was, you know, yeah, you either bought into the vision or you didn't, you know, and if you didn't, you were out.

Dave Jones: That's how it was. You know. Totally.

Ben Jordan: So, yeah, yeah. And, and, but, but they eventually learned for those who don't know the, yeah, the $4,000 development board didn't sell. It was very cool. Like, you know, it was great to show off and demo and, you know, it was brilliant tech.

Dave Jones: It is.

Ben Jordan: But especially the way it integrated with the software, you could actually plug in the modules and it'd auto detect them via one wire serial numbers and stuff. And then it'd pull in the FPGA stuff. I've never seen an FPGA system that was, so it was well ahead of its time. It was bloody brilliant. It was, yeah. Like it was really plug and play stuff. It was amazing. But yeah, the $4,000 board didn't sell. So they eventually came out with a $300 version, which sold, which sold a lot better.

Dave Jones: They sold like hotcakes because.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Yes. I don't know. So do you know how many of those were eventually sold? Because that was.

Dave Jones: I think that final Chinese production runs went over 4,000.

Ben Jordan: Right. Yeah. Because I went over to China, went over to Shanghai to set up the factory to make those units. Yep. Yeah. Right. And yeah, that was, I wasn't too long after that, that the whole China move thing happened and yep, I was out of there.

Dave Jones: But that's something that I'll probably want to ask you about some of the design aspects of that when you join me and Bill, because I have. Oh yeah. I still have some of those boards. I still play with them every now and then and talk about them a little bit.

Ben Jordan: Oh really? Yeah. I've, I've, I've still got one somewhere.

Dave Jones: And there's some, there's some things in it that I was just like, why did we do it that way? You know? And it'd be, it would be cool to ask you and get your input because you were part of the team, right? Yep. I was part of the team that worked on it. Yep. So we can go through that. I have a super rare system on module that Steve Howell gave me. Oh really? Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Cause he, he worked on lots of weird, and you can see a lot of his stuff on his website. If you haven't, we've actually mentioned his website a couple of months back.

Dave Jones: Apple logic.

Ben Jordan: Apple logic. And he document, no, that's, uh, yes, yes. I think it's Apple logic, although he might have a personal one as well. And it documents all these projects he's worked on. And we, and we gave it as a stellar example of how to document your work so that you can show it off to people. Oh, it's bloody brilliant. He's just, yeah, it's great. Anyway. Yeah. He worked on lots of, you know, weird oddball boards and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: It is apple logic.org.

Ben Jordan: Right. Apple logic.org. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Don't look for apple logic.com.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: And I think he does have another one. That's more like his resume. That's SRKH designs or something.

Ben Jordan: Yes. That's a, yes. That's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah. SRKH. And yeah. Worked on lots of weird and wonderful boards and yeah. Oh, and there was a portable version. There was a portable version of the nano board as well. There was like a handheld version. That was crazy. Yeah. So he worked on the handheld version. I did the industrial version as well as a version of the nano board too. Yeah. It was, we just had all these different variants. So for those who don't know the, the vision, the vision was that, uh, and I, I would love to get your opinion on this. The vision was that electronics in the future was going to be all modular. Like why, why would you want to design your own custom PCB? Why lay out a power supply when like 10 million other designers have already laid out power supplies? It doesn't make, you know, it doesn't make sense. You just drop in this module, including the layout and everything's done for you. So everything would be modular. And that's when Altium famously had this campaign, turn in the world of electronics upside down, where they made the P this is a PCB company and they made the PCB tool optional extra. So what you bought is you bought the nano board. Yeah. This was in the days of the $4,000 nano, but you bought the $4,000 nano board. You'd get all the FPGA stuff and you'd get all the, um, you know, all the embedded software stuff, but you wouldn't get the PCB module.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It was, it was funny. What was that? They came up with that phrase, the innovation station is what they call it.

Ben Jordan: Innovation station. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And Marty Half did a YouTube video wrapping about it.

Ben Jordan: Oh, wrapping. Oh, yes. Oh, didn't they do some cringy videos?

Dave Jones: Oh man, it was, it was, but it was funny, but cringe. Yeah, I know.

Ben Jordan: It was funny, but it was so cringe.

Dave Jones: The innovation wrap. It's still there. I think it's still there.

