Eric Müller

We had a deadline. We had overcommitted. There was an expectation that the work was going to be, that we were going to get a release out that day. I'm sitting at my desk. The product manager has his desk next to me. I looked at everyone and said, all right, we're clearly not going to launch today. The product manager raised his eyebrow at me and I said, we're not going to get this done.

So how do we solve this? And we'll launch when we launch. I was going to go to our boss and say, I'm sorry. We did our best, and it's on me, and it is what it is. My willingness to say, look, I screwed up, it's on me, it took the pressure off of them. And suddenly, people are relaxed, identify the source of the problem, and we actually launched.

I'm Eric Mueller, VP of Engineering at CISO at present.

Presence is a digital consultancy. So we build digital products for folks and we really like to make that distinction in digital products. We're not really focused on building like marketing websites or anything like that. Our goal is to help companies take an idea or a business or a product and put it into the digital space. And that could be obviously on the web, it could be mobile devices.

We've done IoT implementations in the past, and we can help a company think through a strategy, we hook them up with designers, but more importantly, as we get in there, we really push forward on their actual build, what they're gonna put out there in this space. We've worked with small companies, we've worked with large companies, so startups all the way up to large enterprises.

Personally, I'm VP of Engineering and our CISO primarily been focused on building out our team, working on our process, and then making sure that the teams are able to deliver for our clients. And then on the security side, helping our clients if they have any questions around security, and then also drove our SOC 2 process. So we've had four audits.

So we went from nothing all the way up to our fourth audit, and they've been really good. And then I've been with the company for, it's 11 years since August. And the reason I always draw that is I started with the company as a consultant. So everyone started in the company as a consultant, except for our founder. And then at some point, I'd say about six, seven months in, he brought me on board.

And then as we grew, I started off leading projects and then started to take on leading the overall development team.

Someone once said it's not minimum viable product, but minimum lovable product. I actually prefer that. And the reason I say that is like, what does viability even mean? You can have so many different ideas around that. Engineering might have one idea. Product might have another idea. Design might have another idea.

And you put that in front of your clients and none of them think it's actually viable. They're like, why are you showing this to me? But I think lovable says something. When they're working with it, you look at it, it should give them a smile. They should feel proud about it. That's what they're getting out there into the market.

And when you have that feeling about your product, I think your clients are going to have that feeling about the product. The first one of those at Presence was actually a really small product. We were working on a redesign and API rebuild for a gaming company. There was this moment, I remember our CEO came by, I was sitting at my desk and the team was remote, we were all remote.

And we were really just trying to get it into the perfect place to launch it. And I remember I was like maybe inches away from my screen. I just really wanted to know, is this lined up the way we want it lined up? I know there are better ways to measure that, but it just felt like I had to have that level of intensity. And not long after that, we launched and everyone was very happy.

The reason that kind of comes to mind is I think when you're thinking about minimum viable, minimum lovable, you're sweating those kinds of details. It's not about just cobbling something together and pushing it out the door. It's about we're proud of it. We love it. We're going to put our name behind it. This is our first step out the door, and we are just so pleased.

Every product that I've ever worked on, we go into thinking we have all the budget in the world, and everyone has very lofty ideas, and you have that first round where you decide, what do we absolutely need to go live with? And that first pass at that early on in the project, I think is really critical, right?

Because you've got everyone together, everyone's very focused, everyone's very optimistic, And you can put the brakes on a little bit and say, let's do this thing, right? Let's think about it, but let's be realistic, right? What you're describing is not what you need for the first version. You're describing what you need, maybe five versions. This is 10 years from now. So that's my first pass.

And I love taking advantage of that because like I said, everyone's very optimistic. Everyone's very happy and very excited. And so it's very easy to rein people in because it's like, yeah, we can have that conversation. It's no big deal. And we can make trade-offs. And so you really want to take advantage of that.

Then there comes this moment in the middle of the project and people are trying to increase scope. There's always that opportunity, right? That's often someone deciding they want to impress their manager or they really have a feature they just really love and they don't want to let it go.

I always like to look at them and say, if I get a bad feeling around that decision, I look at them and I say, that's a great idea, but I'm concerned about its delivery. Is this something that you want to go to your CEO and say, we are late because of this feature? There's a lot of different ways to phrase it, but that's the bottom line question.

And you would be surprised, probably not, at how many people look up to the sky and scratch their head and go, we can wait until the second version of the product.

Our roadmap was very loose. We focused on finding very interesting work. When Jason founded the company, he was like, we're not going to be a designer. We can work with designers, and we're going to have people who are thoughtful about design on our technical staff, and we're going to have product managers and all that. We're going to think about design, but we're not a design firm.