The Business of Laravel

Matt Stauffer:
Welcome back to the Business of Laravel podcast where I talk to business leaders who are working in and with Laravel. My guest today is my friend, Kenny Myers, CEO of Sweet. Kenny, can you introduce yourself and tell us who are you and what is your business?

Kenny Meyers:
Yes, I am Kenny Myers, the CEO of Sweet, and Sweet is a company focused on making comics less shitty for everyone. And what we mean by that is building software from different places I've worked in tech that is helpful that comic readers and publishers haven't had access to, as well as just improving the software game altogether. But beyond that, our flagship product will be...
Sweet Chop, a new digital comic store launching on Android and iOS and eventually web on this fall.

Matt Stauffer:
So you are involved in the Laravel community. You are actually an OG in Laravel community. You spoke at the original Laracon.

Kenny Meyers:
I did.

Matt Stauffer:
You've been around since the earliest days. But I still have to ask the question of what motivates you to choose to make the type of technology you're making? Because I don't know if there's anybody else doing Laravel and comics, right? You don't say, hey, I want to build something for comic creators. Laravel's the first, or PHP, or even often web-based technologies is the first thing reach for. So what kind of motivates you to choose things, like choose the tech stacks that you do in the work that you're making?

Kenny Meyers:
So I do know that another comic store uses PHP as its driving force, but I believe it's a custom framework.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, got it.

Kenny Meyers:
It's not uncommon to see PHP, especially WordPress, used in smaller scale places at publishers. I mean, PHP is everywhere.

So the decision to use Laravel was one of pretty much just pragmatism. This is actually my second stab at a digital comic store. In the first stab, my other partner, only really knew PHP and was a designer, so I've worked in multiple languages and Laravel of course is just like, it just does so many things so well that I don't have to think about a lot of annoying things I do in other languages. Although we did try, when I started Sweet Shop, we tried Go for a little bit and then I was just like, this is just way easier if we just use Laravel and so we switched back. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Hahaha

I got it. You also don't have, mean, one of the things that I think might be helpful to hear is can you kind of talk about like the construction of your team a little bit too?

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, so there's three of us right now, although we're growing, but not in the engineer space, because there's two of us engineers, one whose name is Ben Carr, who is probably one of the best engineers I've worked with. And I've worked in a lot of places with a lot of really great engineers who's incredibly skilled with Laravel, but I could throw into a pit of anything and do well. And his name is Ben Carr and he helps build a lot of the products, a lot of the UI. He's crazy good. And then Matt Anderson, who is a designer, who I worked with and have built certain things with, including like a little photo sharing app that got a tiny mention. This fame is a tiny mention in like a polygon podcast aside. Not polygon, verve. The verge. And so that's my claim to fame.

Matt Stauffer:
Look, we take what we can get. Uh-huh.

Yeah. So you got that team of three, which is only two developers and you are on, is it product three at this point for suite?

Kenny Meyers:
We are on product three, yes.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So you're spitting out a lot of work with a pretty small team, you know, so.

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah. And I think, mean, obviously that's the key. Like, you know, that the key thing is that we've chosen a similar, like we're just using Laravel for all of it. Obviously Sweet Shop has mobile apps, so we can't use Laravel there no matter how hard I'm an, I'm an app engineer by trade. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to use PHP. I find it offensive at an engineering level, but I understand the premise. But in general, like this kind of lets us, because the problems are relatively similar per platform, although, you know, really bends sort of the X factor here. He can just roll like a beast. And sometimes I'm just like, in awe. And I'm sort of the jack of all trades. Very serious, not master of none. Like, yeah, yeah, I just don't, I just like to build things, but I'm not, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So you guys have some web apps, you have some mobile apps. Are the mobile apps being powered by Laravel based APIs or do APIs powered somewhere else?