Ben Jordan: Oh, it's still there. Okay. I'll have to try and find it and link it in. Yeah. Oh, so yeah. Anyway, it was, it was modular. The future would be modular and you wouldn't have to design anything. You just drag and drop things and put it in and you would use off the shelf modules. You'd be, you know, all these little hardware internet of things modules, you know, you'd just slap them together. Bingo. You've developed your product. And the future was every, of course they bet the company on this. Uh, I think probably a little bit before you joined or when you joined in early to mid two thousands, uh, they bet that everything was going to be inside an FPGA. Like, like FPGAs were the future. And that was, you know, that was the end of that. Like every, you know, and it just didn't pan out because FPGAs are too expensive. They're too power hungry. They're, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Oh yeah. It just didn't, just didn't pan out. You know what's funny though?

Dave Jones: Modular. Yeah. I've, I've just, just yesterday or the day before had a phone call with a friend in the Altium user community. Yeah. Who used to do not just board design, but he would actually, he worked for a medical device company and they actually did use the whole FPGA thing. Now, one of the, one of the few Altium companies that embraced the whole paradigm and said, well, we'll design the board and we'll use FPGAs because they have low volume, high value products. That's where you want to use them.

Ben Jordan: Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Dave Jones: And it's, it's funny. He, he got in touch with me by sending me a LinkedIn message saying I could really use an FPGA with a soft core processor right about now because nothing's available in the supply chain.

Ben Jordan: Yes. Yes. Oh God. Oh, the supply chain. So what's your, so what's your thoughts on the whole modular electronics thing? So did you think it was ever going to work? Because I, I knew from day one, I had even debated people on the old Usenet forums like a decade before that about modular, you know, everyone had these ideas for everything's going to be modular, you know, and modular systems. And it just, you know, and there'd be no need for true custom anymore. And it was like, uh, yeah, nah. As we say here.

Dave Jones: I agree with you for the most part. I think, I think the dream certainly has not died. There are still, and even Altium. Oh, there's still, yeah. Even Altium, you know, you look at, they acquired the company Gumsticks. Oh, did they? Yeah. Actually, it's not. Oh, wow. Yeah. Gumsticks. So it's funny. And this, this closes a circle too, because back in those days when you and Steve and we were all in the Sydney headquarters during that time, it was actually the Gumsticks modules. And that, that was a little company out of Vancouver, Canada. And they made, they made these little processor modules that were like, and that they were called Gumsticks because they were kind of the size of a gumstick. You know, the board.

Ben Jordan: Right. Yes. One of those little. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And they, they had a TI Stellaris processor on them and a bunch of other things. And, and it was a whole complete computer system on, on, it was a system on module and you could plug it into your own carrier board and it. Right. And, and some of those had been, had been used by the team in Sydney at Altium and it inspired them. Oh, we can make modules like this just with an FPGA on them. So that's why Steve went and developed those SOM modules, but. Yes, that's right. But it's funny. Some years later, right around 2018, I think they acquired Gumsticks because Gumsticks had developed an online website called Geppetto where you could literally do that. You could grab modules. Yes. Yeah.

Ben Jordan: I, right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I want an, I want a Stellaris or, or maybe you don't have a high end processor. Maybe it's going to be a Arduino equivalent. Grab that, drag and drop it onto the canvas. Okay. Now I, those do I need. Oh, I need, I need this many analog inputs. Okay. I need this many PWM outputs, whatever it is. You drag and drop it all onto a canvas and then you go into the GUI in the website and configure how everything connects up. And then you specify in a very crude way, what size board you want. And all of these things are kind of bits of a printed circuit board and you have to get them to fit. And then you place an order, you pay a $2,000 NRE fee and the oompa loompas go to work. And two weeks later, you get the board on your doorstep ready to develop your software on it.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Nice. Nice.

Dave Jones: And the system, that system works, but it's, it's still very niche. I mean.

Ben Jordan: It is very niche. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Dave Jones: And I don't think, I don't think. So, so the vision's there to make things modular and sort of automate stuff and Altium, Altium's trying to do that and they're trying to do a bunch of things, but that's, and they rolled that into what was Upverter. So now their whole Upverter branding and marketing is about, it's really gumsticks Geppetto. Got it. Okay. So they're trying to do it just in a, in a different way.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: And it, and it's still only going to be niche though, right? I think so because the cost, like you don't get to control much about the board shape. You don't get to really optimize the layout. If you're going to, if you're going to make something that's going to be an awesome product, think about how much hours you put into making the board just right.

