The Art of the Hardtech Agency with Justin Sirotin (OCTO)

Season 3 is back, and this one's a treat. Justin Sirotin, founder and CEO of OCTO, sat down with DeAndre and Grant, and the three of them were so deep in agency talk before we hit record that we basically lost the first few minutes to it. Justin and Grant have walked the same road from opposite ends: industrial design and engineering, accidental consultancies that outgrew the "real" company, and years of learning the unglamorous economics of building a product development firm.

What starts as two agency founders comparing war stories turns into one of the most honest conversations we've had about how these businesses actually survive, and why the hardest part is almost never the work itself.

What we get into:

The "accidental agency" origin stories, Grant's college go-kart company that became Glassboard (2015), and Justin's path from industrial design to founding OCTO
The two kinds of entrepreneurship, and why a profitable bootstrapped consultancy is a totally different animal from a venture-backed rocket
Justin's 2020 survival playbook: waking up from a three-week illness into a global pandemic, refusing client cancellations, being first in line for PPP, and going to zero salary at the top so nobody got laid off, then bonusing the team back
How that crisis built so much trust it turned 2021 into a rocket ship
Launching a China-made cycling product during the worst possible supply-chain moment (no boats, no containers, manufacturing-by-Zoom)
The "one more thing" magic that makes a good agency, and why you have to burn a few projects to the ground before you're any good
Rory Sutherland's bees and the "waggle dance": why big companies are wired for mediocrity and outsource their risk to firms like OCTO and Glassboard
Why sales, not engineering, is the most expensive, slowest, hardest job, and why you only get a handful of real new logos a year
Services-business go-to-market: long lead times, sky-high LTV, and the patience it demands
Cramming your ego into a trash can, learning to say no, and letting clients "graduate" so they're acquirable instead of dependent
The Charlie Armor story, recruiting talent on a client's behalf, and trauma-bonding through the Valley of Death
Closing advice for anyone starting an agency: you can't theorize your thesis, you have to get burned into it, and BRAS (Build Relationships At Scale) is the whole game

A few lines that stuck with us:

"I buy people annually and I day-trade them monthly, that's what a consultancy actually is."

"If there's not money in solving the problem, there's money in prolonging it. But that's not us, I want you to go to market as fast and as cheap as humanly possible."

"You can say no with a healthy smile, and say yes with honest eagerness."

About the guest: Justin Sirotin is the founder and CEO of OCTO, a product development firm. He came up through industrial design and trained as an attorney along the way.

The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard.