How We’re Building Sunnyside w/ Steve Lloyd
Welcome to Journey to the Sunnyside, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and of course, your own mindful drinking journey. This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free fifteen day trial. I'm your host, Hartenbrook, published author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert. Today, we're pulling back the curtain so you can meet one of the key people behind what we're building at Sunnyside.
Speaker 1:Steve Lloyd is our chief product and technology officer, and before joining us, he spent a decade helping grow Strava into one of the world's most loved fitness platforms. In this episode, you'll hear what brought Steve to Sunnyside, what he's focused on behind the scenes, and how his passion for building meaningful products is shaping the future of Sunnyside. And if you've ever wondered who's working behind the scenes to help make your experience better, this one's for you. Okay, Steve. Thanks for coming on today.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Let's start here. Who are you? Who are you? And what do you want?
Speaker 1:Who are you? And what's your role here at Sunnyside?
Speaker 2:So I'm Steve. My role at Sunnyside is chief product and technology officer, and what that means is I'm responsible for product design and engineering. In short, the team that I support builds the product and experience, that Sunnyside members use every day.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And was there a specific moment when you came to Sunnyside and you're like, yep. This is the mission I wanna be part of?
Speaker 2:For me, the Sunnyside mission actually goes back to well before I joined the team. So I've been on the Sunnyside team for about a year and a half, but I've been a Sunnyside customer since 01/01/2022. And then my original introduction to Sunnyside, the mission, and the team was through signing the product as a customer and using it to help me curb what it become drinking habits that I was somewhat uncomfortable with.
Speaker 1:You know, I love that our team is so in tune with our users because many of the times, we are the user. And so we're building around things that we think would support us and also that we hear when talking to other people. Do you think that that gives you, like, a a competitive edge to build something that truly is impactful?
Speaker 2:I mean, I would say yes, but it also prevents challenges. I am one Sunnyside member. Oh, yes. Tens of thousands of customers who are using Sunnyside every single day. And one of the big challenges in consumer product, particularly if it's a product that, you know, the team is using themselves, is really making sure that we don't get too deep into what do I want to build for myself.
Speaker 2:And instead understand, like, what do Sunnyside customers really need? I got into consumer software because I love that feeling of creating something, giving it to someone else, letting them see it. Like, maybe it provides some value. I'm getting feedback on how to make it better. And so, like, while whereas, you know, I have a Sunnyside tracking streak of over thirteen hundred days.
Speaker 2:I have to check myself every time I think about building, like, what I want. And part of how I do that is spending as much time as possible talking to Sunnyside members, understanding the challenges they're going through, understanding what they want to see improved in the product, and then trying to find that through line of prioritizing things that will have the most impact overall on the SendTech community.
Speaker 1:Said like a true product engineer slash data scientist. And, you know, I have an entrepreneur background, and a lot of the times you can identify pain points that you actually have. However, I have to remind myself that I'm sort of a weirdo and that, like, most of the people that I would build for, there's very little of them. And and so, yes, talking to customers, finding out what they truly need is just such a good philosophy that this team brings on and that you bring on as well. And so that leads me into you said that you love creating products that truly change lives.
Speaker 1:How do you bring that mindset into the mindful drinking space?
Speaker 2:I mean, at the end of the day, like, what motivates me is hearing the feedback from our members, particularly our members who've been successful and feel like their lives have been transformed through Sunnyside. Like, I like, most of the feedback that tends to come in in the consumer product is critical feedback or feedback around bugs, opportunities for improvement. But we do have a number of members who send in their wins, send in their successes, send in their thanks for what Sunnyside has done to support them. And that is really what drives and motivates The ability to, again, like, use software, use all this modern technology to reach as many people as possible and help them make improvements in their lives. Like, Sunnyside members, like, we provide software.
Speaker 2:We provide coaching support. We provide services, but each member is the one making those change for themselves. And it's really, really awesome, at the end of the day, to play a little bit of a role in helping people have a positive impact on their health.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't think a lot of people realize how meaningful their feedback can be. And I think it's just natural. You know, for every bad experience somebody has, they go and tell 10 friends. For every good experience, it might tell one or two.
Speaker 1:And I think the same thing goes with giving feedback to what a lot of people think is just like a faceless company a lot of times. Like, they think they're just submitting it and not a real person maybe looking at it and actually thinking through it. But the truth is, at least here at Sunnyside, is that all the feedback is carefully looked at and discussed. And so if somebody was listening here and maybe they have a lot of things that maybe they'd like to pass on, but they never have, Like, what would you say to somebody, to a customer to say, like, this is how you should send some feedback to us. How how would you instruct them?