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, so it is Laravel based APIs. We keep them pretty light and slim, like a combination just like tech wise, we found a mix of just modern Laravel, which is really great with like Laravel data and Laravel actions, which is a little bit little if you want to get into the I don't know how much into the the package listings you get here. Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
We don't do too much weeds. Yeah, not so much, yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
Sorry, I'm a software engineer, my trade.

Matt Stauffer:
Alright, it's totally fine.

Kenny Meyers:
We, yeah, they're mostly using LiveWire and they're all, yeah, even the APIs, all just Laravel on Vapor. We pay our toll to Taylor as much as we can.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Well, and I think one of the ways where I do really appreciate talking about the packages is, you know, like maybe this isn't the podcast for us to nerd out about things, but it does, it is valuable to talk about, for example, like what is the benefit of, you know, using full stack Laravel and Livewire when you have a small team versus maybe the decisions to have a fully separated JavaScript front end and Laravel backend team when you have a much larger team.

And I think a lot of those, because if this podcast is for CTOs and people making business decisions, I do think that those are very relevant to people, whether or not they're actually in the trenches writing code every single day. Was the decision to work with Livewire one of just personal preference? Is there an element of, hey, if we have separated, separate SPA, now we have to maintain multiple code bases. Like what were you all thinking about as you're making those decisions?

Kenny Meyers:
So I should caveat this that we do use Vue on Find Your Comic Store, which is our comic shop locator, which is like a map location. We use...

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Uh-huh. Yeah. And it's a very heavy front-end app.

Kenny Meyers:
It is, of course, because maps are very heavy front end. We pretty much universally agree that Laravel is backing what it is, and then the front end, we sort of go case by case basis. you know, Bindings, which is like a digital marketing tool for comic book creators, is really, you know, just showing off...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Okay.

Kenny Meyers:
like what web apps and LiveWire is really good at doing, is showing off images, showing off, like it's showing off comic books and bringing in pieces from different APIs. And so, you know, there's like, most companies that I think do well start on a framework like Laravel. I don't think there is a startup that hasn't, I mean, Rails is like the first one, like, and then.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
We have Django and Laravel, Django being the Python one. And I think Laravel, just because of the accessibility in terms of who uses it, there's way more PHP programmers around the world, period. The availability of material and the constant updates, like they've done an incredible job of just like moving the framework forward has just been such an accelerant for us in general that we can quickly decide architecturally, like, oh we need to do vue on this, like a view with like a full like JavaScript front end versus LiveWire, which is more like Webby, HTML-y with such ease. It just adapts to our case, but also doesn't make it very difficult to then adopt new principles. Like it's pretty incredible. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I love that. So speaking of kind of like the technical things that you had to kind of battle almost as you've kind of been working through it, you guys have come up with, again, three apps and built three apps and gotten pretty meaningful reception in the comic world over a very short period of time. So I do want to know overall, like what are some things you've had to deal with technically recently? But I'm also very curious, are there any things that are unique to your environment, unique to comics or unique to how quickly you guys are shipping and each the side of your team where you're like, this is something that don't know if every Laravel app that deals with that you think would be interesting to share about.

Kenny Meyers:
That's a really good question.

You know, the biggest issue, and I think it would be unfair. The biggest issue is always user input, right? Like that is always like, that is always the X factor. And now of course there are, now there's like, you know, uh, MCP input and stuff like that, that other people doing, we don't deal with that stuff. But I know like the inputs are now getting even more varied and then API, uh, comics has a very unique issue that a lot of our metadata comes from.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yes.

Kenny Meyers:
publishers. and a lot of that metadata is differently organized and differently structured at different publishers. So the majority of our time is spent working on wrangling a complex series of variable input like times n into a system where we can display it properly, even at like bindings, which has a much simpler interface, because it's just like put a title and description and

Matt Stauffer:
Disparate data basically.

Kenny Meyers:
upload the comic, right? We're not trying to show off the page amount, the genre, there's a whole system called BSAC codes, if you've ever heard of them, that are in publishing,

Matt Stauffer:
No, I haven't.

