Mat Ellis is the CTO and co-founder of Kismet. Mark called him with an idea. Mat said yes. That is still, he says, essentially how their relationship works.

In this episode, Mat talks about his dream job at Lockheed Martin, riding motorbikes through Vietnam, a year in Shanghai where his favourite meal was Japanese, and how a niche coding language called Elixir ended up connecting him to Xplor.

He also has a lot to say about how to build a team, why constraints make better products, what it means to be responsible for an outcome not just a piece of code, and why everything in life is luck - and that's a really good thing.

In this episode they cover:

•  Granddad's computer and the game Flight Simulator 

•  The only subject he ever aced: the high school software course that changed his path

•  Bad at maths, great at software: working backwards from the outcome

•  Building a Mat-shaped engineering team

•  Dream job at Lockheed Martin

•  Small teams do more: the thesis Mat tested at Kismet

•  Responsible for the outcome not just the code

•  Constraints make better products: Steve Jobs and the independent theatre analogy

•  Goals as identity: standards not finish lines

•  CTO by accident: doing what you're good at until it stops working

•  Remove the ceiling: Whiplash, Dr. Robbie and how leaders accidentally limit people

•  Luck: everything is luck and that's why you can't be anything but humble

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