LIU024: Dennis Thankachan: Lightyear and Beyond

Kevin Nanns (0:05 - 1:08)

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Alexis Bertholf (1:09 - 1:32)

Alright, guys. Today we have a very special guest for you. We're here with Dennis. He is the CEO and co founder of Lightyear. Now, before Lightyear, he worked in investment banking and invested in software and telecom companies. And we are so excited to have him on the show today to talk about everything he's done. Dennis, welcome to Life in Uptime. How are you doing?

Dennis Thankachan (1:33 - 1:36)

Doing great. Thank you for having me on. Excited to chat here.

Alexis Bertholf (1:37 - 2:23)

Absolutely. Now, I'm curious, telecom to me, I I I guess my first experience in in networking was through Cisco. And I never... It sounds bad to say, but I feel like I only really worked on one end of the internet. Like after I I gave customers their switches and their routers, I never really asked a lot of questions about how they were getting connected to the internet or to anything until I started working with Megaport and then I was like, oh, wait. Companies have to buy internet too. Like it's not it's not just it's not just consumers. And then I got introduced to like the whole world of telecom. How did you get started in telecom?

Dennis Thankachan (2:24 - 4:21)

I will say that I also deeply underappreciated telecom until I ended up investing in the space. I still remember when I was a computer science undergrad, tracking the bits from pop to pop Yep. For my networking course and finding it amazing that, you know, I'm seeing something instantly online, but there are, you know, many different many different points of presence being traversed by information and it's kind of amazing that all of that actually works. But the the thing that most amazed me about connectivity and and why I got started was in, you know, 2019, I set out after spending a few years investing in telecom and feeling like I really knew the space, investigating the massive trillion dollar area that is business telecom spend and being kind of appalled by how things are done. You know you know, by 2019, 2020, every... It feels like every segment of our lives has been transformed by the Internet, cloud, and software. You know, you buy flights differently. You buy clothing differently. You buy services differently. You get a car differently. However, the way that enterprises like, you know, giant companies spending millions and millions of dollars on the most important stuff get their connectivity, really is very similar to the way that it was in 1997. It's just the products they're buying are different. Maybe they're buying 10 gigs rather than t ones. And that's just amazing to me. And, you know, the question that I asked was, oh, could this also be transformed by software? And would that be better for the enterprise? And with investigation, you know, I became really, really convinced that the answer was yes and that if, you know, me plus a team of people could build something, it'd be both a really fun and exciting journey also potentially a great way to build a career.

Alexis Bertholf (4:21 - 4:34)

Do you think that... I I mean, studying computer science and coming from like a more technical background before pit of pivoting into business. Is that why you were looking at this from an automation standpoint?

Dennis Thankachan (4:35 - 6:08)

Yeah. So I I studied computer science with the intention of creating a business. Okay. I was in Interesting. When I was in college, it was around the time of like the craze of the the social network film, Y Combinator becoming a bigger thing and the notion of creating a startup being very, very exciting. And prior to college, I was, you know, making websites to make money. Basically trying to find any way I could create something that could result in making money and just became very, very passionate about that. And then, you know, this whole startup craze invigorated, you know, like young CS graduates on that particular path. So I was really hell bent on creating some sort of a technology product or thing at some point in my career. And really, it was a matter of like searching for that thing. Mhmm. Over time, as an investor, I fell in love with software and I fell in love with telecom just like spaces that as an investor, ended up building a lot of expertise in. But admittedly, if it weren't those things, it would have been something else. And I quit my initial job really to search for an idea or an application to build rather than having an idea in mind. So I I don't know that I would necessarily recommend that path for someone because it's it's a little serendipitous in terms of how things panned out, but it did work out for me.

Alexis Bertholf (6:08 - 6:14)

So you weren't like double dipping at all. You were like, I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna go hunt. We're gonna go find something.

Dennis Thankachan (6:14 - 6:39)

Yeah. My belief was that it wouldn't feel real unless I was pouring everything I had into it. And if I weren't taking risk, I think to come up with the best possible idea and really see it through to the fullest, you have to have risk. And I think I wouldn't be intellectually honest with myself about being serious about something if I was quote unquote starting a company, but still making a big hedge fund check.

Kevin Nanns (6:40 - 6:49)

Mhmm. So you felt like you had to have that risk that like a sink or swim mentality to be successful. You couldn't have the the safety net behind you?

Dennis Thankachan (6:50 - 7:03)

Yeah. Personally, I mean, not necessarily everyone has their own risk tolerance, but for me, that's sort of what I felt. And I think it was really beneficial to... I feel like I learned a thing 10 times faster because

Alexis Bertholf (7:04 - 7:55)

of force, I guess. Well Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I I think there's something to be said with going all in. I mean, even... I've been creating content now for three years, but I've also always had a job on the side and I've talked to so many creators now that are going all in on their business and it has become their full time thing. And even... Man, I can't imagine doing like doing that when it's an unproven idea. Like, feel like with content creation, at least it's it's been proven that I know other creators who are very similar, who have very similar sized audiences and they've gone full time and it's like, okay, well that worked for them. It'll probably work for me too. I've got a stream of income like things are already kind of proven out. I can't imagine taking that leap with absolutely no guarantee. Like just on just on a bet.

Dennis Thankachan (7:57 - 8:43)

Totally fair. I think everyone has their own path to determining what's for them, so I wouldn't criticize any perspective. I think in life with anything great, nothing is guaranteed. And, you know, the greater you wanna build something to be, the less guaranteed, the higher risk it'll be just almost definitionally. And you just have to have the energy to pour into something where I think, you know, in my prior jobs, was working, you know, seventy to ninety hour weeks regularly. And I could just say from my personal perspective, there's just no way I could put my best into something with what I was doing. And just the financial conflict of I was working in really financially lucrative careers and that distorts your world view a bit.

Alexis Bertholf (8:44 - 8:55)

But also makes you kind of fragmented because you're you're putting a bit of your attention here and a bit of your attention there and a bit of your attention versus being able to just really focus on one thing that you care about.

Dennis Thankachan

Exactly.

Alexis Bertholf (8:59 - 9:15)

Well, I I... Could you apply that same mentality? I mean, we talk a lot about getting certifications or like pivoting into a new role. Starting a company is a very extreme example. But I think you could apply that same mentality to going all in on anything.

Dennis Thankachan (9:17 - 9:42)

I think I agree with that. I think in particular, like a really strong, powerful specialization of some sort or being the best at a particular thing or close to the best or extremely good at a particular thing is probably the best starting point by which to build from. And, you know, that can be applied in a bunch of different ways, but, you know, I definitely subscribe to that.

Alexis Bertholf (9:44 - 9:56)

So did you get lucky and when you went all in, things... Everything just worked out magically in the first shot? Like, was was this your first venture into entrepreneurship?

Dennis Thankachan (9:57 - 11:22)

It's actually my second. So I definitely... At least I... I mean, I'm I'm sure I did get lucky in certain senses. You know, I don't I don't wanna dismiss luck. But I definitely did not succeed out of the gates. After leaving the hedge fund that I was working at, I spent a bunch of time investigating a variety of ideas in telecom and some also outside of telecom and ended up landing on, you know, a business idea in telecom that I started building, spent about a year on, and it was a complete and utter failure. No momentum, almost no revenue generated. You know, we generated like a tiny bit of revenue, but more cash burned in the business than revenue generated and almost no momentum out of the gates. I learned a lot of lessons from that and I'm glad that I shut it off when I did, but I definitely would put that in the failure court. However, part of the luck is in the context of building that business is where I discovered the niche that is business telecom or the very very large niche that is business telecom. So had I not worked on that, I definitely would not have been able to build up enough industry knowledge to build Lightyear. I learned a ton about the industry, how enterprises buy, how networking works at the... On the ISP end that I wouldn't have been able to pick up as an investor.

Kevin Nanns (11:22 - 11:42)

And I also learned a lot of valuable lessons about what mistakes you can make starting a business because I feel like I made every single one. So can you walk us through the the early conversations then that you had with customers that you found this niche that you... Like this this thing that was missing that Lightyear could slide in and solve that problem? Well, like, what were those issues that were happening?

Dennis Thankachan (11:44 - 14:13)

Yeah. So I'll start with a conversation with first what I was aiming to potentially displace and then how that led to customers. So, you know, how I discovered this space was in the context of the business that I was prior building, I met what you call a telecom agent or a telecom consultant, which is like really commonly what an enterprise will use to buy telecom services. Mhmm. And the consultant I met who is very successful as a consultant and was pulling in personally, you know, 7 figures a year on telecom commissions, was sort of bragging to me about how he was sort of leasing enterprises for their connectivity. You know, selling services that maybe were not always needed, selling services that were priced a bit higher than needed to very lucrative clients that would really have no way to know that they were getting the best thing because they really relied on him to help them source connectivity options. And, you know, that sent me on a goose chase of like, okay, this seems ridiculous. This guy's making millions of dollars doing this stuff. Why don't you just Google this stuff? Why don't you just verify what he's saying online? You know, why don't you do this stuff in a better way? And I I dug in further and further and it's like, There's actually, you know, if you're buying infrastructure to give insight, there's no way to know who's on net, who's near net unless you just build up that knowledge in your own brain. But if you're managing hundreds of sites, there's no way you're gonna know that for the whole geography of your footprint. That's a problem. There's no way to know what things should cost if someone is selling you type two versus type one access. And these are all things that you just gotta manually do the work to figure out and it's just a lot of work for a network engineer. Mhmm. Yeah. So that's that's really painful. And then I spoke to enterprises who work with individuals like this or just do this manually in house. It's more often even what we see. And I told them, hey, if we could give you a product that would potentially allow you to validate all of these things in a digital platform and it was accurate, You know, would you use it? What features would you want from it? And the thing I discovered was, you know, purchasing a service is just one small part of the problem in a network engineer's life. There's also getting it installed, getting, you know, physical infrastructure installed is like the bane of a network engineer's existence many times, you know, I discovered. And then there's the whole... There's inventory, there's ticketing, there's payments, there's

Alexis Bertholf (14:13 - 14:18)

configuration changes. And that's just on the... That's just on the telecom side too.

Dennis Thankachan (14:18 - 15:43)

Yeah. Yeah. Including everything else. And and a lot of IT people and networking folk are working on much more than that and this is just a big time suck for them. So, you know, the vision really evolved into, okay, we need to build a platform that... The the goal with Lightyear, you know, as it stands today is like... Or the product vision is really like fixed business telecom and we view that as take all of the pains that go into the manual workflows around telecom, every single one, and we'll give you one platform where you can manage that. And that's really what evolved to become the product vision. We started with procuring network services because that felt like the most unaddressed from what existed in the market today. And from there, we've branched out. We we now have multiple products and we have multiple products to come that'll fully address that vision. But the cool thing was first discovering the problem area that also aligns with like a big business opportunity because telecom... Business telecom is a very large market, validating that you could build a product that would meet that need, actually going through the process of executing on that and making the decision of that starting point wedge product, then expanding from there and proving that out. We got a lot of things wrong along that path, I will say, but I think we got the very big points right, which I'm grateful for in retrospect.

Alexis Bertholf (15:45 - 16:26)

Well, I think it kinda goes back to, are are you solving a problem for your customer and do you care about your customer? And if you can get those two things right, the details will work themselves out. But as long as someone really really needs what you're doing, like you're helping people at the end of the day. How long... I guess, is this what you pictured yourself doing in college going back to Dennis, the computer science major who had dreams of entrepreneurship. Like, did you have an an idea of what you wanted to build or what skills you were trying to develop along the way?

Dennis Thankachan (16:28 - 16:38)

I think yes and no. Some things I was really certain of, I definitely did convince myself that I will found a technology company of some sort. I was really...

Alexis Bertholf (16:38 - 16:51)

I definitely was a little delusional in the brain on that particular point. You have you have to be. You have to be. I love when people say that because it's like, if you're not gonna believe in yourself, who is?

Dennis Thankachan (16:51 - 18:57)

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so I was definitely sort of pushing myself mentally on that particular point, and that drove a lot of my choices. You know, like for one, I picked up the CS major with that in mind. I also studied finance in undergrad and I thought that, you know, the perfect thing if I'm going to be a tech founder will be get a combination of, you know, sort of like hard programming experience and also learn how to operate a company, learn finance, learn how to talk to people, things of that nature, which is what I felt like I got from the business major. That actually proved to be kind of prescient in the long run. Although how much the degree has actually helped, I don't really know, being honest. And, you know, the other thing I told myself was actually I decided not to start off as a programmer and to start in finance. And this was maybe very silly logic in in retrospect, but also kind of proof of your impression was, you know, I remember the the social network. I'm like, okay, Mark Zuckerberg can write code. But admittedly, like, he really didn't become a professional programmer of any sort. He sort of built this thing. And at some point in the movie, he meets fancy man with money who is Peter Thiel or playing Peter Thiel. And that seems to be a very pivotal moment for him. And I don't know fancy man with money, and I will need to meet eventually fancy person with money. And that's the the thing that I thought was, oh, if I succeed in investment banking at a hedge fund, I'll both make money and learn what it takes to raise capital. And Mhmm. My logic was very silly in college, but that also proved to be true. And that was the that was the thing. In in like those areas, did differentiate myself from like a performance perspective and that really lent credibility to where when I started something, there were people that were willing to place a bet on me without a ton of knowledge even on what it was that I was gonna build. And then for that, I'm very grateful for, but also I tried diligently to earn that over time.

Kevin Nanns (18:58 - 19:50)

Yeah. I mean, that makes sense to me that you you kinda need two parts of it, right, to run a business. You need to to be technical enough to understand the need and how to solve it, but also the business part of it. And if you had the programming, the the technical part already, then it makes sense to me that you would then work in the business side to learn the business, to know what you need to know, so that you can combine the two and be a CEO today that you probably never thought you'd might be like a CEO. But I mean, honestly, I don't even know what a CEO does. Can you can you like, like, to me, a CEO is someone who's like way upstairs in a building that is in his office and the only time I see him is if there's a problem. Like if like if I'm about to get fired or there's something happening where he's running around, but other than that, I don't really see the person. Can you can you... What's your day to day look like as a CEO?

Dennis Thankachan (19:51 - 22:16)

Yeah. I feel like that's the archetypical $100,000,000,000 CEO and I'm trying to earn that job because that seems very nice. You know, I think there's different eras and the and the role evolves and that's the difficult part of it, but also the fun part of it. The first first run, I will call like fake CEO. You know, you're you're a wannabe CEO. You're not really a CEO of any sort. You're really just like a... You do, like, plumbing and trash effectively. Yeah. So, you know, early on, I have a co founding CTO. His name is Ryan. And him and I were both partnered to build this product. And effectively, I was trying to do everything that was not programming Lightyear, effectively. So he didn't have prior industry knowledge of telecom, so I was effectively helping scoping and design what would become the product. I was doing everything we could to get early customers. I raised capital and helped get our early hires and lots of other random stuff in and around that, you know, like drafting agreements so we can save money on legal work, handling HR and payroll once we raise money, you know, like drafting all all of those things because it's like we're not gonna be an HR person, you know, like, yeah, we have a lawyer, but every time I talk to the lawyer for five minutes, I get a 500 bill. So I don't wanna Exactly. Talk to our lawyer. All all of those sorts of things and that's where, you know, I could call myself a CEO. You're not really a CEO. You're just doing lots of different things to get yourself off the ground at all costs. Mhmm. Then then there's a layer where the role begins to evolve. You hire a few people that can take on roles like we had a salesperson, we had a few engineers, we had a product person. I could do a little less work scoping and designing product. And I would spend a lot more time really trying to like do everything we could to get customers so that I could get sufficient momentum to get some validation around the product or I could raise a little bit more money to bolster the engineering team and build more product more aggressively, more quickly. But nobody's gonna give us that unless we get enough revenue and that's a chicken and egg because also the product at the time couldn't do enough to really justify what I was convincing customers of. I was selling them product, part vision and you know, like we're very grateful for the early customers who trusted That's

Alexis Bertholf (22:16 - 22:29)

part You're of you're like, they call it building the plane as you're flying it. You're like, this is what we want to do. I sold a deal. Engineer, go figure it out. I think we can do this in theory. Now go build it.

Dennis Thankachan (22:29 - 25:39)

That's right. And and you know, with enterprise connectivity, there's not a lot of fault tolerance. So that's that's sometimes a tough tough tough convince and, you know, certain things we learn the hard way. However, that became a thing and I was just spending so much time selling selling selling, talking to anyone that I could. More recently, you know, now we've gone through a few rounds of capital. We have now a little north of 80 employees and we have a few 100 customers, we have a sales team, we have a proper engineering team. This is where the job gets... This is now... The job is getting very very fun. It's always been fun and the stress moves to different places, but Yep. This is where the job really changes, where I spend most of my time on these things that people maybe consider fluffy and abstract. Strategy, recruiting, culture, vision setting, and thought partnership to executives. So I'm I'm like naming a bunch of buzzwords and it sounds totally nonsensical. And this is the type of stuff that, you know, when I was 18, 19, I would think is like absolute nonsense. You know, like all all of the value in company building is, you know, in like hard engineering, this that and the other. And if you're not hands on keyboard doing stuff, you're not really working, you're just an executive. Mhmm. Which which is funny because my my mentality on that has completely flipped because, you know, for one, recruiting is probably my number one value prop that I can bring because at this point, we have very talented builders, We have very talented sellers. And the best thing that I can do as one person, knowing that I'm not going to have greater output than an entire sales team or an entire engineering team, is get the best possible people that we can and convince them that this is the place to take their talents. And that is the number one highest leverage way that I can, you know, sort of improve output here. And if I can do that with a manager or an executive who can bring a few very talented people with them, even better. That's like one of the highest leverage things I can do. Second is, you know, even though I may not build an individual feature or sell an individual deal, I still do sell quite a bit. But if I can set the strategy that directs the salespeople away from a pitfall and toward the reward, that is where you can take something like 20, 25, 30 people to water rather than drought. And that is the highest leverage thing that that you can do. Right? And and the the easiest way for me to screw my job up today is to do certain individual contributor tasks that take me away from or distract me from the really big hairy audacious strategic items. And that's sometimes where even I make mistakes and have to remind myself of like what the most important Yeah. Things are are things that can impact at scale the entire company or the entire cohort of people rather than one individual person.

Kevin Nanns (25:40 - 26:12)

But isn't that hard to let go? Like, I'm dealing with that a little bit on a tiny scale compared to you where like, I'm hiring an editor and I'm like doing all these things for my content and it's it's my baby, know. This is the thing that I'm building and I'm I'm very protective of it. So to hire someone to let them do it and let them take control of it is scary and it's really hard for me to to let go. But you've had to do that on a massive scale. So did you find it hard to do that or were you, like you said, more focused on the bigger stuff so you knew that's where your value was?