Kenny Meyers:
they're like how they categorize genre at a higher level, everyone's agreed on it, all that kind of nonsense. That's the unique issue of comics and books and publishing in general, but comics is a very special place because everything's kind of bespoke.

So the people who are dealing with pain, like similar to me, are people who are dealing with that kind of complex input into a singular system. It's like a really hard funnel and it takes a couple revisions to get an understanding of like where it could go wrong and you can't, it's almost like an intermix of human, you need eyes on it, which is always, you know, troublesome. But if you can build a system where you need

Matt Stauffer:
Got it.

Kenny Meyers:
The smallest amount of time for eyes to look at it. That's what we're working on. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, then you're best off. Has there any part of you that's ever wanted to be like, you know what, I'm just going to be the guy who sells this data normalized to everybody else?

Kenny Meyers:
No.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. I mean, I know that you probably have to have contracts with each publisher before you can get their data. So I'm sure that's not, it's not that easy, but I was curious if at some point you're like, well, if I already got the data anyway, you know.

Kenny Meyers:
I've certainly thought of ways that the business could expand beyond comics. Like in terms of, we do have a very complex, near revenue cat style implementation for selling digital comics, that works across multiple platforms, right? As much as I don't like what they've become, I really found the endearing...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
like model of Amazon to like spin off interesting businesses like S like AWS from all their infrastructure stuff as compelling and helpful. And it makes it really easy to do with Laravel because you're just like, like, like with vapor, I could do an instance. And then, you know, we're not on Cloud, but like the idea, the idea of like just the frameworks, keeping it simple makes it easy. so Laravel really helps with that.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
So do think, we do think in terms of, like Bindings is a really good example, like art books exists outside of comics, right? Or art history books, things that need that sort of page panel exploration. Like we could expand to art students. But we're pretty hyper-focused in the comic space. It's pretty rough for that space and the people there are really doing just some of the coolest stuff.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
It is a phenomenal place to work in. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I'm jealous, but I love it.

Kenny Meyers:
What you talking about? You're working in Laravel. Laravel's a great community. It's way too male, but it's still a great community. There's way too many men in Laravel, but it is a great community. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, you're right. You're right. I just love comics.

You can say that again. You can say that again. Yes, I agree. So speaking of said community, you know, one of questions I always ask is what has your experience been like in hiring, you know, Laravel developers? And I know it is just the two of you. But as a business owner who has had to ask for help and get help and first finding Ben and potentially for other stuff, what do you what do you see the like if you're like, hey, I had to scale up a team of five Laravel developers tomorrow. How do you feel about that proposition?

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah. So I think there's a really cool thing in the Laravel ecosystem where you can, I think it's very easy to hire Laravel engineers. I think that Laravel engineers also are cheaper than other software pieces. And as bad as that sounds, that is like, that does make it easier. I think they're also more accessible. Like you can find really good engineers in other countries and stuff like that. I particularly love that I can reach out to friends who have agencies like yourself and be like, hey, I have this project. Can I get an engineer? And a lot of agencies that I've known or worked with have the ability to like, essentially have a, you have a temporary hire on your staff for like two or three weeks. And it's very easy to do except when you get super busy and then your prices rise and then you guys get really obnoxious.

Matt Stauffer:
Sorry, not sorry.

Kenny Meyers:
You know, I don't like I say I know I said prices are cheap, but like in general, like I obviously want to pay people really nice living wages for what they do. It's it's hard work. And in the era of AI, it's even more thankless work with way too much external pressure on people. That being said, the PHP now, the caveat to all of this is that it's actually very, very difficult to find like the cream of the crop because it's broader, it's actually harder to find, which is why having someone like Tighten, so you've done all the vetting, is very, very helpful. Or I've worked with HappyCog before, and that's actually where I met some outstanding Laravel programmers. I think that that agency model is very helpful. I think it's a very excited and interesting

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
employee base. And I think that, you know, it has a lot of the right checkboxes for what would be much more difficult in other languages, like hiring a mobile engineer is a living nightmare. So like, yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yes. Yeah, nope. Wouldn't be me. Don't envy you that.

