Episode 21 – Emotions in Focus: How a DevOps Engineer is Creating a Game-Changing App

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hello welcome to the boost my name is Leon we’re here as part of San Antonio startup week interviewing Marco uh he’s got a startup idea as part of the pitch It to Win It competition so welcome to the Boost thank you for having [Music] me yeah so I watched the the Instagram real I’d love to get the pitch again for everybody and we’ll put it in the show Notes too okay um I uh it’s just a a concept at the moment it’s um an app that will help you check in with your mindset and will help you uh make better

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decisions throughout the day so the app at the moment would simulate real life scenarios based on um a profile that you make um you know I think basic things like age and occupation are pretty good places to start and um from there uh you would give it some general uh emotions that you’re you’re experiencing more than one hopefully I don’t always think that having just one emotion really paints a picture of it uh and from there um you can simulate maybe the things that you have coming up in the day just to kind of go through the

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steps and uh at the end of it you can start to link the emotions that you might have be having with um decision- making and your behavior uh and then at the end of it it will present it to you in a graph and you can decide uh after you know maybe you carry out the task that hey I probably should have been a little bit more uh on the emotional side during during this long meeting or I’m just listening verses uh maybe more assertive or more objective so it just gives you a way to log um your emotional

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and your mental state and sort of reflect on it afterwards m not really thinking of doing too much advice I think it’s just would be good to just sort of know where you are and then from there you can start to uh you know maybe reconstruct your way of thinking and um just help you uh build better relationships I I I like it I I do a lot of like journaling I use like day one but you know it it prompts you for for what you you know hop in the day write it down kind of gives me something to remember also like you can do

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mindfulness and and those parts but they don’t have all of the the additional additional things um where where did the idea come from like what what was that inspiration for you so I’ve had a lot of help uh from my wife um we talk uh a lot about parenting uh I started we got married in 2022 and we had our first kid we have two boys now and I wanted to you know just make sure that I’m bringing uh my best uh every day with my kids and my family I started reading a lot of parenting books I’ve started to read some psychology

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books some trauma books and it’s interesting how some of a lot of it overlaps with uh just so many different areas of um yeah parenting psychology it’s all sort of converging in some ways and uh I just at work even um there were days when I would maybe not carry out the task as efficiently as I wanted to I was maybe dragging work along and then even with um with my co-workers I probably wasn’t connecting with them the right ways MH and so uh I work in it I’ve been reading parenting psychology and I feel like

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just subconsciously it was you know just sort of came together that I would like to sort of bridge that Gap and just be better at tracking uh my emotions and my beh Behavior Al together in one place how how old are the the boys my oldest stale is two and my youngest Leonel is one okay you you’re in the the thick of it yeah for sure yeah it’s a it’s a yeah I’m like on the yeah the biggest like Journey like I guess right now yeah the biggest tasks are yeah and to to your to your crediting to your point yeah 100%

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it’s th those are the the moments and the the development that’s going to make the biggest impact and they’re going to be changing and adapting and how we we act to them I have two daughters and the it’s every little every little thing matters in and how you interact with them how you handle stress and anger and happiness and and all of those and one of the things that you said was um that you can have more than one emotion you can be excited for something and scared yeah you know you can have more than two

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you know like there’s a I know there’s probably like emotions I don’t even know the word the the word for or how to to say it but there’s sometimes you know like emotions that I don’t even think we can quantify like like I don’t even know how to express like you know like a I I know how to express Rage or happiness but sometimes like a Melancholy is like what is what is this emotion like H have you thought about any any of that like how how you’re going to prompt people or is it more you know like I I like the

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what is your background how is there but any any other thoughts on how to help educate folks on these emotions cuz that’s that’s a hard one I I yeah I Envision the app having a pretty large list of emotions um on that first question MH uh and I think it would be a good um it would be good to limit them to maybe three just so that you know we can kind of lock in you weigh them hey like the first one that comes yeah go for that one first but then you might also exper you know I would have loved to have that app going into this podcast

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actually because I uh I you know excited I I would have marked excited definitely nervous um and uh a little bit definitely energized as well I guess I could probably put that um and and just to go through like okay you know what you know what’s the task uh and then just go through some scenarios in my head to get my my brain going um to sort of prepare myself for this so I’m doing a lot of research and like learning and reading um with books and uh I’m just yeah I’m just starting to connect some

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dots in different places and I think it would just be something uh that would help uh me personally I think it would help my family and maybe even um you know institutions um think of like the therapists uh that they can really only attend one person at a time uh with their sessions and um if you give them an app where they can kind of have a dashboard into their patients and they can maybe see throughout the week everything in between the sessions that their patients are going through um you know that with