Speaker 2:I'd say first, we love to hear the feedback. We cannot get enough feedback from our members. Our entire product road map is grounded in the feedback we're hearing from members and how we think we can best improve the product to help support our members. Like and just it's actually very simple at Sunny Side. If you have text messages set up, just send a text to Sunny Side with your feedback.
Speaker 2:That's all you need to do. And our coaching team funnels that through you so the product team has eyes on it. We are looking at those messages every day. I'm seeing the themes. If we send surveys, fill out the survey.
Speaker 2:We use that information to help understand how to build a better product and experience. I noticed sometimes, yes, it takes a little bit of effort or a little bit of work to do that, but don't hesitate. And don't hesitate if there's things you don't like. We have a very, very fixed skin. Our product leaders have to have fixed skin to hear all the feedback coming in from customers.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it's hard. We built something. We're excited about it. We're proud of it. And maybe it's either crickets or complaints or things like that, but that is how we make things better and how we stay in touch with customers.
Speaker 2:So just go to Sunnyside and your text messages. Send us feedback.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And something you said there is just product is hard. Like, it really is hard to get it right, especially right on the first go. And a lot of times, you put so much effort into something that never really goes anywhere. And so when a feature gets launched and it's really great, what a lot of people don't realize is there was so much work behind that and a lot of failures probably.
Speaker 1:And and to anybody listening, although, by the way, the podcast is a product in itself. So send me feedback. Send me critical, you know, notes. I'm okay with that too. I have thick skin.
Speaker 1:I wanna make this the best and most supportive podcast as well. So how do you make sure that you're you know, you get into all these features a lot of times. How do you make sure the bigger mission stays visible even when you're deep into product strategy and road maps?
Speaker 2:A lot of how we do that as a team internally, again, is ensuring that we are staying focused on our customers. I love it when we have an interview with the customer, and we'll take snippets of it and share it with the team. Even having engineers on the team who want to hear the feedback directly from customers, who want to serve and support our customers. When I joined the Sunnyside team a year and a half ago, one of the things I felt immediately is the sense of everyone is aligned on the mission. Every single member of the Sunnyside team is here in part because of that how they care about the mission, and it's different for every individual.
Speaker 2:It may be a family history. It may be their own challenges with alcohol. It may be their desire to do good for others. I mean, we have members who don't drink at all, who still have that desire to help Sunnyside members moderate and cut back. And staying focused on the customer, like, I think helps when we're in the day to day minutiae of, like, a technical weedy detail.
Speaker 2:And it may feel like, do we really wanna spend two days getting this thing just right when it's almost good enough right now? And the answer is generally yes because we care about delivering the best possible experience to our members. And that's focus on our members is what helps in sometimes in a really challenging scenarios. We have had features we've been working on where we run into a technical challenge, and what we thought would take a week ends up taking two weeks, three weeks to get through. But our engineers tend to come out the other side of it proud of what they did because they care about, like, that end experience they're building, not the minute technical details along the way.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit because, you know, I I interviewed Ian a few times. I've had Nick on the show, but I think that that it's a different sort of feedback to come from somebody that net isn't necessarily the founder. So, you know, as far as, like, working at Sunnyside coming from, like, a world class app before you did this at Strava and stepping into this, like, what's it like working at Sunnyside? What's it like, you know, what's the team like? Like, I think that opening the curtain a little bit and letting people see, what the people are like, really makes a difference on how you perceive the product.
Speaker 2:Starting with Nick and Ian, because they probably wouldn't give this type of phrase to themselves when you talk to them. Like, the founders of Sunnyside embody the mission, and that is something that permeates down in the team into everything that we do. And in any company, like, CEO just threw what they choose to focus on and how they speak on a daily basis has an incredible power to influence the team's mindset and what the team stays focused on. And so and so it's been relatively easy for me as someone who brings, like, a customer centric product background to, like, lean into that at Sunnyside because of how much the founders embrace it. And if anything, I felt empowered to really, like, lead and demonstrate different ways of getting even closer connection to our customers in how we understand what to build and how we evaluate our success, because they actually want to see that in the business themselves.
Speaker 2:So it's been really awesome to work with Nick and Ian as founders in that regard. And then down into the team, again, every member of the team, they, in part found Sunnyside because of the mission itself. And, yes, for a software engineer, it's a software engineering role. For a product designer, it's a product design role. But it still comes back to, like, what are we trying to achieve?