Kenny Meyers:
But but fortunately for me, I'm the living nightmare. I'm the mobile engineer. So yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, again for now fingers crossed you don't have to bring in more So you have been a programmer since the early days if you looked at your LinkedIn You've been some very impressive places but one of the coolest things about your story is that you have now created your own thing and I know that a lot of people listening, you know, a lot of them are CTOs and stuff like that. A lot of people listening are Aspirationally listening. They're like I would like to have a business.

I would like to be creating a thing. So if somebody's like, you know what I want to do is I want to do what Kenny has done. I want to be the next Kenny Myers. What does that journey look like in terms of books, podcasts, videos, experiences, ya know, whatever you got, what can you share with us that you're like, this helps you get in this direction?

Kenny Meyers:
The first thing I would recommend to everyone is to go to something like Laracon and just get used to introducing yourself to people. Networking, no matter what business I've been in, technology, like the jobs I've gotten in large companies have all been because someone else knew someone there and I knew that someone. It sucks.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
Sometimes you can get in based on merit, but it is like, and that does exist. Like that's clearly a thing, but it's going to be way easier if you have someone. So like,

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
just put yourself out there. I know it's really hard. I tend to be extroverted, introverted, where I can go and be very bombastic and a jerk in a loving way, hopefully. That's what I tell myself. And then, like, it drains me. Like, I get home from, from like, I just went to San Diego Comic-Con and just had the best time, and by the end of it, I was just, like, a husk of myself.

So that unfortunately is the truth about any business and Laravel is no exception. Engineering places like that, it's gonna help if you just introduce yourself and annoy people. The number two thing is if you are thinking about doing this and you have the means and it won't destroy your family, you should do this. If you wanna go my route, my route had like a...

a spiral in corporate America down to like rock bottom where I was just so disillusioned with actual programming with what I was actually doing that it put me in like a lot of people like going to burn out space. And I wish I had left earlier, like I wish I had gone and done the thing earlier and started the business earlier. I should have known when I received the first
feedback that I have a trouble with authority. That was probably not the place for me, but working at those places was really good. Like it was really fascinating. I probably have learned a ton about scale and things that you no one would ever encounter in even the nicest products and you know, working there also got me in touch with people. So I guess if you want to, if you want to clear path, don't take my path.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
But you should probably work at an agency for a little bit. And then you should probably work at a big company to see how that thing scales. And you should try to hop skillsets. Like jumping to iOS from PHP was a dream of mine. Not that I didn't love it. Well, from back in front end was truly wonderful. I've only had to look back because it's harder to get a job as a mobile engineer sometimes. But yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
It's it's my path is full of It's a spotty full of a lot of places my resume. Other people have navigated better, but do the thing just do the thing as my is my number one piece of advice.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Okay. Do the thing. As you are continuing your journey of kind of like learning how to do your current job well, and your current job is certainly programming things, but you're also kind of running a business and you're being entrepreneurial. What are the supports that like help you feel like you're continually growing and learning in that journey?

Kenny Meyers:
I mean my partners by by far.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
I think that having had a partnership that unfortunately collapsed before in my current role really taught me a lot of lessons. And the partnership is so foundational, which not to knock, like solo founding or even just solo, like doing your own thing is really tough and it's amazing. I'm in awe of people that do it. And a lot of people that have...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
have made networks of other people doing what they do, which again, I'm sorry to tell you that my one key thing is to be social if you're aspirational, but unfortunately that's it. Like either be a genius and like create something like a solo genius or just go talk to people. Reach out. Everyone is way more accessible than you they are. Like they are all way more accessible.