Dennis Thankachan (26:12 - 27:36)

Yeah. That's... I think that is a very difficult transition point as a manager and I've made I've done a bad job of that for quite some time in a number of areas where I used to view, oh, I can do x thing really well. I can sell better than any salesperson. You know, I should be running every single sales call. I don't trust you. Well, know, over time I started to recognize, oh, we hired all these salespeople. They're making salaries. They wanna sell and they're not even getting the opportunity to learn how to sell. And I know if I wanna get to this point of company, I'm not gonna be able to do every single call. You can only do so many calls. I need a very talented developed sales team, they need to be trained, they need to learn and if they can't make mistakes and learn, I am holding them back. And that's one example. I've done that in so many areas with the notion of this is my baby o. Copywriting for the company, oh, nobody can convey the brand vision better than me. I need to write every single thing. And I'll do it and I'll feel productive because I'm doing the work. I'm hands on keyboard, but I'm actually holding back our marketing team who has no opportunity to develop the ability to articulate our brand voice. We will need a successful marketing team to be a great company. Yeah. And these are all things that I need to take and remind myself to let go of. And that's part of the transition and there's you know, probably one to two more order of magnitude transitions that I'll have to make that I'm sure will be difficult in different senses.

Kevin Nanns

Mhmm.

Alexis Bertholf (27:37 - 28:05)

It's it's like this. Entrepreneurship is like the ultimate form of personal development work. And your business only grows as much as you grow. And so like the more that you're able to understand those transitions and like sort out the inner workings of your own brain, the faster your company will grow because you're able translate all of that down to your team because you understand like what your big goal is and also how to communicate that.

Dennis Thankachan (28:07 - 28:57)

Yeah. That's exact... I mean, the personal development piece is both the most fun and the most humbling because you're shown as the job changes where you have weaknesses again and again and you hit walls and you have to be intellectually honest with yourself about where you need to change or else. And, you know, the or else is like you mess up a decision or something or other that impacts not just you, but many many people who consider this their livelihood. And that's humbling because you'll get it wrong and it'll be very visible and very painful because, you know, people don't feel sympathy when you get it wrong as an executive and that's understandable. You know, why should you? Because you you signed up for the job, the the big boy job, but it's it's difficult sometimes. So, you know, your personal growth is to some degree on display.

Alexis Bertholf (28:58 - 30:25)

Mhmm. What would you say to someone, man, I feel like there's two types of people, Dennis. There's people who know they wanna be entrepreneurs from a young age and they know like they've always had an itch to run their own business. And there's people who kind of stumble into it. And they they always thought they'd work for someone else or like most engineers I feel. They kind of stumble upon a good idea and then they're like, oh no. I have a business. Oh god. What if I wanted to be a founder but not a CEO? Like, wanted to own the idea. I wanted I wanted to get this thing out into the universe, but I don't wanna be the one to care take it. And it's it's almost like realizing that just because it's your idea, like, might not be the best person to actually take it to market. You could be a really good CTO, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're the best CMO or the best c... CEO. Right? The best operator. And I don't know. I feel like it's interesting because there's very few... I feel like I meet more of the latter. Like people who had an idea and they kind of stumbled into entrepreneurship. I feel like I haven't met as many of the former. Maybe it's because like I went to school with a whole bunch of engineers and I've always worked with a whole bunch of engineers. And they're like, oh no, I started a company. What do I do now? Versus I really want to start a company. What should I build? Does that make sense?

Dennis Thankachan (30:26 - 33:38)

Yeah. I think there's both the... There's there's... Well, yeah. I guess there's two pieces. Like one, there there's definitely some number of people who have an infatuation with entrepreneurship that's separate from the job. Kind of like people have an infatuation with professional athletes even though they probably couldn't play in the NBA or or understand necessarily what it takes to be at the highest levels of a particular thing where you have... I think entrepreneurship has has taken that because you can see certain CEOs, founders, this like... This that and the other, and they're very wealthy, you know, the the visible ones. And also they seem to be working on cool stuff and that seems like a cool life when in reality a lot of it is plumbing and most people do not end up in the position of the people that that you've heard of. That... That's one piece of it, and it definitely attracts a lot of people that are probably not fit for the role because it just takes years and years and years of grind to do something great. And even still, most people don't get to to something great at the end of the tunnel. It's difficult. There are just easier and better ways to make money in most cases. Then there are the people who maybe start something and like have... There are different archetypes. There's that sort of like prototypical visionary founder, the person that can come up with phenomenal ideas, articulate them super well, and get something off the ground, but maybe could be scattered, disorganized, not great as a manager, maybe not a CEO, but they're a founder. And then there are other people who are like founders who who stumble into it as you say, who have some sort of a superpower. Maybe they are a phenomenal CTO builder type. Maybe they're a phenomenal salesperson. Maybe they're a phenomenal recruiter. And I definitely made a lot of those. And I think whatever you are, whether you're like visionary founder or you have a certain archetype, phenomenal marketer, a phenomenal whatever important skill is, I think it's just really important as if you achieve any success, get... You know, getting off the ground is difficult no matter what your archetype is. But if you have any success, you have to just be really honest with yourself about your skills and really try and lean into your superpowers and then build around your weaknesses and not hide or shy away from your weaknesses. And, you know, if you're a phenomenal salesperson but you don't know anything about building an engineering team, don't... Trying to run an engineering team is probably gonna be a foolish decision. You know, you should really try and use your sales skill to convince a CTO to join you And So he can build an engineering team. Yes. And be generous with equity and that'll be probably very lucrative for you. But, you know, the thing that I find interesting with entrepreneurship overall, you know, even getting back to the whole infatuation with entrepreneurship is so many people I know wanna start companies and even come up with phenomenal ideas and are super smart and very hardworking. And the thing, you know, I always try and check-in on is of the people who convey some sort of an idea to me, you know, three years later, what percentage of them are actually working on that idea? And tends to be about 1% where where that is true no matter how smart, capable, you know, skilled. It it... There's like

Alexis Bertholf (33:39 - 34:06)

a sheer force of will component that that is a common thread that's required, I think. Here's something most IT leaders know but rarely say out loud. The legacy network model is showing cracks. You've got five vendors with none of them accountable to each other, renewal cycles track on spreadsheets, and an IT team spending cycles managing infrastructure instead of moving the business forward. The problem isn't that no one wants to fix it. It's that switching can feel risky and overwhelming.

