Lifelong Artist (http://www.c-hammer.com) serial entrepreneur, board member, public speaker and technology executive with a career spanning 30 years including leading digital transformations and the creation of Direct to Consumer businesses; with influential roles at Nike, AppNexus and Wayfair. Notably today I am the Chief Executive Officer for Vala-AI and President of BBBSIC (Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Island County) amongst other roles.

Key Points

[03:10] Young entrepreneur sells origami throwing stars, trouble ensues.

[07:05] Switched between big companies and smaller start-ups.

[10:42] Big Brother of the Year, showing gratitude.

[14:33] Confidence amid self-doubt; value in options.

[17:07] Finding trustworthy friends is essential for humans.

Find Hammer Online

https://vala-ai.com

https://techtastic.tech

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chammer1/

https://c-hammer.com/

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Transcript Provided By CastMagic.io

Seth [00:00:00]:
Entrepreneur’s Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, so the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs, how we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneur’s Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneur’s Enigma podcast.

Seth [00:00:35]:
I’m as always Seth, your host. Today, I have Christian Hammer who goes by Hammer. But that’s I think he’s got one of the coolest names, Christian Hammer. Like, think about that. That’s just it’s a it’s a cool name. And, yeah, Christian is the CEO and founder of Vala AI. He is the president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Island County. He lives on an island in This is out of Seattle.

Seth [00:01:04]:
He’s not doctor No. He’s not evil. He says he’s a very sweet guy. He has a podcast that I was on called Techtastic. It was a lot of fun. We met via I think we met via PodMatch, which is a really cool service pairing up guests and hosts and all that stuff. And he’s at the height of the AI revolution now. He’s worked for companies like Nike and I mean, Like, big name keep like, big name he the guy knows his stuff.

Seth [00:01:32]:
Let’s just assume. Like, he’s been through the corporate rigmarole. He does his own thing. He’s a very talented artist that likes to draw crabs, I’ve noticed on his website, cdashhammer.com and and and kois and other stuff. I think the last 3 were crabs. So let’s bring hammer in here. How’s it going, buddy?

Hammer [00:01:52]:
Seth, lovely to be here, man. Yeah. The last 4, I think, were crab. And, actually, there’s another one I just finished with crabs on it too, but, you know, it’s a thing.

Seth [00:02:01]:
It’s a thing. I mean, you’re you’re on the coast, so what do you have? Crabs.

Hammer [00:02:04]:
Yeah. I’m on an island. They have a Dungeness Crab Festival here. So, actually, it it happened because somebody looked at some of my sketchbook weirds, And they’re like, man, you should draw crabs. Crabs sell. And I was like, well, I don’t wanna draw crabs because they sell, but crabs are creepy and I wanna draw those. So I started drawing Watson. Yeah.

Seth [00:02:23]:
That’s so funny. That’s hilarious. So you’ve worked for big companies and I have. And you’ve moved moved your way up in big companies And you’ve done a lot of things. You if anyone says you’re bored, it would be, not true, because I think you keep yourself plenty busy. So much but you are not doctor. No. You’re not evil.

Seth [00:02:44]:
At least I don’t think you have a, like, a missile base in your backyard or anything like that, and bonds wanna come get you or anything like that. So

Hammer [00:02:50]:
Yeah. No comment. Yeah.

Seth [00:02:51]:
No comment. Oh, there we go. Hey. Hey. Hey.

Hammer [00:02:55]:
And and the

Seth [00:02:55]:
answer to your podcast is really good too. So I really enjoy that. So Thank you, Andrew. On it. So how did this all get started? Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur? Have you always just been into technology? Like, what’s the origin story of Hammer here?

Hammer [00:03:10]:
The origin story now, see, this is where we get back into being a super villain again. Right? Uh-oh. So when I was really young, my parents will tell a story and actually my brother tells it best, but, I was in daycare And so, you know, whatever that age is. And, I got I I learned how to make the origami throwing stars and some other origami things, and kids Kids started paying me for them like their lunch money. And, I started paying other kids to make them for me, made a little catalog, got other kids selling for me. I’ve actually had set up it Wasn’t just the daycare office center I was in. It was the elementary schools and stuff that were around the area. We had a little distribution network going on and, got in trouble for it.

Hammer [00:03:50]:
Like, they were, like, quit you can’t sell stuff to other kids like that. That’s, you know, you’re you’re they they don’t have money for milk or lunch or whatever. But I did pivot right away. Like they said, you can’t sell. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t charge to teach them how to do it. So we started doing that next. But I I kinda remember it, you know, but when I don’t know how old I was. I was probably in high school When I really got into computers, the the first time I really got to sit down with 1 of the 4th grade, and you got to be like, The the computer was a new thing.

Hammer [00:04:23]:
You know, this weird guy would come in with a cart and the computer would be on it. And, you know, like, The they’d let us have access to it, and so I’m you know, first, I was playing, like, Oregon Trail like every other kid in my generation. And then I was, like, wait, You can do things. You can make this do things. All you have to do is learn this, like, programming language. That seems pretty cool. And, Pretty quickly got to feel like I was a wizard of this new world, this this this world that only existed in the computer. I could create magic That others couldn’t, and that that arcane knowledge and that, like, that power that came from being a wizard was really, you know, stimulating, we’ll say.