Matt Stauffer:
huh. Be communal. Yeah. No, I love that.

Kenny Meyers:
because we're all just human beings on a rock floating in space at a certain point. Yeah, it's just...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah

Kenny Meyers:
I just feel, you know what? I joked so much I forgot the stupid question, Matt, like a real jerk.

Matt Stauffer:
I asked what is something that supporting you like in terms of continuing to grow in the area that you are?

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, so I mean, my co-founders and just pushing into new spaces constantly. I mean, comics is a publishing industry. I come from a tech background. They are very, some people are really accepting of that. Some people are very skeptical of tech for a lot of reasons in comics and very justified. You know, my resume sometimes is like, Ooh, and my resume sometimes is like, there's a big Facebook on there. Not a lot of people sometimes.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
So it's just constantly...

It's learning to adapt quickly in a competitive space and I find myself...

I don't know. There's not really a great answer to this question. Like, I'm just motivated by the pure love of the community, like the people. And the stuff I'm doing isn't necessarily new to me. It's not new for me to write iOS apps that serve JPEGs. This is what I've been doing for most of my career. But the people make it worthwhile for me. They're the ones who keep me engaged and the business part is fun, but also not new. So...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
The least exciting answer to your question, I guess, is how I would put it.

Matt Stauffer:
It's the least exciting answer would be the same answer everybody else gives the most exciting answer is what is uniquely you. And speaking of something that's uniquely you I want to know like if you had your druthers and you were completely in control of what the next 20 years of your Work, life, and your company looks like where are you headed?

Kenny Meyers:
I mean, this is insane to me to even say it, but I think I'm in that space, dude. Like working on selling digital comics, digital as they are, like I love this. I get to meet people working at different levels, including people at the height of their success, people who are just like, I just drew this picture, or like my four-year-old just drew this picture. And like figure out ways to build for them. I've got killer team.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
And I guess I have a home life, allegedly, that's pretty good. I don't know. I don't see them very much, but I've heard they're doing well.

Matt Stauffer:
Uh-huh.

Kenny Meyers:
And yeah, and I just, love working on the tech. I obviously, this all comes with a huge caveat that the world is crazy right now, but I'm doing it, dude, which is insane to me. Now, obviously I would like it to make enough money to like, for everyone.

Matt Stauffer:
Beautiful. Sure, sure, Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
And even people in comics to make more money. Like that's the goal, right? To make things less shitty. And that means you have to make money to make things less shitty. That's just the way the world is. But I have never woken up more excited doing anything, no matter where I'm at in my life. I feel very lucky in that regard. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
I love to hear that. That is so cool. Is there, so you said you love your team. You said you love where you guys are working. Is there a, like a configuration of the company? So one, just to give you an example, I am at a place right now where I'm like, if we had a little bit more money coming in, I would probably hire a marketer and a bookkeeper. Cause right now I do those things and I do them adequately. But it'd be really cool if I had somebody doing this for me. Are you like, you know what, if the revenue is a little higher, the props a little higher, it'd make my life easier in a day to day if I had these particular rules. Are you like, you know what? I like this company the size it is and you know, we don't need that.

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, I think we're gearing up to bring in more people, but the roles are kind of in that vein. I talked about the metadata issue. So having someone who really knows comics and the ability to do that. There's really interesting, weird technical things with comics where you have to adapt it for a mobile reading platform that involves a lot of human curation too. I'm really bad at like registering the business registration crap.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Kenny Meyers:
It's just like, it's just like, I get the notice. It's like, I got a month that I'm just like, shit, it's time to register.

Matt Stauffer:
Like the taxes and the state registrations.