Kevin Nanns (34:07 - 34:36)

Meter was built to solve exactly that. It's a full stack network with hardware they designed themselves. Firmware, software, support, all in one. They support the migration, offer upgrade credits for existing gear, and the financing is flexible. Companies like Lyft, MrBeast, and Bridgewater have already made the switch. If your team is ready to stop managing a patchwork network and start enabling the business, go to meter.com/liu.

Alexis Bertholf

That's meter.com/liu

Kevin Nanns (34:40 - 35:04)

to book a demo. So yours... You're... I'm I'm still stuck on the CEO part. Sorry. What what do you most enjoy about your your job today? Like when you wake up, I I think of when I do it for myself, I think of like projects that I'm working on and like technical stuff that I get to mess around with. But as a CEO, are you always picturing the big picture? Or when you wake up, you're like, I'm really excited to tackle this thing today?

Dennis Thankachan (35:06 - 36:41)

It is some of both. And ideally, they're tied together. Mhmm. The thing that I find most exhilarating about it, and this may sound weird to say, is, you know, when when I was younger, I used to play all of those, like, RPG games where you would, like, build skills, level up, and things like that. And that would definitely just yield, like, every level up, every skill gain, every new weapon would would give sort of like a dopamine rush to my brain. Yep. Business is sort of like the job version of that where you get to live, make decisions, and view... Like, there there is a firm scoreboard in front of you, which is like your company's equity value, whether you win or lose deals, whether you hit targets, and it's very visible. And I find that more fun and exhilarating than anything because you make decisions and you do things and you're shown whether you're effectively like right or wrong on those things and you learn live. And I find that to be super fun. And the thing that I'm thinking about and excited about is, okay, what are the things, you know, I like to think that I know how I can allocate my time in a way that's going to move the needle in the best possible way for the business. And I'm gonna make a bet with my time and my effort and I'll be shown if I'm wrong, you know, for for one way or another. And and that is very exhilarating, waking up and being able to do that. You know, another way that I view view myself is like, I view every single day is a fight to prove that I am worthy of my job.

Kevin Nanns (36:44 - 37:06)

Oh. So what part of running Lightyear then would you... Would... Is this most surprising to you today that you, you know, when you first came out this and just wanted to be a founder and wanted do this thing, you never thought that you would be, I don't know, like doing this today. Like what what part of the other job or the aspect of running Lightyear is surprising most to you?

Dennis Thankachan (37:07 - 37:24)

I would say the shift from hard skills to soft skills, like the dramatic shift in importance from hard shift... Hard skills to soft skills, and how important the soft skills are, was definitely something I underweighted

Kevin Nanns (37:26 - 37:33)

over time. Did you already have those skills when you, like, started doing this or did you learn them on the fly?

Dennis Thankachan (37:34 - 38:24)

There's absolutely been a lot of learning on the fly. You know, I definitely would not consider myself to be a natural fit for the role that I have today. Mhmm. But I think I've been able to learn and fake it at points in time and make mistakes along the way. But I also do really like working with people. I love recruiting. I get like a real kick out of recruiting. I've... People always say, oh, recruiting is really important. Your ability to attract talent is like the most important thing as a CEO. But I kind of mentally underweight the soft stuff, you know, when I first started Lightyear and it's like, it's ultimately gonna come down. Do we have the best product? And then if so, people are just gonna buy it where it's really like product is a piece, but in the enterprise, you gotta recruit people and you have to have a phenomenal sales team. You have to have a phenomenal marketing agent.

Alexis Bertholf (38:24 - 38:31)

Having the best product is absolutely not a people are you about it? Like, how are you letting people know what you actually do?

Dennis Thankachan (38:33 - 38:45)

Yeah. Exactly. And that's the key that's the key to success, I think, in in the enterprise in particular. And that's where the the the sort of like one step prior to that is recruiting a phenomenal sales team.

Alexis Bertholf (38:46 - 38:54)

Right. What would you say the moment was that made it real for you? Where you were like this this is it. Like, found my thing.

Dennis Thankachan (38:56 - 40:32)

I think there's a few micro moments that are really cool. I think first dollar of revenue first dollar of revenue also being associated with, you know, we got a connection for... You know, it was one of the coding schools at the time. It was a hack reactor, which at time was like one of the largest coding schools. They were opening a new office. They couldn't get a connection. It was a major issue. And we were able to get them a connection and they were so grateful for it because it was actually a big operational problem for them. That was like a firm validation point that was so exciting because then I just started to multiply that wells. You know, you know, there's this many facilities in this building and every single one of them went through the same problem at some point and, you know, they probably went through the exact same process that that this person did. I think there was a point at 1,000,000 of revenue that felt like, wow, this is like more than just a thing that is an idea that a few people like. This is a thing that could be a real business. Mhmm. That was very very exciting. And then alongside that probably like our series a financing, which was in 2021, we raised 13 mil, which was our first like real capital round where investors saw, you know, the rate at which we were growing, some of the customers we had picked up. They spoke to our customers and they validated and they're like, wow, this is gonna be a valuable business. And we put, you know, our money behind it in a very real way more than just, people think you're smart and your team is smart. They're actually excited about something grander than you, which is the idea and the product and that was super exciting.

Alexis Bertholf (40:32 - 40:46)

That has to be such a crazy feeling. I can't imagine getting $13,000,000 to go build something. Like, even if someone gave me a couple $100,000 and was like, go do something. I'd be like, real really?

Kevin Nanns

Me? It's terrifying. So much pressure. Yeah.

Alexis Bertholf

Can't even imagine.

Dennis Thankachan (40:54 - 41:36)

Yeah. It's it's fun and exciting, but the... Yeah. The thing is you can't get too excited by the press release, the news, and the dollar amount because those dollars don't go into your pocket. They are dollars that are effectively, you know, they're giving you that money with the intention of you returning a multiple of that. Ideally, many multiples of that to them. And that's an intense responsibility because, yeah, returning, you know, $13,000,000 times 10 times 20 times 30, that's... You have to create a lot of revenues to be able to deliver that. And that's like a thing that I was both, yeah, exhilarated by, but also understand for sure.