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medication as well right they they could have given um a prescription to one of them and they’re really just trying to figure out if it’s working for them because when they come back around the next week you’re sort of relying on them to have a coherent account of everything that’s happened in between I mean they’re going to give you the bad probably um probably the good as well but most of the time it’s like you’re just relying on Word of Mouth and so I think having um some graphs something visual would be really beneficial for

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more than just me yeah and mental health is is I don’t want to call it like a trending topic but it’s it’s become more culturally accept to talk about mental health it’s also more acceptable to even discuss that in terms of like hey are you are you doing good are these projects stressing you out is work is it personal like I I think there’s a a moment here in in our culture that if we kind of keep it at top of mine but also find ways to track and discuss it just like we have apple health and you know

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Apple watches and I it’s great yeah and it it gives you something to kind of quantify am I being you know active am I being somewhat healthy I think having the same thing for your emotions and stuff like for a long time there was just emotions that I don’t think I quite understood but if if there was an app to kind of help guide me in that and kind of write that down and say oh hey every time I you know I go do this event I’m always really nervous like but thatc comes amazing so I I don’t like I can and you probably

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will always have that emotion but you can also like understand that hey that emotion’s probably good it’s it’s a natural human response like you don’t have to let that you know the fear of It kind of get in the way so I I’m looking at it as a really kind of cool quantitative thing to look at not only you know my steps but then the health of like oh hey I talk to talk to all these clients this day this is how my end of the day went and I’m like hey I need to adjust something in my my schedule so

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having actionable not feedback but actionable like data would be really cool I’m I’m kind of a data nerd in that that sense yeah I it’s funny in in my day-to-day I um at the moment setting up a lot of monitoring systems and I don’t really pay too much attention to like the actual data that goes into it I’m just like is it operational all right I’m done like whatever um so yeah it it sort of gets my brain going in different places even just thinking of the idea of an app like this and what I would want

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to see from a user perspective and who it would um just who would help like leaders think about think about a scenario uh like a town hall or whenever you know you have like an open book in a big company and you get some you know you get news you get updates about the company and then afterwards you’re you know you sort of get to see the real emotions of your employees and how they feel about how you deliver the message or what you were telling them and you can really start to figure out like are

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my employees really happy or not yeah have you ever heard of motiv code it’s called mcode it it’s um I’m really into like strength finder 16 personalities um one of them I just yeah Myers Briggs all all six personalities is the website domain but Myers Briggs um there’s a bunch of other ones out there I for a long time I was kind of like ah the you know like I don’t want to put people in box and it’s not a perfect like thing of them but more and more you know for example if somebody’s a maximizer and you put them in a and a

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task that is super high pressure very fastpac and their maximizer they’re going to really struggle and that’s going to create stress and this and other things you know issues too and being able to kind of also like you know notice those in a in an employee sense that would be very interesting you know like you’ve got paths here so you’ve got maybe even a B2B you know like busines to business like slack app or some sort of integration into you know our our Enterprise tools that every business use

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uses and kind of like survey because they do employee satisfaction surveys all the time like there’s so much time in between them mhm and and they’re also kind of they’re Trojan horses to most people most people see them as like oh hey they’re Anonymous but I know if I say like hey I hate the the food in the kitchen and you know this person’s terrible I want to move away from them like that there all of a sudden you gave identif information and now it’s like hey somebody’s going to say something sooner

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or later but if you have something more like survey based it’s emotion you can kind of get a quick hit of it you can let people leave comments if they want but I think just having that so you just in terms of your concept B to B that that’s an interesting play tied into like the Myers Briggs the 16th the the um strength finder you know tie those into the hey what is this person like have you know the emotions and see what tasks they’re doing tie it to that could be really really interesting and

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then you have a consumer side which you know both ways has vastly different monetization schemes like also vastly different challenges you know so it’s an interesting an interesting like Fork there any like what are your thoughts on on like how what what you see for this or who this helps in I like the I agree with you 100% on the Myers Briggs 16 personalities I always thought it was interesting how on the bottom of it it’s like you should really only take this every six months like why like why do I have to why can’t I just

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like spam it over and over again just to see like what what I’m what’s going on you know um I like the Myers brri uh I have a family member who um has a degree in uh psychology and she pointed me towards a cognitive behavior therapy framework which aligns a little bit more maybe with what this app can do um tying the emotion with the behavior is and I’m was just like yeah that’s like wow I can’t believe it’s that easy there’s a few others I think there’s emotional intelligence um but I think what I’ll