Ben Jordan: Oh yeah. And the K, you know, the custom case and the custom board to go in the custom case and all the other, you know, custom things that go along with the product. You can't do that with modular stuff really. It just, it, it just doesn't work. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Now that, that tech might get better and improve over time, but I don't think it's ever going to completely replace full custom board design.

Ben Jordan: No, no, totally. But the, but Altium bet the farm on that. Yeah. And it just, yeah. It just, just didn't work. Unfortunately. What's the, what's the, what's the current price of Altium doing? Cause they just, they just sent out a release that they're going to up the prices due to inflation.

Dave Jones: Uh huh. Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Just sorry, but due to inflation, we're going to up the price. What was the, cause I haven't looked at prices of Altium for a heck of a long time. What's the.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know what the current list price is for a full perpetual license.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: I, I do know, I did receive a quote for subscription in the mail, in the email.

Ben Jordan: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it had gone up from 1895 for a year to 1995 for a year.

Ben Jordan: Okay. So the maintenance is going up. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But then the email said the price of this is going up. So I'm like, wait a second. Maybe I missed the, maybe I missed the previous pricing increase. Yeah. Cause this is already a hundred dollars more for a year of maintenance than what I thought it was. So.

Ben Jordan: Oh boy.

Dave Jones: If that's any indication.

Ben Jordan: Right. Were you in Sydney at the time? I know we were still at the old headquarters. We were still at the old, uh, French's forest. Sorry. Um, uh, where was the old headquarters? We were still in the old building. Anyway.

Dave Jones: It was French's forest. Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Oh, it was. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Cause then we moved to, uh, Belrose. Yes. So we were in the French's forest and I can vividly remember Nick Martin, the CEO, like gathering everyone together. We were in the kitchen and he, and he said, right. We, we, we've decided to drop the price of our product by 80%. We are. And, and he's in almost an exact quote is we are burning our bridges. We can't go back to high price software. So I think it was like eight, $10,000. The software was at the time. And we dropped it to $2,000 overnight. And, and it was like, this is now the new price. Everyone pays $2,000 and that's it. And, and yeah, we're burning our bridges. We can't go back. And like, there were a lot of customers who were like, but I just paid $8,000. Like what?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Man.

Ben Jordan: A lot of pissed off customers. Oh boy.

Dave Jones: That was not. That was a heyday for mental graphics. Yeah. It was in response to the GFC. Nick's like, nah, we're. And in, in, in many ways I could see why I did it. Like I got it. Right.

Ben Jordan: Oh yeah. No, totally. Yeah. Like we were going for volume. We're going to own the market. We're going to destroy everyone else. And like, and, and the company, like we said, had no debt. Like the company could do pretty much anything it wanted. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: And they thought they'd make it up in volume and stuff like that. But I think it lasted like nine months before the prices went back to normal.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think that coincided with firing a VP of sales in the States as well.

Ben Jordan: Well, this and the CEO at the time, who was it?

Dave Jones: Kayvon.

Ben Jordan: No, it was, um, uh, she was.

Dave Jones: Oh, uh, the president, Emma LaRusso.

Ben Jordan: Emma LaRusso. Yeah. Then she went off to form her own company after that. But yeah, I think she was mortified that, that actually she was not on board with that. So I think that's why she was pushed out.

Dave Jones: Possibly. I think most other management were not on board, but they were like, well, I'm not going to say anything. We'll just see what happens.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Well, see, that's, that's how it worked. Cause she was, I think pretty sure she was the CEO at the time. And Nick was, but, but, but Nick still ran the company. He was the major shareholder. It was still his company. So he, you know, like she kind of like had to, didn't really have a choice, but to go along with his vision of this new low cost software, you know, $2,000 for everything. And I thought, oh, geez, that's a ballsy, you know, ballsy move. And it could actually work. You know, everyone could pile up, you know, everyone wanted Altium, but you know, it was like $8,000, you know, it was pretty pricey, but two grand. Oh, you know, that was like.

Dave Jones: That means an individual who maybe is out of work in the GFC could have hoped to be doing some contract stuff. Right. And that's the thinking.

Ben Jordan: Exactly. That, that was the thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I. Software companies now are like, the only way to do that is. Put them on a subscription and make them pay monthly or, or pay per use.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: Which. That's right. A lot of people still don't like that model, you know.