Kevin Nanns (41:36 - 42:02)

Everything that I've learned about this is from Silicon Valley, the HBO TV show. And it sounds like that show was very accurate, because everything you're describing, and even the main character who had like, he's kind of a visionary person, but didn't have the execution, and like, everything you're describing is is 100% from like from the TV show. So it's all aligning in my head. It's really cool. Yeah. Exactly. I I love the Silicon Valley and all of the sort of like tropes

Dennis Thankachan (42:03 - 42:30)

are Mhmm. Kind of accurate, especially for the time. The only thing that is inaccurate is, I think in the show, they, like, kept building a product to nowhere that was on... Like, didn't really have any momentum. And then sort of at the very, very end, they just, like, magically made it work and got a ton of momentum out of nowhere. I don't think that really happens. But outside of that, I think the whole show is pretty pretty accurate. And, yeah, it's less less funny, a little more boring in reality.

Kevin Nanns

A little more terrifying.

Alexis Bertholf (42:33 - 43:21)

I'd say like a lot more stressful. I don't know. Dennis, I have a question. We have a pretty technical audience. I I think a lot of people that listen to the show are engineers or early in career engineers. Can you highlight from studying a technical degree how you feel like that's helped you in business? Like, I'll I'll give you an example. I studied aerospace engineering. I went to work as a solutions engineer at Cisco, which is for lack of a better term like technical sales. And I feel like coming from a a technical background like, you just tend to think about things differently. So how do you feel that studying engineering has kind of influenced how you operate in a business sense?

Dennis Thankachan (43:22 - 45:47)

I think it was very beneficial. But to your point, more in the how you think and how you learn rather than directly beneficial. So, yeah, I studied computer science. I never actually became a programmer. So you can call me a fake engineer if you want, but I did finish with a four o in computer science. And the the thing there... Like in in undergrad, we were, you know, programming in c and we built a Lisp compiler and we were working in x 86 assembly. Like all of these things that, you know, if I were to get a job as a programmer, I would use none of today. And, you know, in... When I was in college, which was not that long ago, but feels like ages ago in the context of the way programming works, we didn't even really learn web development. You know, the one novel thing we picked up was mobile development. I did have a class where we built like an Android app, which is fun. But point being is like in terms of practical skills, there were very limited skills you took away. And then, you know, I don't use differential equations day to day in in work. No. But the thing That's weird. Thing that MATLAB. Come on. Yeah. Exactly. So so... But that is... But things that I think are really useful are as an engineer, particularly with, you know, computer science, you're... You learn how to break down problems algorithmically, how to test things, how to design scientific experiments, things of that nature. And the hard math really is useful because it makes easy math really, really easy, which you do a lot of in in work day to day. So there are a lot of things that are beneficial. And I will say my understanding of algorithms and engineering concepts actually does... Has proven to be useful in building software and managing an engineering team. It's just that I've had to take the concepts that I learned and upper level them by understanding how things work in web development, how the cloud works, how security works, and also how, you know, now LLMs and AI work, which is definitely not a thing that we learned about in school, although we did learn about neural networks. So that's... I find it to be very useful and I'm very grateful for my education, but it definitely wasn't directly practically useful. But I would really recommend it to to anyone.

Kevin Nanns (45:48 - 46:01)

Do you do you still use the technical knowledge? Like, are you actively in your job scope dealing with technical problems and solutions or, you know, do you not use the technical stuff at all anymore?

Dennis Thankachan (46:02 - 47:06)

I definitely deal with technical problems. Like for example, I'm very involved in our product roadmap, product decisioning, and certain technical decisions there. And not at the extreme low level, but, you know, you have to know quite a bit enough. And then also the other thing is we make... You know, for example, we've had to make a whole series of very, very consequential technical decisions around implementing LLMs within our product where you have to have a pretty deep understanding of the technology. Otherwise, you're gonna get it wrong. And that's where, you know, not understanding things can be dangerous. Prior education was certainly helpful there. And, you know, for our customers, part of how I can build trust with our customers is making sure I know how networks operate at a really deep level. You know, I can explain the the technical differences between a wavelength and an ethernet private line. Because if I can't do that, then people are not gonna trust me as a non network engineer in, you know, working with our business. And also, how can I make product decisions and things like that if those are the types of problems I'm trying to solve?

Kevin Nanns (47:07 - 47:46)

Yeah. I think there's a... Well, I don't know. If I were to talk to a CEO about a company, I would assume they don't know the technical details. They don't know the aspects because in my head, they're they're the the business person, they're the spearhead for the business, but they have engineers and people underneath them that deal with technical stuff. And so to hear a CEO talk about the technical details of their product is refreshing, I think. And I think that's... It does. It... Like as a network engineer, that would build trust in me a lot to hear that every aspect of the leadership and and the CEO especially has that technical foundation in the background. So they're not just talking, they actually know what they're talking about.

Dennis Thankachan (47:47 - 48:32)

Yeah. And my favorite thing to do is... And I think the easiest trust building exercise is like I certainly know that a lot of network engineers are very skeptical of people in my seat and rightfully so, I get it, is to talk to people that are the practitioners on the networks that are the day to day users of our product and talk to them and at least show them that I know at a very very specific level why they purchased our product, what particular network problem they're trying to solve, and what they may be dealing with at a network level. Mhmm. And that's a great way to build trust. It's also a great way for me to exercise my muscle and learn more and more about what they deal with day to day, which is what we're hoping to solve. But, yeah, like I love that part of the job.

Alexis Bertholf (48:33 - 50:03)

Well, I feel like especially, I mean, sitting on the the sales side for basically most of my career, almost all of my career. It's normal for engineers to be almost like sketched out by sales people. Like they think they're just coming to fish. We hate them all. Yeah. They're coming to fish for a check. But there's so much value you can provide even as a non technical salesperson if you know your niche. Like you support multiple customers, you are across a niche of the market. Like most of the businesses that you're supporting when you're talking to engineers or network engineers, unless you're unless you're talking to like a very large enterprise where they've got 50 to a 100 IT people on staff. The person that you're talking to is probably spread thin across a bunch of different technologies. So even if you are a quote unquote non technical salesperson, in your niche, in your corner of the world, whether that's security, whether it's data center, whether it's AI, whether it's, you know, telecom, you know a lot of things. Like there's a lot of ways that you can help this engineer kind of get out of or maybe get out of their bubble isn't the right word because I guess you would be the one that's a specialist like in your line of business and you can help teach them things that they may not be aware of. Macro level trends are ways that other businesses are adopting technologies. And you don't have to be a hands on the keyboard engineer in order to do that.