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probably do is focus more on the cognitive behavior therapy Parts but yeah I think people do have their strengths um especially in a workplace and you want to utilize them um I I I agree with you I don’t think that people should always just be in this box because then they they start to believe it mhm and um but you know maybe with the app uh it can start to if it’s intelligent enough you can start to pick up like hey this person is kind of this profile but we’re noticing now when they do have those presentations maybe they

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still are nervous um but the responses that they’re giving to the scenarios suggests that they’re actually starting to restructure the way they think and maybe it’s building more confidence right like maybe the nervous and it’s sort of there’s a balance like nervous is kind of lowering but their confidence is getting better so a lot of it is still just a ton of research I feel like I have to do that’s just the like the meat and potatoes of the the real engine of the application you know all the things

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around it there’s all these teex Stacks that you have to consider back end front end how do you want the the the the UI to look and I’m an operations guy I work as a devops engineer I work on Azure and all of the other things around it are new to me they’re interesting I want to learn them and so this project this idea is uh really energizing me and I I would just want to just keep working it out and hopefully have a finished product that will help help me you know help everybody I love I’ve got two thoughts

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the first one again I would do that startup boot camp um if you’re not a member of geekdom you don’t have to be for that I would go sometime today or tomorrow find chrisy she runs that program and just kind of talk to her and she can explain it a little better and you know like get you signed up for any of that but that would help you kind of start start with the lean canvas go through that and then also get Mentor feedback cuz while I might be positive on this some other folks might come in and say Hey you know in an

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example is that you know hip is that Hippa you know is that identif identifiable Health Data I you know I don’t I don’t know it might it might not be you know like if it is that kind of you go down a different path of like you’re not going to be selling this to companies yeah um you know that’s an interesting thought and then on other side somebody might come in and say hey this might be a really good use case and also be able to tell you kind of this is this is what it what what’s the model maybe or hey there’s a

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there’s another app out there that kind of do something similar or you know hey they just raised money and you know it’s a big big ocean like there’s enough for more than one but um that and then on the second thought is um I’ll I’ll kind of ask like some of those questions like have you thought about monetization or any any of those other parts like you know like how do you make money who is your customer you know so if we want to break it down like let’s do who is your customer initially probably would be

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institutions therapists MH um giving them a portal uh I I’ve gone to therapy actually I did a therapy a few therapy sessions for a few months I really enjoyed it I was kind of just going for just general uh I guess guidance you can put you can say um it was just at the it was at the point where I had both kids and and just everything was just you know being thrown at me right so I wanted just some place to check myself um and it was very Ben icial um it’s expensive yes um so um I think when I would go to these

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sessions it was a very you know there was I mean at least I don’t know uh um the in-person ones I don’t think that there was any technology involved uh there was a few that I did um over over the camera over Zoom or whatever that better help yeah so imagine that there is like a recording feature to it where they can maybe go back and look at different parts of it but um be a little scary I mean maybe maybe not I mean for me you know it’s like I would I’m going there to to get help right and I and I sort of

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see it as a tool like why wouldn’t you why wouldn’t you use it to help this person right like if I come to a therapist and I say like I have you know some some data that you might be like you’ve never seen right like I have the trends of my emotions throughout the day my schedule um it might it might in the end save save money on sessions right you’re not paying so much a fitness coach Fitness coach is asking you to record your breakfast your lunch your dinner you got to record you know with your Apple watch you know how often you

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work out you have to do your workouts and then even outside of that you know it’s asking you know are are you you know getting enough sleep all all those things so the same could be said there um okay so we kind of have customer have you thought about monetization that that’s a you know how do you make money not just yet I mean no yeah no it’s it’s a it’s a it’s an important question it’s a hard question it’s not always something that you got to start off with you know there’s premium models where essentially

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everything’s free and you’ve got some ads and maybe you have a subscription that gets you longer storage you know or hey you can now pass this over to your your doctor for $3.99 a month you know um I forget the rest of lean canvas but those are the two that I always when I go to Mentor on those startup boot camps I kind of ask who’s your customer cuz you got to go think about them you’re you’re your own customer in this case that that’s a good and important part because you’ve got a basis of what you

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want it to look like what I would say to like do anything is I would put some stuff together landing page y email capture and just start kind of building that idea but have that landing page so when somebody you know you’re in the elevator and you’re pitching an idea to somebody you can say hey I’ve got a newsletter I kind of like give updates about you know hey some mental health stuff that I read and then also what what you know I’ve been doing here but it gives you that audience to build and then when you’re ready to take that

