Armon Dadgar - Co-founder of HashiCorp

**Armon Dadgar** (0:00)
It's never a question of the other person's motive or the question of the other person's, you know, honesty or whatever. It's like, hey, what data points do you have that I'm not considering?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
The Founder Formula brings you in behind the curtains and inside the minds of today's brave executives at the most future-leaning startups.
Each interview will feature a transformative leader who's behind the wheel at a fast-paced and innovative tech firm. They'll give you an insider's look at how companies are envisioned, created and scaled. We hope you're ready. Let's get into the show.

**Todd Galina** (0:41)
Hey everybody, welcome back for another episode of The Founder Formula. My name is Todd Galina, and with me is the Chief Marketing Officer here at Trace3, Sandy Salty.

**Sandy Salty** (0:49)
Hey Todd.

**Todd Galina** (0:50)
How's it going?

**Sandy Salty** (0:51)
It's good, I'm happy to be here again.

**Todd Galina** (0:53)
We are super excited. Today's a big interview. We got a whopper.

**Sandy Salty** (0:57)
We do, HashiCorp.

**Todd Galina** (0:58)
Yep, they are super exciting. And can we talk to their founder?

**Sandy Salty** (1:03)
Yeah, they've got an amazing brand and kind of the emerging tech space.
But before we get to that, I'd like to take over for just one minute. Are you okay with that, Todd?

**Todd Galina** (1:12)
You are the co-host.

**Sandy Salty** (1:13)
Sweet. Okay, so I wanna talk about one of my favorite topics.

**Todd Galina** (1:16)
Which is your dog.

**Sandy Salty** (1:17)
Not my dog. It actually happens to be you. Let's talk about you for a minute.
I know this is gonna be excruciatingly painful for you, but I get the sense that our listeners hear your amazing voice day in and day out. And maybe when I get to know a little bit more about Todd Galina.

**Todd Galina** (1:35)
I don't think that is happening at all. They wanna hear from founders.

**Sandy Salty** (1:41)
Okay, so I'm just gonna keep going. So Todd, you and I get to work together almost every day, and it's pretty cool. Like this is sort of like what you do by day. Most people don't realize that there's another site to Todd Galina, which is an entrepreneur yourself and really an amazing world-class animator.
Ladies and gentlemen, he's already very uncomfortable.

**Todd Galina** (2:15)
So, okay, so what you're talking about is some of the background in animation work that I do outside of my awesome, awesome job here at Trace 3 But, you know, yeah, so I am, yeah, I have a background in Flash animation, which is soon became Animate, which is an Adobe product.
But recently, yeah, I've been launching and pitching an animated series, which has been super duper fun. It's been a big, big lifelong dream of mine. I tell people I've only had three good ideas in my entire life.
One of them was a super great idea I had for a movie. And so I had written it all down. And then one day I'm in the movie theater and I take my son to go watch this movie called Chronicle. So for those of you who've never heard of it, go check it out. But I watched that whole movie and I was like, oh my gosh, like that was literally my idea.
And someone else did it. I'm taking too long to like get my great ideas out there. And all my ideas are around like TV shows, or movies, or series, or animated series. So in a panic, I really started working in earnest on my second idea, which is this show that's called Force Five. And we've been super excited. I partnered with a good friend of mine who's an animation producer for Cartoon Network. He and I got together and he really, we complimented each other. In this interview we're gonna be having with HashiCorp, there's a conversation about complimentary relationships.
And I think that's key when you do anything. So he and I worked really well together, and we were able to put together a test reel, and we've been able to pitch to all sorts of folks, including DreamWorks and Nickelodeon and CBS. So it's been fun. It's been a big journey. We don't know where it's gonna end up, but it's certainly been a blast.

**Sandy Salty** (4:02)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I've seen some of the design, and I'm familiar with the concept, and it is super, uber fun.
The amazing thing is I don't think most people realize that behind animation is a real business. It's a competitive business and a super rigorous business with a lot of money behind it.

**Todd Galina** (4:23)