Dennis Thankachan (50:04 - 51:16)

Yeah. Yeah. And and and even to your point, I think the number one thing that we benefit from is when we can tell network engineers, hey, you'll have to speak to... You'll have to do fewer sales calls with AT and T and or Verizon or whoever as a result of using your product. That's the thing that we can sell on and for our team, you know, the few things that I'm very keen on are, one, making sure you have adequate technical knowledge to be able to speak to the person on the other realm and be empathetic with what they're dealing with. Because if you do, it'll be the best way to advance a sale and they're Mhmm. They're going to respect you exponentially more and not just view you as a dollar hunter. And, you know, we we do quite a bit of training to that end to make sure. And, you know, that the other thing that we teach is, you know, we are never ever ever going to tell an enterprise what to do with their network, what vendor to choose, who to pick that is not what we do. All we wanna do is give them the tools with which they have information so that they can make the most educated decisions because network engineers know what they're doing, are trade offs in every decision and you know, we're not gonna tell you how to architect your diversity. You know how to do that, all we wanna do is help you achieve it in the easiest way possible.

Alexis Bertholf (51:17 - 51:29)

Yeah. That's huge. You sold me. So Dennis, earlier you mentioned that you were doing a lot of learning around LLMs or implementing LLMs into the product. Are you putting AI in Lightyear?

Dennis Thankachan (51:30 - 53:50)

Yeah. So we recently effectively relaunched our product. Okay. What we call... What we used to call Lightyear and what we founded Lightyear on is what we call the telecom operating system, which is basically workflow software to manage your telecom. And we... You know, our domain is lightyear.ai, so we always envisioned using AI as a means to help facilitate telecom workflows, but more like 2019 AI. Primarily like statistical models that could help us be predictive on pricing or an outcome of something and we were gonna build more traditional workflow software. And that was working, you know, but it was really difficult because telecom is sort of an infinite vector problem because there's so many vendors, so many services, so many different workflows. You know, how you ticket a particular service with a particular vendor, that's like a problem where the the n of different outcomes is like in the thousands and you you have to work... You have to manage through that. You know, now with LLMs, that really changes because you now have these machines that can take in natural language context and make decisions. And if you sort of like tune them properly, they can make really, really thoughtful, educated decisions, you know, as good as or even sometimes better than a human in certain instances on particular vectors. You can automate all these things with a different approach to not just basically give you software, but also do the work that you would otherwise be doing on top of the software. And so, you know, in short, we've recently relaunched our platform as telecoms system of action. And we effectively are, I'd call it, like, disrupting ourselves rather than waiting to be forced to reinvent ourselves in the context of LLMs. We had a whole internal, you know, big aggressive push to where, you know, we we made the decision that if we continue down the current path without change and admitting that this new technology fundamentally changes the way you'd build Lightyear, we're gonna kill the company. So Mhmm. You know, let's sort of attack ourselves and then reinvent.

Alexis Bertholf

I love it.

Kevin Nanns (53:55 - 54:11)

Was that terrifying to have to reinvent yourself like that after having... Like, you've had success. Right? So your your business is succeeding and then reinventing yourself seems terrifying to stop doing something that's working for you and change it up a little bit.

Dennis Thankachan (54:12 - 56:40)

It's definitely pretty scary because this reinvention was occurring at the same time where you have these AI models that are rapidly getting better, and it's hard to know where things stop or where the technology goes. We're all learning on the fly about these. You have traditional software and you have the stock market telling you software is dead. And if you're building software, you are the biggest idiot on earth. So being a software CEO is not fun in that in that moment. Then you also have a team that's kind of scared, but they don't know what they're particularly scared of. They're just generally kinda scared about like, okay, what happens to my stock, my job? Yeah. So... Yeah. So it's like... And, you know, from there, we had to make a series of decisions like can... First and foremost, it comes down to the customer and the problem and not just reacting to the market. Can these tools be better, result in better outcomes for our customers? And with these tools in mind, if I were starting Lightyear today, would I build it differently and would I approach the problem differently? And the answer to that is absolutely yes. And then the question is, if I am not building the company that you'd build today from scratch What are we doing? I'm gonna run this company off a cliff, you know, if you extrapolate far enough. So you have to cut your losses, admit some costs, and admit maybe a few mistakes along the path. Mhmm. And, you know, take your pill and make a change. So we sort of redid the whole product division, the whole roadmap from scratch. We told the team, here's what we're going to build and there, you know, there are a lot of questions. And we also reorganized our engineering team around AI native building to make sure that we're leveraging the tools to to their fullest extent. And we're also doing a lot of AI research research and development. And we just launched, of course, the new set of features. And then the other fear is like, oh, what if this doesn't land with customers? You know, you theorize all this stuff and then you spend like, you know, months and months just working on it heads down. And what if it doesn't land? And that's kind of scary. But, you know, we launched. Our customers really like it, and I'm more convicted in this direction than ever. And, you know, I went from feeling painfully behind the ball to now feeling at least a little bit, you know, at least on... Hopefully on the nose. So it's it's exciting, but it's also a time of a lot of change and changes. And times of change are where you're you're at most risk of making poor decisions.

Alexis Bertholf (56:40 - 56:58)

Mhmm. Well, think it's also... You're you're still solving the same problem. Like it's not like you're you're reinventing. Yeah. It's not like you were reinventing the company to solve a completely different problem. You still had the same customers that you're serving today at heart.

Dennis Thankachan (56:58 - 57:23)

That's right. That's right. And that's where we're fortunate where this this was able to sort of like layer in and on top of what we're doing in a really natural way, and that's where we're fortunate because that's not the case for every company. Mhmm. There are certain companies that like needed to sort of like die and be reborn and that's unfortunate, you know, that's tough. Some companies have done it really well, some companies have done it poorly, but it's, you know, one of those periods of time.

Alexis Bertholf (57:24 - 57:34)

Yeah. It it's like you're trying to serve the same market with the same problem in a similar way, you're just trying to do it better. I think that's completely valid.

Dennis Thankachan

I agree, but I'm biased.

Kevin Nanns (57:37 - 57:42)

Yeah. Obviously was because it worked out for them very well. So so

Alexis Bertholf (57:42 - 58:01)

if with with AI in mind, I mean, Kevin and I, we get questions all the time from young engineers. They're like, should I still go into networking with AI? What should I study? What should I do? I just got a job. Should I be trying to figure out how to fit this into my job now? Would you have any advice for someone like that who's in that position?