Speaker 2:Like, what type of impact are we trying to create in the world? And how many people out there do we believe that we can actually help in some way if we can just reach them and convince them that Sunnyside might play a valuable role in their life?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I mean, that's the exactly the the experience I've had. You know? We can do a little rah rah around Ian and Nick because they are authentic, and they are both humble. And they do I've worked for, you know, two years very closely with Ian.
Speaker 1:And if there's one thing that I know is that he cares deeply about the mission. He cares about all of our users, and he cares very much about the team. And so, I mean, if there's one way to describe him, it's just that these are good guys and women on this team. They care about users. And, you know, I went through you might be familiar because you're a tech guy.
Speaker 1:I went through Techstars and one which is a tech accelerator with lots of VCs and fundraising, but their overall, mission statement is give first. And I really feel like that could be applied, and I'm reminded constantly that, the team really cares in that give first mentality. And most people, everyone has a direct relationship, whether indirectly or directly through family or their own experience around alcohol and finding solutions that are actually sustainable and meaningful. And there's a connection there, a deeper emotional connection behind the mission. So I I'm glad to have you here that for us to be able to sort of bring that out because it doesn't it well, first of all, we just talked about ourselves all the time, that would come across a different way.
Speaker 1:But every now and then, I think it's good to say, hey. We care, and this is who's behind everything that you use. So speaking of that, take me behind the scenes a little bit. Like, what's something that the product team has been tackling recently that pushes you and and the team to grow?
Speaker 2:So I'm really excited actually this week. We are launching Insights in our progress experience on Sunny Side. And what's really awesome about it, it was a technically challenged problem that we actually think is going to really help some of our members understand their progress over time in a different way. And what we're doing with it is on an annual basis and a monthly basis, actually showing, like, drinks or dry days, how they are like, the number that is going up throughout the year. And for many of our members, drinks is the thing they're looking to reduce over time.
Speaker 2:Dry days is something they're looking to go up over time. But finding the right comparison points. For newer members, it's a comparison to that baseline before you started Sunnyside. One of my own experiences with Sunnyside members that I know many members of our community have is in the day to day, sometimes it can feel bad because maybe you didn't hit your plan. Maybe you had a plan dry day.
Speaker 2:You ended up for some reason. It just happens to me all the time. Social situation I didn't know about, and I decide, you know, I'm not gonna stick with that dry day. I'm gonna have a drink. On the next day, don't feel great about it.
Speaker 2:It's like that was a planned dry day. But to be able to look back, how many breaks have I had in July this year versus last year? And even if I'm feeling bad about the moment to realize I'm actually improving on a long term, like, I'm actually cutting back over time from year to year, even if in the moment doesn't feel great, and that ability to help remember zoom out. Look at the bigger picture. The day to day is often really, really hard, but that improvement over a long period of time is so rewarding to see.
Speaker 2:And so helping our members see that comparisons to baseline for newer members, comparisons to last year for longer term members. I talked to one of our customers, and he said that every month, his goal is to have fewer drinks that month than he had the same month the year before. And it was so, like, fulfilling for me to be able to show him a design. We are working on exactly that, and we're gonna be able to deliver that to you. Because everyone's motivated in different ways, and they're, like, really find the ways to help people identify what motivates them, what helps them feel that sense of accomplishment, that sense of pride, so that when times are tough, it's easier to get through those tough times.
Speaker 1:So what made you what made you guys really focus on the pacing? Do were you guys having a lot of conversations with customers in that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think one of the real challenges in consumer product at any scale is triangulating all the feedback we're hearing from customers and trying to decide, like, what can we build that actually addresses a lot those problems? Oftentimes, customers will request a very specific view, a very specific slice of data. And even sometimes, like, two customers will suggest things that are complete conflict with each other. If we built this thing for one customer, it would actually make the product worse for someone else.
Speaker 2:But we kept hearing this theme of, like, help me understand how I'm doing in the bigger picture in the longer term. Not just to, like, is this week better than last week, but this year, have I actually, like, gotten to a point where I'm more mindful, where I am closer to achieving my long term goals than I was a year before. And the pacing we have explored so many different visual ways of looking at data, and we kept coming back to, like, pacing and showing this projection out to what is it gonna look like at the end of the year if the rest of the year looks like this year thus far, and how does that compare to where it was before? And internally, as we started to see, like, oh, like, maybe, like, the difference between three dry days this week and four dry days this week is really hard to reason about what that, you know, makes a difference. But you actually plot that out over course of the year and the total of number of dry days and see, like, oh, there's, like, these clean targets.