Kenny Meyers:
Like it's really dumb stuff like that. That really bothers me. but yeah, so I look forward to the day where I can hand that off accounting. Obviously. I mean, it's, makes it easy if you just like have a Mercury account or something and it just goes there. I would like to bring more people in to do cool things in marketing.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
to work. I mean, I'm not, I'm doing our Android app, but I'm not a premier Android developer. So it'd be fun to have someone who really knows their stuff there. I always picture a flat structure and I think a flat structure, if it goes really, really well, like, which, you know, would be amazing. I mean, it's really just about making things more discoverable for people and like going to different countries and being building like little offices there so that they can sell correctly to what like Mexican comic readers want versus North, you know, like North American Jesus versus versus American USA comic readers want. yeah. Or like South American, you know, Brazil is a big comic space. France is huge. Like, so it's sort of a

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Kenny Meyers:
Like a like comics virus I want to spread all over the globe. And. And yeah, so. T

Matt Stauffer:
Love that.

Kenny Meyers:
hat's just the stuff that I can't do like I don't have the the cultural or. Even the business understanding of how a place like France works in comics, so that's where I think in terms of bringing in people tech wise. I don't know how much bigger will make the team. I suppose at some point they're going to. I'm going to have to give up. Building apps but I don't want to do that. I love that.

Matt Stauffer:
actually being fingers and yeah. I mean, I don't know if you have to if you hire right. Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
I think I have to. don't think I have to. But, you know, it if I the worry is to become a blocker for like cool things everyone's doing. So if I'm like the iOS engineer and like everything else is ready, the web has ready stuff. But I've been in just like meetings with publishers.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I hear that.

Everyone's waiting on Kenny. huh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now that makes sense.

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, that's that's really crappy. You don't want to do that to people who are working hard. So I do think about that with some fear. But fortunately, I don't have to worry about that right now.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Well, you notice, you know that kind of one of the questions I asked toward the end of this is, you hiring right now? And you mentioned you're not hiring developers, but are you all at the point where you're hiring other folks yet? Or is it more just this is kind of like a theoretical kind of next step?

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, so we're not quite there yet, but we're pretty close. You know, our initial growth target's very small, so not hiring, I would say. And I already have specific people in mind, Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I've got a spicy one that you don't know is coming and I just added to our agenda. And I want to ask everybody, what's your approach towards AI? And if you use it, what's a creative thing that you've done lately that you think people might not know about?

And it's spicy because I want to open up space for people to like screw AI. It's burning down the rainforest or my entire company runs on AI and for those all to be valid answers that we kind of then explore. So for you, kind of what's your approach towards it in your day to day?

Kenny Meyers:
Yeah, so we keep AI away from the product. A lot of creators justifiably feel that AI is stealing their artwork, especially in the comic space. There's a lot of generative AI pitches that show up in comics to people. it just is, I don't know, I'm on the side of why would we want robots to make art? That's like one of the best things we do. Like literally one of the best things we do. And I understand how people like I...

Matt Stauffer:
Yes. Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
You know, I just, I've had too much psychotherapy to not empathize with people's like desire to like want to tell their story the way they want to tell it. But ultimately, I feel like that, that just needs to stay away. that is to say we use machine learning, like a dumber version of AI for panel detection, which is actually pretty interesting. And we also use it for like text detection.

Matt Stauffer:
Uh-huh.

Kenny Meyers:
But we try to stay away. Like we don't give it too large. Like Claude isn't getting the images or any, it's all locally like, and it's not an LLM. It's not a large language model. It's as stupid and old school hilariously considering it's still machine learning as you can get, which is pretty common. Amazon does it too. It just speeds up that process. As far as like what I do, like I do use some AI to help program and understand things.

Matt Stauffer:
OK.

Kenny Meyers:
I use it with a ton of guilt. I always feel bad about the energy costs. Ben doesn't use any AI and he doesn't need to because he just is better than any like person plus AI can be. I really wish I was just his hype man, but he's pretty damn good, man. He's just that good.