Ben Jordan: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Don't quite trust it.

Ben Jordan: What's your opinion on that? Would you rather pay a big amount upfront and know that you own it? Or would you like to be on a subscription?

Dave Jones: If it's my, if it's my daily driver CAD software, I want the option of perpetual.

Ben Jordan: Yep. To buy.

Dave Jones: I want, I want both options.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: I'd rather pay more and just know that it's never going to get turned off.

Ben Jordan: Know that you own the tool. Yep. And the good thing about PCB tools is that you don't need to upgrade it. If you've got a working PCB tool, it's still going to work in 10 years time. Yep. As long as, you know, operating systems don't change or, you know, something. Right. It's still going to be the same valuable tool. You don't need to upgrade. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah. Of course you'll be enticed to by all the fancy features.

Ben Jordan: All the fancy, new fancy features. And yeah, yeah, yeah. But all the fancy new bugs. Yeah. And I mean, doesn't Altium still have bugs that have been in there for like 20 years back when I was using them back in, you know, ProTel for Windows 2.8? Most likely.

Dave Jones: I'd say so.

Ben Jordan: Yep. There's always a few. Oh, it's just, yeah, crazy. I can remember, yeah, back when I was using that, I was working at a company using, yeah, version 2.8, I think. And I was documenting dozens of bugs and I was sending them off to Altium and they just never got fixed, you know, or some of them might, you know, if they're important enough.

Dave Jones: But yeah. There's another aspect to all of this though, that's kind of something people don't really talk about much. And that's, and it's really important. It's sometimes things disappear. And you're like, no. Yes. In what, in what, in what, well, they'll take, what sort of way are you going for here? Well, they'll take things out of it. And it's like, wait. Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. Damn well, tell me I'm the only person who knew about that thing and used it daily and now, or really relied on it. Yep. Yep. They did this analysis probably around 2016 where they started really deeply analyzing analytics of what areas of the software were in use most frequently.

Ben Jordan: Right. Interesting. And they could get that data? Were they getting the data from people, you know, like.

Dave Jones: Just anonymously, like gathering analytics. Yep.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. But the danger of that, and I expressed my opinion of this at the time and they assured me, oh, it's okay. Like we back it up with actual interviews and this and that. Right. Like, yeah, well. Yeah. Okay. You should also interview people who are expert users and know all of the features, not just the noobs and not people just coming from mentor or cadence.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: Because you end up trying to build your competitor's product instead of something that's better.

Ben Jordan: Exactly.

Dave Jones: But the risk of analytics is you see these areas of the software or these commands or features that appears like no one ever touches them.

Ben Jordan: Right.

Dave Jones: And so you think, well, maybe we could just get rid of that and then we don't have to maintain it anymore.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: And then what happens to me personally, even while I was still working at the company, I'm like, oh no, wait a second. I'm doing a reference design to support a video I'm trying to make. And this thing that I expect to find in the software has gone.

Ben Jordan: Oh no.

Dave Jones: What the hell are you doing? No. Like, I know 99% of the users don't use this according to your analytics, but they may only use this once a year or once every three years. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. But when they use it, they really need it.

Ben Jordan: You need it. Oh my goodness.

Dave Jones: Don't remove things. Don't move my cheese.

Ben Jordan: Oh my. Did Altium make you use the internal versions every day? Because they used to build a new version like every day or every two days.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah.

Ben Jordan: And that, yeah. Oh yeah. As the hardware group, because we were actually doing real boards. You know, we're trying to get real product finished. Yeah. You know, and they said, no, you have to use the latest build version every day so that we know what bugs, you know, and like if a build version is good, you know, or not. And they want us to do that while we're trying to do a real board, you know, like real work and stuff. Oh yeah. And meet the deadline. Yeah. And no, we, we just secretly between us all agreed on one version that we thought was stable and we just all use that. Like we, we, we did play around with the daily builds, but we didn't, wouldn't do any serious work on it because it would just hinder your ability to actually get the job done.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: You know, so, yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. For, for the, for the jobs I had at Altium, I, I was never forced to use it. I generally chose to, but it did eat up a lot of extra time.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yes, it did.