Speaker 2:Like, maybe it's 50 dry days or a 100 dry days or 200 dry days in a year. And to feel a sense of I'm on track for that totally changes what someone might be thinking in the moment of, like, should I have that drink today or not?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That makes total sense. I mean, it it it almost expands the peripheral so that you can see so much more in the impact. And, like, if we're gonna get into, like, the habit side of thing, like, I say things like your destiny is determined by your daily decisions so that you can kinda go beyond just, like, making the decision in in the moment. Or, like, I do a time travel where people imagine what if they didn't change in a year, five years, ten years, and if they did, what it would look like.
Speaker 1:But this actually gives you live feedback from your your habits currently.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's, I've I think it's really powerful to be able to help people see what the future could look like if they can keep, you know, the day to day approximately on track in terms of decision making. And I think that's really important. This is something part of why I joined Sunnyside as a customer, and part of why I was excited about joining the team was, like, the no judgment mindset that we try to bring to things. I, like, as a Sunnyside member, I miss my weekly plan more often than I hit my weekly plan.
Speaker 2:My weekly plan is, like, the aspirational version of me, and then the data tells us the real version of me. And, like, having to sit with that tension, like, actually helps me really, really empathize with our members. The idea of, like, the plan is there to help support you, but, like, it's okay to not hit that plan. And some of these, like, things we're working on to, like, zoom out in the product are really helping to get away from that mindset of, like, the goal is to hit every day precisely exactly as planned. No.
Speaker 2:The goal is to improve over a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. I love that vision. So let's talk about something else that you stepped in and came into Sunnyside. And since that day to now, what was the thing that you've probably pushed out that you or or revamped or whatever that you were involved with that you're you feel like had the biggest impact and you're most proud of?
Speaker 2:It's hard for me to point to one thing or one part of the experience. I think what I'm most proud of overall is helping the company as a whole and the team, like, level up from, like, a, like, strong customer centric company to even more stronger, even more customer centric. I am as proud of little changes we've made, like a setting so you can update your average drink cost so that our metrics about how much money you're saving are more relevant to you. When I joined Summyside, everyone's average drink cost was $8. Some member members who go out to expensive bars, expensive cocktails go above that.
Speaker 2:Some members who are, you know, purchasing alcohol more economically, drinking at home, like, they're below that. And just simple little things to make that cost savings more meaningful to everyone. It's a setting. Like, no one in product gets, like, fired up and excited. We're gonna deliver a delightful new setting.
Speaker 2:Like, that's not how people think about it. They're trying to think about the shiny new things. But for me, it's much more of, like, are we taking the critical feedback themes and over time, solving for as many of them as possible, driving them down? And so, like, on the one end, there's notification preferences. We added a push only mode.
Speaker 2:So our members who don't like text messages, we now can fulfill a promise in push only mode of we will only text them if they text us for for coaching support or to track drinks, but they won't just get text notifications because it's set for push. All the way to our progress tab, which has been one of the biggest areas we've completely reimagined and redesigned. Like, proud of what we've done there too to just deliver more members ways of finding the like, meaningful ways to look at their own data that helps motivate them, that helps drive their own accountability, that helps drive their own ability to change habits over time. So I I apologize, like, I can't pick just one. I don't have like a favorite thing that we've done.
Speaker 2:But overall, I think, like, what I'm most proud of in terms of my contribution to Sunnyside is just helping the team get better and better and better. It, like, truly understand their customers so we can deliver the best possible experiences to them.
Speaker 1:Well, the motivation is incredible, and no apology necessary. It sounds like I gave you a loaded question from somebody that doesn't understand product enough to be able to ask it. So, okay. So this is a final question, and then we're gonna do, like, a little lightning round here. But, and you may have answered this already with the pacing, but is there anything coming up that has you fired up, or that you'd like to talk about that's, like, in the road map ahead?
Speaker 2:Samantha, I always have to be careful, to signal the future road map just because it is hard to ever predict exactly what's going to arrive when. But in a general theme that we're looking at right now that I'm excited about is the notion of just, like, making it easier on a day to day basis for our members to connect through and find either the support that they need, different ways to engage with the community. The tracking tab, the Sunnyside app today is very oriented around plus minus strengths, add notes, like very functional utility use cases. And we see a lot of opportunity to provide more personal level of support to our members. That could be recommending the resources, the readings, the videos that are most relevant to what they're experiencing right now.