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step or you know you’re ready to launch an app you’ve got a built-in list of of potential customers some beta testers or even people that might just give you feedback of like oh hey this would have been useful in this time in my life but now less so um but that would be like the unsolicited advice for me is get that get that up and just just start collecting people’s names so that everyone that says oh I’m I think that’s kind of cool emails down again you read a cool book you send it to them I’m sure I you know that’s

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something I would subscribe to like okay hey cool book I remember Marco I remember he’s got an app and then you know a year from now it’s like oh hey he’s launching that like let me check it out and everything that’s interesting I didn’t think about that yeah it’s it’s the easiest thing so um you know like we were talking about this a little bit before a lot of Founders come on here they’re you know past the the incubator pre accelerator stages here they’ve got a business going they’ve got some

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customers you you’ve got a concept and getting an MVP out super important and just doing an executing I think is super important um it’s sometimes a really big hurdle but you’ve also got the safety of a job you know I know obviously you’ve got two kids you got a wife you’ve got uh a job trying to build something on the side is exceptionally hard but you’ve got the stability to kind of you know ideate think about it and then build on a longer term yeah yeah it’s a lot of fun just talking to it at the end of the day I mean it’s

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going on through my head all day long right because I’m just like right now I could use this app like I wouldn’t capture so much about what I’m thinking and feeling yeah um so just kind of as we wrap up last question San Antonio startup week how did you find out about it and then any sessions that you kind of went to that you enjoyed so I found out about it through Linkedin I’m pretty sure um there’s a few people that I have connections with that I think you know basically work here or have worked here

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so it just showed up on my feed it looked interesting I used to love coming to the tech track I don’t know if you did that um it’s been a while was so much fun like I wish yeah I wish it would come back I love Tech trk it was just so it was cool it just you know that you come in here you get some food you drink some beers you meet some people yeah you got go you’re really serious you’re probably trying to find a job you know not me I was I was just trying to enjoy the downtown area yeah cuz they tore the Frost building scale

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works jle dis it was really cool there was like a scavenger hunt going on I think too it’s like you hit if you hit all the buildings you get like some shirt or something yes oh I do remember the stamp it’s bringing back some Nostalgia there of of that I’m going to have to remind them of that fun yeah um those were the early days I I don’t know if they had one ever after Co but I remember the preco ones yeah that’s a that was a fun those were fun events I’m going to have to recommend somebody funny story actually about the tech trk

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my buddy he was the one that told me about it uh that I worked with and he was like you want to come to Tech trk and I I had just moved actually down town and he was like you’re pretty close like let’s just go together and I was like sure but I he’s a huge Star Trek nerd I like Star Trek too but he said Tech Trek so I thought it was like some Star Trek convention so I show up with like you know just some casual clothes and he’s like what are you doing you might meet your future employer I’m like

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it’s a te you said it’s like Star Trek he’s like it’s a tech Trek there’s a lot of like people with businesses they could possibly hire you and he’s like but they have beer and I was like oh well then why you giveing me crap you know it’s like it’s good just for fun I I also think for the most part almost all the businesses down here are pretty casual I you run into a couple of them that are you know some some folks dress up but I’ve never been that person I I’m the t-shirt and shorts most of the time

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it’s got a little chilly today but yeah I did um I was here um Tuesday I think it was Tuesday I to be totally honest with you I came down for the pitet to win a competition yeah that’s great no I’ve heard that from a number of folks and it’s exciting like we help sponsor that and and you know geekdom executing on it and the down market and it’s really cool to hear folks saw that maybe on the news on LinkedIn or something else and they were like oh I’m going to come because not only do you get to like

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look at and and Pitch your company but you get to go have some programming that’s related it’s free and then this is a huge Network I just had a we just did a podcast on investing in community and talking about like how of San Antonio grow as a tech scene and this is a function of it getting you to start you know start a company possibly and encouraging that and giving you the the foundations for you know introducing the right people and you know like at some point you might need to talk to you know

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a therapist that understands a business perspective that can be an advisor and you might find that in one of these networks it might not be geekdom it might be tech block it might be these other these other ones um um you know even the Chamber of Commerce Sig uh not Sig the uh Hispanic chamber Commerce it’s huge yeah there’s a ton of folks in it so I think it’s it’s a small part but I love to hear Hey something small got you to come here and then overall you’re you’re getting the value out of it for

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sure yeah it was fun I attended a few of the like Latino themed presentations pretty interesting a lot of data that they throw at you yeah it’s a normal conference yeah for sure well I really appreciate it I’m glad we could talk through this um um whenever you launch it love to have you back on okay or whenever you kind of get through just just stay in contact with us um thank you for listening and um if you want to subscribe to the podcast it’s on Apple podcast it’s on YouTube or the boost. FM thank you

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