Ben Jordan: But no, I can understand them wanting that because you have to eat your own dog food, as they say, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's, you know, you've got to try it out. But the amazing thing was though, air, I never, ever lost work though. Like, you know, there'd be like annoying bugs in the daily build version that'd stop you doing something, but I never got a corrupted file ever. I thought that was my fear is that, oh no, I'm swapping versions every single day. I, you know, my files are just going to be corrupted and they won't be compatible, but no, they just, it just, that was, I think the best thing about Altium was the file compatibility. It just worked. Yeah. Oh, it was incredible. Yeah. And it was backward and forward compatible. It was just, I don't know how they did it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was actually, that was genius engineering on the, on the software team's part. I never had that problem myself and I managed technical support for North America from, I want to say 2011 to 2013. Right. Had a team of AEs answering calls, helping customers solve problems. And almost daily someone would call up and say, oh, I've lost data. Really? But it was never a corrupt file. It was. What was it? I cannot remember one situation where it wasn't ultimately user error.

Ben Jordan: Ah, interesting.

Dave Jones: Yep. However, it's not always their fault. There were many, there was one, there was one situation. This is an interesting story where someone called up and he was threatening to sue us. Yeah. This happens pretty often, right? Okay. Part of having a CAD software business. People want to sue you. So this guy, and I felt for the guy like, and he'd, he'd gotten through to one of the junior support staff and, and she was kind of put her hand up for help immediately. Cause this guy was threatening lawsuits and angry. And I came over and put him on speaker and I'm like, what? Explain what's happened to me. Tell me what's the problem. He's like, it's your library. And I'm like, Ooh, here we go. Here we go. This is why PCB designers, seasoned PCB designers don't use other people's libraries.

Ben Jordan: That's it. Yeah. Okay. What was there an error in a thousand pin, thousand pin FDGA?

Dave Jones: I've seen those too. I've seen actual errors in the footprints, like incorrect pin mapping, things like that. But this case, it's like I placed this 0603 resistor. And look, it's, it's like an eighth of the size of the other 0603. And I'm like, wait a second. Let me look at that. Where did that come from? He's like, I placed it from your vault thing. And I'm like, that's an 0603. And, and, and his problem was he'd made prototype boards and he'd ordered parts.

Ben Jordan: Oh, okay. Right.

Dave Jones: So these 0603 resistors, which in metric is what is it? It's 1608.

Ben Jordan: Oh no. And he, oh yes. Yes. He goofed the imperial metric version.

Dave Jones: Oh, actually that's an 0201. That's not an 0603. It's 0.6 by 0.3 millimeters. It's not an 0603. It's an 0201. And then that, that 0603 in parentheses in our library means metric.

Ben Jordan: Yes. Oh my God. And he threatened to sue over that.

Dave Jones: I know. And he's like, oh, okay. And I'm like, I get that it's confusing, but that's our naming convention.

Ben Jordan: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, if we can give you a discount on your subscription or anything else to make you feel better, I'll, I'll tell, I'll tell the salespeople to do that. And he was, he was okay. But it was always situations like that where people, if people had had loss, sometimes a crash would cause loss of work. That's going to happen. Cause you didn't get to say.

Ben Jordan: Yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: And that happens all the time. It's like, oh yeah. And I lost my whole day or even more than a day. It's like, wait, you left it powered up. You left windows on overnight. Yeah. Walked away. You worked for three days on this board, but you didn't save in that.

Ben Jordan: Save it. I know. No, I'm, I am one of those compulsory savers. I've got this, uh, like I've got this macro finger that just automatically saves it like every minute. Control less. Control less. Like I do it with that without even thinking about it. Yep. You know, it's just like, boom, boom, boom.

Dave Jones: You know, it's like you always, you always leave your phone, your keys and your wallet together. No matter where you are, they're always together. They're either all together in your pockets. Yes. Or they're all together on your nightstand or they're all together in a drawer in your kitchen. But wherever they are, they're all together all the time. These are the habits you must. Exactly.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Yes. Yep. To actually survive in this world. Yes. You must. Yeah. Just to survive in the CAD world. You must save religiously.

Dave Jones: Literally. Oh boy. It's like that joke. That joke. Someone said to me years ago. It's like the whole computer system in heaven was based on windows. So it got a B side. Blue screen of death.

Ben Jordan: Death. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And Jesus was the only happy one there because why? Jesus saves.