Matt Stauffer:
It's just that good. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
It's so obnoxious. Yeah, so I, but I generally try to keep it away from the product.
You know, I understand the appeal to me, like even like the accessibility appeal of being able to like, like for people who can't see comics to be able to like give the experience, but it's still shitty. Like it's not, it's not really good at reading and it doesn't understand. And this is like the very fascinating thing about comics, like even the machine learning panel, it doesn't understand how humans read, like, like how we process the information, how we follow through.

Matt Stauffer:
Interesting.

Kenny Meyers:
And it might someday, but like for right now it just it just doesn't understand art as well as a human does. And to be honest, if AGI, if we if we make superintelligence and they start making their own art, that's a different beast. That is its own thing to tackle. That's but yeah, so it's a complicated question. It has a lot of serious repercussions in the comics community. And those are my people. And I am

Matt Stauffer:
Sure, sure, Yeah.

Kenny Meyers:
very grateful that they do what they do. They don't get paid a lot. And that's one of my goals is that they get more money. And again, like we should be making the art, not the machine. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I'm with you.

So I should have asked this earlier in the podcast, but I'm actually super curious. Like, what's the backstory of your relationship with the comic?

Kenny Meyers:
Well, I grew up a 90s kid reading all the famous comics. That was like the boom time for comics, or at least until now. And that was like X-Men and all the things that became popular that eventually just came to the movies. And then in 2010, I think the iPad was released and digital comics started becoming a thing. And I appreciated that I could read them and I didn't have to put them anywhere. Although...

Matt Stauffer:
huh.

Kenny Meyers:
somewhat ironically now since this is all comics now. And then, I don't know, as a user of the most famous reader, was Comixology, which then became Kindle because Amazon just slurped it up and destroyed it, I was really disappointed with how much money I spent and how crappy the whole experience had become, considering it was pretty reasonable.

Matt Stauffer:
Love that.

Kenny Meyers:
So I was like, well, I don't know anything about this space, but if we can get Image Comics to come on board, maybe we can do something with it. And a partner and I did a startup and we got Image Comics on board. And then I've been in it three years. And in comics, that's relatively new. Like everyone's been there either like they just started or they've been there for 25 years. So, so yeah, so.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, well you made quite the inroads over a few years.

Kenny Meyers:
I hope so. mean, it's kind of crap. There's a lot of people who come in as well known who are tech people who come into industries and be like, we're gonna do like, we see all your problems. And I mean, the comic industry is doing well. It does have problems, but I'm not like, I'm here to focus on just making people more money so that we can have more comics.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I mean, you love comics, you love comic creators, and your goal is for them to succeed versus you would just succeed on their backs. So I think you're already pretty differentiated compared to a lot of the stereotypical tech bros coming in to capitalize on other people's work. Also, you're a great guy and I like you, so I support what you're doing.

Kenny Meyers:
Well, that's very kind. You are also a great guy. Is this the ass kissing part of the bios? You're such a big sweetie. You know, when I, you were presented to me as like, he's like the sweetest guy on the planet. And I was like, no way he's been in, he's been in this community too long. He's probably evil and he's too successful. But no, you are a big sweetie and it is lovely to know you.

Matt Stauffer:
No, no, no, no, no, that's just like a baseline part of my interactions. So moving past that part.

Matt Stauffer:
Uh-huh. Yeah, clearly. Appreciate it. I feel the same way and we have entered the ass kissing part and I'm glad I finally got you on the freaking podcast. So um, All right. So let's start wrapping it up. Uh, what do you want to plug? If somebody's like Kenny Myers is a sweetie. Matt Stauffer was right. He's the best. Uh, what does it look like for them to follow you to kind of give throw money at you? Like what is, you know, what's your, what's your shtick?

Kenny Meyers:
I think the best thing you can do is go, I mean, I'm on most of the platforms, Instagram, threads. I forget what those handles are. Something Kenny, something. But the best thing you can do is just go to sweetshop.app, it's just one word, sign up for our mailing list when we launch and try out a comic. Like we'll have free comics that you can try, just like if you've never considered the medium, if you're like, what?

