My guest today is Rian van der Merwe, speaker, writer and responsible for Product at Postmark, which is part of Wildbit. Wildbit is an 18-year-old technology company whose software centers around taking the pain out of the development process and is used by over 100,000 companies globally. Prior to joining Wildbit, Rian has served senior product roles at top firms including eBay, Naspers, Jive Software, HealthSparq. Additionally, he is the creator and actively contributes to Elezea, a blog, and a newsletter for people who create technology products. Find Rian Online: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rianvdm Twitter: www.twitter.com/RianVDM Website: www.wildbit.com Find Jamin Online: Email: jamin@happymr.instawp.xyz LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil Find Us Online: Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp Website: www.happymr.com This Episode’s Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by HubUx. HubUx reduces project management costs by 90%. Think of HubUx as your personal AI project manager, taking care of all your recruitment and interview coordination needs in the background. The platform connects you with the right providers and sample based on your research and project needs. For more information, please visit HubUx.com. [00:00] On Episode 233, I'm interviewing Rian van der Merwe, responsible for product at Postmark, but first a word from our sponsor. [00:10] This episode is brought to you by HubUx. HubUx is a productivity tool for qualitative research. It creates a seamless workflow across your tools and team. Originally, came up with the idea as I was listening to research professionals in both the quant and qual space complain about and articulate the pain, I guess more succinctly, around managing qualitative research. The one big problem with qualitative is it’s synchronous in nature, and it requires 100% of the attention of the respondent. This creates a big barrier, and, I believe, a tremendous opportunity inside of the marketplace.
My guest today is Rian van der Merwe, speaker, writer and responsible for Product at Postmark, which is part of Wildbit. Wildbit is an 18-year-old technology company whose software centers around taking the pain out of the development process and is used by over 100,000 companies globally. Prior to joining Wildbit, Rian has served senior product roles at top firms including eBay, Naspers, Jive Software, HealthSparq. Additionally, he is the creator and actively contributes to Elezea, a blog, and a newsletter for people who create technology products.
Find Rian Online:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rianvdm
Twitter: www.twitter.com/RianVDM
Website: www.wildbit.com
Find Jamin Online:
Email: jamin@happymr.instawp.xyz
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil
Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil
Find Us Online:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch
Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp
Website: www.happymr.com
This Episode’s Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by HubUx. HubUx reduces project management costs by 90%. Think of HubUx as your personal AI project manager, taking care of all your recruitment and interview coordination needs in the background. The platform connects you with the right providers and sample based on your research and project needs. For more information, please visit HubUx.com.
[00:00]
On Episode 233, I'm interviewing Rian van der Merwe, responsible for product at Postmark, but first a word from our sponsor. [00:10]
This episode is brought to you by HubUx. HubUx is a productivity tool for qualitative research. It creates a seamless workflow across your tools and team. Originally, came up with the idea as I was listening to research professionals in both the quant and qual space complain about and articulate the pain, I guess more succinctly, around managing qualitative research. The one big problem with qualitative is it’s synchronous in nature, and it requires 100% of the attention of the respondent. This creates a big barrier, and, I believe, a tremendous opportunity inside of the marketplace. So what we do is we take the tools that you use; we integrate them into a work flow so that, ultimately, you enter in your project details, that is, who it is that you want to talk to, when you want to talk to them, whether it’s a focus group, in-person, or virtual or IDI’s or ethnos; and we connect you to those right people in the times that you want to have those conversations or connections – Push-Button Qualitative Insights, HubUx. If you have any questions, reach out to me directly. I would appreciate it. Jamin@HubUx.com
[01:35]
Hi, I'm Jamin Brazil and you're listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. My guest today is Rian van der Merwe, a speaker, writer and responsible for product at Postmark, which is part of Wildbit. Rian, thank you very much for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast today.
[01:54]
Thanks, Jamin. Good to talk to you again after about a decade.
[01:58]
It has literally been a decade since I've seen your face. I have been following you on social. You had a book release a couple of years ago, which got a lot of publicity, and I just ordered a copy of it, another copy of that actually. Lost my other one. Before we jump into that, I'd like to start a little bit with your background. Tell us about your parents and how they have informed your career.
[02:22]
Sure. So, I grew up in South Africa. I live in Portland now, but I've lived in a bunch of places up to this point. So, I grew up in a little town called Stellenbosch, which is about 45 minutes outside of Cape Town. It's in wine country. I've lived in many places and I still believe that's the most beautiful town in the world. And I don't think that's even remotely biased. We should put a photo in the show notes so people can decide. So I grew up there,