Ben Jordan: Jesus saves. Oh yes. I've seen that. Yes. Yeah. That's it. I'll pay that. It's pretty good. Speaking of losses. Do you remember the one way back? There was one guy. He's a one man band. And he actually took the name Auto Tracks, which was the original version of Protel. And he actually made his own CAD PCB software. I think you can still buy it. Yeah. And he called it Auto Tracks. And because Altium let the trademark on that name lapse. And he said, you know, and Altium tried to, I don't know if we tried to sue him or not at the time, but we sort of like threatened him. And he went, well, you, you know, actually don't own the trademark on it. So ha ha.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Ben Jordan: You know? And he. I remember that.

Dave Jones: He eventually renamed it Auto Tracks Dex.

Ben Jordan: Auto Tracks Dex. That's right. But he still had Auto Tracks in the name.

Dave Jones: Someone, someone of Slovak background based on his name in the UK. And the product kind of had a good feature list, but I tried it out before I even worked at Altium.

Ben Jordan: Yeah, I tried it out once and it was, it was, you know, you could kind of maybe do the job with it, but you know, it wasn't polished certainly. Yeah. But it was, it was very impressive for one, one guy having to wrote it. Oh, mammoth effort for one developer.

Dave Jones: Huge effort.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I had, I had Wiki, I had Wikipedia wars over, over that as well when I was at Altium.

Ben Jordan: Oh, okay. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Trying to go back and edit, edit wikis and getting, getting my edits disputed by him and then disputing back and saying, and yeah, I just gave up.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think Altium just gave up in the end. There you go. Oh, go and do whatever you want. We don't care. You're a, you're a one man band. I think that's what happened.

Dave Jones: I don't think he really makes much of a living from it.

Ben Jordan: No, no, no. I think he sells a few dozen copies a year or something still. Something like that. I'm sure he has his own little loyal customer base. Yeah. Good on him. Yeah. So anyway, enough of the, we spent an hour on Altium. Of course we did. Of course we did. But what, what, so what are you doing these days? You're no longer at Autodesk.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm, I felt the shackles come off and realized I need to be YouTubing. I need to be. Yep. So another, another whole side of my life is for my whole life. Since I was 12, I've played guitar. Yep. You're a muso. Yes. And I've played guitar a lot, believe it or not, mainly church. But what that means is I have to, I have to produce a lot of different sounds for different songs written by different people all around the world. Oh, interesting. It's kind of like being in a cover band, right? Right. And for about the last 10 years, I've been using only software or, you know, digital signal processing systems to, I got tired of having a broken back from carrying heavy to heavy valve guitar amps, which found amazing, but you get one sound and. Got it. Like early, early companies like line six hit the market in the late nineties with their emulations and they weren't very good then, but they got better and better and better and better. And I just got by, by, uh, I want to say 2011 when I moved. So when Altium moved everyone else to Shanghai or laid people off, I got moved back to the U.S. and be.

Ben Jordan: Oh, you're so lucky. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, so I've been.

Ben Jordan: They're now head headquartered in the U.S. now, aren't they?

Dave Jones: Yes. La Jolla.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. How, how long did they last in China? Like a, not even two years. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe 18 months or something.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Something. And then they decided. And then I think, didn't all of the U.S. defense, uh, you know, and government contractors going, well, you're now, we, we now deem you to be a Chinese company. Therefore we're not going to use you anymore. Either you move or is it, was, was that the reason for the move? Was that the main reason?

Dave Jones: That was certainly a reason. Right. And a very big one. Oh, huge. Yeah. And, and not just, not just the military or government departments, but their contractors and the contractors, contractors. Yes.

Ben Jordan: And yeah, it flows down, flows down the pipeline. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Mentor had a field day. They're like, they sold a lot of pads. They sold a lot of pads to Altium customers. Oh. When, uh, Altium moved to Shanghai. Like they don't even care about PCB. So, you know, come on.

Ben Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Dave Jones: They're doing that IOT thing. They don't care about you. Use pads. And they, and at the same time they, PCAD was killed as well. So they lost a bunch of PCAD customers. Right. Cause PCAD was end of life. So, yeah. But since about 2011 or 2012, I've played guitar only through essentially software. And I got really, really good at replicating sounds of other guitarists. And so my, the goal of one of my YouTube channels is to share my knowledge on that and just do, but it's, it's hard making time to make videos regularly. I know you know how that goes.

Ben Jordan: No. Yeah. I know how that is.