Matt Stauffer:
Love it.

Kenny Meyers:
comics like like there's a lot of you know maybe my kids read that like there's so much good stuff for every one of all ages just sign up try out a comic when we launch that's all I ask that would be super dope.

Matt Stauffer:
Love it.

Okay. Is there anything that you hope we had covered today that we didn't get to?

Kenny Meyers:
No. But I didn't know what to expect about this podcast. Or if I could add value, which I hope I did to someone.

Matt Stauffer:
Love that. Yeah. Well, you certainly did. You absolutely did. OK. And the last the last question then is if somebody came along with one hundred million dollars today and said, you know, give me sweet. Here's one hundred million dollars. And I think I've learned I have to I have to say and you had to take it because a lot of people are like, no, I'm like, well, that's that's no fun. Or maybe give you one hundred million dollars and you choosing to continue working on a suite as an option. I don't know, but like what do you do tomorrow if money is no object? That's really kind of the point of this question.

Kenny Meyers:
I mean, but you're kind of caveated that with just like, you also have to not do the thing that you wanted to do ever. And like saying you have to abandon the dream again, mind you, because I did try it before. OK. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
And that's why I've never caveat that with anybody else prior. I'm like, so if somebody gave you a hundred million dollars tomorrow and you didn't have to abandon and you didn't have to abandon sweet, cause I've never given that caveat with anybody else. If somebody gave you a hundred million dollars and you no longer had to show up to sweet, what would you do tomorrow?

Kenny Meyers:
I would probably figure out a way to, obviously give back to the community, the comic community, probably through a lot of the charities that they have like bank, which are really lovely. I would definitely take a really expensive trip to Tokyo Disney to with my family. I would probably buy a nice house, in Kauai, just on the beach, not something simple.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay? huh. Love it.

Kenny Meyers:
And I would sit with my laptop and I would start just working on what's next. I don't know what that is. Probably in the same space, maybe in games. I did.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, and it could be sweet. Maybe you just keep running sweet. That's fine. You know, I know, I Okay

Kenny Meyers:
No, you said no, you said no. If you say no, I'm going to stick by your rules for me. For me like there was, know, like I love the game space too. Like I just I just I made it. I made a critical decision last year, a critical understanding of myself, which.

And I think this might be helpful for some people listening is like, I love working. Like I know it can be problematic for things like my, you know, my family, which I make time for, and it could be problematic for like everything, but I have accepted that if given a beautiful lanai to sit on, I will be very happy sitting on that lanai with my laptop in my hand, but like a nice drink to my side.

Matt Stauffer:
Take my laptop.

Kenny Meyers:
And I think that's okay. And it meant a lot to me because I was able to be like, so now I know that I could just keep doing this. I need to like make that space very intentionally. And I also have a better framework for talking to my friends about it, who are just like, why are you doing this all the time? And I just like, I just love it. But then like, there are things I do to zone out, like play games, but I think it was, I don't know, intention does matter. I don't think it's a magical thing that you could just intend something into being, but like, but

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, right.

Kenny Meyers:
That kind of circuitously answers your question. There's just so much cool stuff in the world. I'd just building games on little engines and seeing if I could do that, because I don't think I can. There's a lot of joy in building stuff. It's a cynical industry for a lot of people, but it's so fun to build stuff, man, and to get it in front of people.

Matt Stauffer:
Love it. That was one of the more specific answers we've gotten. You're like, I know where I would be. I know the big expensive trip I would take. I love that. Well, I guess that's it. Man, it was so great hanging out with you. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your journey with us and your wisdom. And yeah, I really appreciate you.

Kenny Meyers:
You say jump, I say how high, sir. Whatever you need.

Matt Stauffer:
I love it. For the rest of you, thank you so much for hanging out with us and we will see you next time.