Dennis Thankachan (58:03 - 60:25)

I will provide some general advice that I think is helpful in this moment. I think this is... People contextualize this moment and understandably so is a very scary moment to be early career right out of college because there's so much change and it feels like that change is disproportionately harming young people. And there are definitely some stats you can look at that indicate that there could be some truth to that. But on the other end, there are pockets I see that have me optimistic for the future. In particularly, if you're like an early career person now, people are not good at making sense of and navigating change. And that for the right person can be an opportunity for career acceleration. So for example, on our team, there are varied levels of willingness to adopt AI tooling and figure out how to operate at the frontier. But we needed somebody to do that and your ability to figure out how to do that is not necessarily directly correlated with experience. And so there are circumstances where I'm seeing, you know, our company and other companies, people that are younger, more experienced, able to make strides at at at the advantage or even sometimes the expensive people that are more experienced and think they know best and are unwilling to embrace change. In networking, I think that's even more true because software engineering, everyone is leveraging LLMs. In networking, that's really not true at all. You know, we we we see all forms of enterprise teams. Most enterprises we're talking toward just the very tip of the iceberg of how do I incorporate AI into our network operations? How can that make it better? Can we triage issues? Are there tools we should be using? Are there things we can be doing better or faster? And it's the perfect opportunity for early career individuals to figure things out. The other thing that I would say is true is AI makes networking more important because network uptime, network connectivity is more important. And there is a shortage of individuals who study the art of networking. It is not necessary... Like, there there are not enough people that understand how connectivity work... Works, how data centers work, and these things are more important, not less important. So that's also an opportunity. So I think just... Like, I think if you can figure some of those pieces out, it's it's something that you can take advantage of.

Kevin Nanns (60:27 - 61:13)

100%. Do you think so if as an engineer starting out... Actually, I'm gonna pivot there that question. Do you think networking people are slow to adapt more slow than other technologies? I don't wanna say anything negative about network... As a network engineer, you can be... You can disparage me. It's fine. Just look at IPv four. Right? Like, IPv six has been around forever and we're still using IPv4 as a majority. We're we're... I feel like network engineers are a little slower to adapt than other technical careers out there. We're a little more, I don't know, like less willing to to... For change. And I'm curious of your take on that. I think in general,

Dennis Thankachan (61:13 - 62:44)

technical folks, because they're smart and they understand how things work, are more likely to be skeptics. Right. I think the the archetype of the skeptic, think is something I see in a lot of very talented... Sometimes the more talented an engineer you are, the more knowledgeable, the more skeptical you are because you dismiss technical innovations because you understand how they work. Oh, you understand the plumbing of this thing, therefore, it's not impressive. All of these other people that are impressed by this thing, they just don't get it. You know? For example, some of the sharpest machine learning individuals I know of were the most dismissive of LLMs because they're like, this is not a magic machine. This is a thing that represents words as vectors and then predicts the next word. What's so magical about that? Where it's almost like the fact that you're technical and understand how things work, you can miss the point. And then by the time the train is shifted, you become frustrated by the hordes of people who are like hype chasers. I'm not saying that that's true of everyone. I think there are a lot of tech... Not just network engineers, but all forms of engineers that maybe have that trait. I've had that trait at points in time where there are technologies that get a lot of hype that therefore I'm skeptical of them. Generally though, I don't think it pays to be skeptical in a career path. And that's a thing that I try to untrain myself on. You you learn more by understanding how things work and why things can work rather than trying to be the person that it's very easy to poke holes in something. It's very difficult to create an innovation that actually works.

Kevin Nanns (62:45 - 62:50)

I love that. That's a very very well said.

Alexis Bertholf (62:50 - 63:38)

Well, it's almost like, not to compare everything to content creation, but like, if you're creating if you're creating something from scratch and you're putting it on the internet and you have a bunch of haters in your comments who are gonna pick it apart, when you were like, I was just trying to make a generalization about this technology to get people excited and help them learn. Yes, I generalized a little bit so that it would do better on the internet. You are correct. Technically, your wall of text comment is right. You are a much better engineer than me, clearly. I've made it simple for the masses. But it's much easier to like throw rocks at someone who's already putting yourself... Putting themselves out there, you know, kinda sticking out their neck to start something new or create something new.

Dennis Thankachan (63:39 - 63:55)

Putting yourself out there is very difficult and yeah, the life of a content creator which, know, obviously both of you. I think it's a very difficult job because you take stances and, yeah, staying away from the comments is probably good for the psyche, but hard to do, I'm sure.

Alexis Bertholf (63:55 - 63:58)

Yeah. We gotta get you making content, Dennis.

Dennis Thankachan (63:59 - 64:02)

Yeah. Guess this is the start. Right? There he goes.

Alexis Bertholf (64:03 - 64:21)

So Dennis, we always close the show with one question. If you had a piece of advice for younger you, you who was just starting your journey, whether that was your first failing business or first building the company that you have now, what would that be?

Dennis Thankachan (64:23 - 65:10)

The number one piece of advice I would give myself and what I try to remind myself of today is follow your passion and don't care what other people think. And if you're nervous about what others think and you're questioning your passion, always lean into the passion and go harder at it. It's a reason to embrace the discomfort and the fear because if something isn't different or uncomfortable, it's not going to be interesting. And those are the areas where, you know, you may stray from the herd. So just, you know, don't be afraid to do that because that was the thing I was very afraid of when I was younger. You know, is this weird? Not everyone else is into this thing or does this thing. And always those things have been the threads that have been the best in my life to pull on.

Alexis Bertholf (65:11 - 65:21)

Mhmm. Wow. Love. Incredible. Well, if someone wants to find you after the show or learn more about Lightyear, where should they go?

Dennis Thankachan (65:22 - 65:33)

Check out lightyear.ai. And if you follow Lightyear on LinkedIn, it's at linkedin/lightyearai. We post a ton of content.

Alexis Bertholf (65:34 - 66:01)

Amazing. Sweet. Well, that is it for this episode of Life in Uptime. Huge thanks to our guest Dennis for sharing his journey and thanks to you for listening. If you guys enjoyed this conversation today, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. And if Dennis's story gave you something to think about, share it with a friend or a colleague who might need it. And until next time, keep learning, keep building and keep your uptime high.