Dave Jones: But I'm very passionate about that. I've got my Schematica channel as well, which is, is at the moment, it's just Altium tips and tricks. Nice. And, uh, I'm considering other, other resource, other avenues of, of income. I've been doing a little bit of contracting work, like actual design work. Yep. And so all of that, it sounds like I'm a scatterbrain probably cause I am, but I like doing a bit of everything. So all of that comes under my, my business, Jordan DSP. Jordan DSP.com. Yeah.

Ben Jordan: Which we'll link in. And you're on the Twitters as well.

Dave Jones: Yeah. At Jordanite with a YTE at the end. Yep.

Ben Jordan: We'll link that one in too. If you want to follow Ben.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I'm looking at writing, you know, uh, I'm looking at writing as a paid writer as well. Like a bunch, just a bunch of different things.

Ben Jordan: Oh, okay. Right. So if anyone out there needs, uh, what a design consulting work, especially Altium or, uh, Autodesk based stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, let's put it this way. Yeah. So I'm an expert at Altium. Oh, obviously. I'm pretty good. I'm pretty darn good with Autodesk Fusion 360.

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: Even mainly on the MCAD side, honestly, but it also, it also has schematic and PCB in it.

Ben Jordan: Great skill to have is the combined PCB and mechanics. See, I don't do the mechanical CAD thing. I suck at it. And that's a lack of, yeah, I should work on that.

Dave Jones: It's just time. It's just you've invested time. Oh yeah.

Ben Jordan: Yeah, exactly. It's a time thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I also do a Libre expert. I've done, I've had my own Libre license since about 2007 and kept it up to date all these years and done mechanical design in that too. They're all pretty much the same. Yep. So yeah, I'm a CAD jockey, a really good one, but it's more, I know how to make teams more efficient, especially if you're using Altium and you have a bunch of users and you're like, why?

Ben Jordan: Oh yeah. You've done how many.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like, why are they so slow? Why does it take so long to bust a board out? It's like, I could probably come in as a consultant and whip your team into shape and tell them this is the workflow you need to follow. If you do things this way, if you learn these shortcuts, you know, I can help you set up so that your team's more efficient. So that's the kind of...

Speaker ?: Totally.

Ben Jordan: I can definitely vouch for you, Ben.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Ben Jordan: Yep. Ben's the guy you want if you want to, yeah. If you want to streamline your design stuff, you can tell you how to do it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Thanks. I really... That endorsement coming from you, Dave, means a tremendous amount to me.

Ben Jordan: No worries.

Dave Jones: I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Ben Jordan: All right. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it. I mean, we could go for another hour, I'm sure. Oh, easily. Maybe we'll have to get you back on. Yeah. Because... Yeah. Jeez, that flew by.

Dave Jones: It did.

Ben Jordan: Yep. Anyway, yes, I will be on your and Bill Hurd's podcast. So do you guys call it a podcast or is it a live... Well, it's kind of a podcast. It's just a live hangout.

Dave Jones: It's a live stream.

Ben Jordan: Live stream hangout. Yep.

Dave Jones: I guess it could be a podcast, but it's really video focused. So we like to show things. It's video, yeah. We like to show things. But every Friday...

Ben Jordan: Yep.

Dave Jones: ...barring unforeseen illness, every Friday at 11 a.m. here in Los Angeles time zone, like Pacific Time. I don't know. What's that in Australia? It's wee hours of the morning in Australia. Sorry.

Ben Jordan: I'll have to figure it out. Maybe I can get up early.

Dave Jones: Right now, it's probably not too bad because I think we're maybe five hours difference or something. But anyway...

Ben Jordan: Yeah, I've seen it. And it's a really good show and you have guests on and stuff like that as well. So yeah, it's definitely worth looking at.

Dave Jones: Yep. And I'm super looking forward to you joining us maybe in a couple of weeks. That'd be amazing.

Ben Jordan: Oh, pressure's on. No pressure. No pressure. I've got to perform. I'll get my monkey suit on and we'll...

Dave Jones: That'll be fun.

Ben Jordan: All right. Well, thank you very much, Ben. It's been good catching up. Yeah, likewise. After all these years. I mean, we haven't actually chatted voice to voice since Altium. No. I know.

Dave Jones: It's been far too long. I'm sorry I didn't reach out sooner.

Ben Jordan: Nah. It's my fault too. Anyway, awesome. Thanks, mate. Appreciate it. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Catch you next time. Okay.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. ! Outro Music