Speaker 2:We hear a lot of feedback that's almost like we like, a member will say, I wish Sunnyside took to figure out what I'm struggling with right now and reach out to me with advice or reach out to me with help. And we wanna get better and better about doing that. So the ability through resources, it could be connecting someone into a conversation in the community that's particularly relevant to what they're experiencing right now or things they've talked about before. We have this, like, really rich product experience, but it's not always easy to help people guide their way through it and find what is most interesting to them. And so I think we have a big opportunity through the personalization models that we're building on the back end to do a much better job of identifying what type of support someone needs at any moment, when they may wanna celebrate a win.
Speaker 2:The idea of, like, not just support in times of need, but, like, helping them celebrate, helping them feel that, like, sense of accomplishment when things are going well. And so without getting any sort of, like, this is gonna be released at this point in time, I think our members can expect in the second half of the year a much richer and more personalized way of helping them, like, feel support from Sunnyside and connecting them into parts of the experience, that are most meaningful to them at any point in time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I love that answer. Okay. So let's do the lightning round now. Okay.
Speaker 1:First question. Keeping in mind that we are mindful drinkers, so it can be whichever one. What's your go to drink right now? Nonalcoholic or alcoholic?
Speaker 2:Can I give one of each? Sure. So my go to on the alcoholic side, I I enjoy craft beer. I currently am in Door County, Wisconsin. And there's a brewery called Peach Barn, which makes an incredible peach sour.
Speaker 2:They actually get the peaches from Colorado. They brew them in Madison, Wisconsin, and then they have a tap house up here in Door County, and the peach sour is incredible. So that's the alcoholic side. On the nonalcoholic side, I have explored a lot of nonalcoholics, and I almost feel like some of the mass produced stuff with some of my favorite. So nonalcoholic Stella, by my measure, has the, like, smallest taste difference between alcoholic and nonalcoholic of the EV and ABR I've tried.
Speaker 1:I literally had one last night, and I bought it for the first time last week, and I thought the same. I thought it was really good. And it's like the style of beer that I like. So I'm with you on that. And funny note is that the other day I bought, I won't say the name, but I bought an IPA NA, and I drink it.
Speaker 1:And I was like, you know what? I hate IPA. I only drink it because it had high high alcohol content. So without without the alcohol, why am I drinking this? And I have a whole theory that I don't think anybody really likes IPA, but unless because of the high APV.
Speaker 1:But, anyways okay. Favorite way to recharge or reset?
Speaker 2:Physical fitness. I I spent ten years of my career at Strava for a reason. I love cycling. I love running, even weightlifting. For me, like, physic physical health is mental health.
Speaker 2:And so when I'm stressed, need to recharge. I generally look for some kind of physical activity to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right there with you. And, if you can believe it, you were meditating right there with me with your product because my meditation is, believe it or not, riding down a steep hill on a mountain bike because it's the only thing I can think about is the trail in front of me. Rest of the thoughts have to go away. Alright.
Speaker 1:A habit or product you're currently loving?
Speaker 2:So I've been huge music fan, piano player, for all my life. I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to music. And there's an album by a band called Chaim called I Quit, which is definitely my summer album right now. It's three sisters. They have guitar licks that, like, call back to, like, Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones.
Speaker 2:That's just really awesome band that we'll be right now.
Speaker 1:Very cool. I'm thinking about on the music side trying for the first instrument that I played as an adult. I've been looking at the handpan. Have you ever tried that? No.
Speaker 1:So if anybody's listening and has, email me about it. Mike@Sunnyside.co. It seems neat because it's a percussion that can carry it an entire, like, tune without other instruments. So it seems interesting. It's a little bit, maybe it's a hippie side of me.
Speaker 1:Whatever. Okay. This is the last one. What keeps you inspired day to day?
Speaker 2:I think more than anything else, just the advances in technology and in the past few years, AI. I'm inspired by thinking about, like, what technology can deliver to, like, help make people's lives better. Like, that's why I'm at Sunnyside. That's why I was at Strava before. And technology is becoming so powerful in terms of what it can do.
Speaker 2:And at the same time, there's a just because you can't do it doesn't mean you should with technology. Right. It's like what really keeps me inspired is thinking about all these technical capabilities that are out there and emerging and how they can be used to deliver products and experiences that help people improve their lives.
Speaker 1:I love it. Alright. This has been incredible. If there's one thing that you could say to any Sunnyside user that's listening right now, what would you say?
Speaker 2:I would love to hear your feedback. Our road map is grounded in your feedback. We are building for you. Send us feedback in any way. Just hop open pop open Sunnyside texts.
Speaker 2:Send us what you think. If you run into a bug, tell us so we can fix it. If there's something you'd like to see us do, tell us so that we can consider it in the future roadmap.
Speaker 1:This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free fifteen day trial.
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