Seth [00:05:02]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:05:04]:
And in high school, I I started really thinking about what that would mean. Now this was before, the Internet existed in its current form, although worldwide web existed. The Internet sorry. The worldwide web did not exist. The Internet did. We had

Seth [00:05:18]:
Oh, the Internet’s been really wild. The Internet’s way older than you. Yeah. Exactly. Internet, maybe after you dial into just a system kinda thing. Yeah.

Hammer [00:05:26]:
Yeah. You’d tilt that into somebody’s box or you do whatever you were and And I was doing some stuff then. I was writing Pearl CGI applications for you know, and getting people who are paying me to do it. So I was getting ready to go university, and I thought I was gonna go into the software, like, package software, ship it on CD ROMs and discs kinda world.

Seth [00:05:45]:
Remember those? Yeah.

Hammer [00:05:47]:
Yeah. And, so that’s what I prepared for, but I also didn’t think that was a real job. It because That whole wizard thing, like, I you know, we were we were having fun with it. It was a game. I really thought it was something I would continue to do as Hobby, maybe do some little side plans, freelance stuff, but it would be adjacent to my career. And my career was gonna be as an architect. Not a software architect, a designed to build that.

Seth [00:06:15]:
Drafting architect, like like, I’m paying stuff. Yeah.

Hammer [00:06:20]:
Yeah. Exactly. But, thankfully, I was at university exactly the right time. Mosaic browser came into the world, the world wide web happened, And I was ready for it. I said, wait, there’s an opportunity now. So I started my first video

Seth [00:06:36]:
talk. Yeah.

Hammer [00:06:37]:
Yeah. Which was the DCAD Studios. I doubt there’s any reference to it left unless you go back on to, like, the deep web, you know, searches. But we did, Type 1 websites for companies that were asking for it. You know, the original Web one stuff. And 1. Kinda went from there. I did a bunch through 2001, I think, is when we closed the incubator, when the dot bomb, the time Employable hammer.

Hammer [00:07:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. But we had a couple good brides along the way, and, that’s when I jumped into the big companies Kind of in earnest. I I kinda gone back and forth. I I went to a big company and then I went to Banfield, the pet hospital, which was just starting up and we we had, like, I think there was, like, 50 locations when I joined, and when I left there was 2,000 when we sold the

Seth [00:07:29]:
That’s about growth.

Hammer [00:07:31]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We we sold it to, Mars, the candy bar company. Like, they they also own most pet food companies, And then did extremes, like, which was a bunch of vertically integrated, extreme sports online retailers.

Seth [00:07:48]:
It’s Yeah.

Hammer [00:07:49]:
Then went off to another big company. I think I went to Nike, and then I kinda went back and forth. And, I mean,

Seth [00:07:55]:
that’s fine.

Hammer [00:07:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. My resume, you look at my LinkedIn profile, it’s kinda nuts. It’s like, what the hell? He’s he’s over here. He’s doing something big, and then he’s doing, you know, he’s doing his own thing, and then he’s over here.

Seth [00:08:07]:
Yeah. One

Hammer [00:08:07]:
of my favorite startups.

Seth [00:08:08]:
I remember AppNexus. They were, like, a web 2.0 darling.

Hammer [00:08:13]:
Oh, yeah. Big ad tech platform, AppNexus.

Seth [00:08:17]:
Way far Not as

Hammer [00:08:18]:
big as Google. Yeah. Yeah. But we have we sold that in

Seth [00:08:22]:
New York. Going to their offices in New York for A web web 2.0 day where it look where it was like a scavenger hunt. You go between offices and get snacks and swag and stuff like that.

Hammer [00:08:33]:
Did you ever come to one of the AppNexus Razzles?

Seth [00:08:36]:
No, I didn’t.

Hammer [00:08:38]:
Oh, it’s too bad. Those were it was it was like demo day at, The Apple or or what? I can’t remember what they call them.

Seth [00:08:45]:
Yeah. I never I I it was it was on the West Coast. I never I’ve never been to the West Coast. I’ve been as far west as Wyoming. Gonna take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show.

Hammer [00:08:55]:
Yeah. Well, we did these big razzles in New York, and they were fantastic.

Seth [00:08:58]:
I never went. No. Oh, shocks.

Hammer [00:09:02]:
Yeah. Oh, well. I mean, I don’t think AT and T kept that tradition alive after they acquired us, but

Seth [00:09:08]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:09:09]:
Yeah. Did that, then then went to Wayfair through their big growth phase.

Seth [00:09:15]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:09:17]:
It was pulled away by IBM and AP Mueller Maersk for their joint venture called TradeLens. We shut that down because it was, there’s a long story there, but ultimately, it’s part of Maersk today. And then, started on started on the new one, which is Vola AI, which has been a blast so far, and we’re on a great trajectory already.

Seth [00:09:39]:
Is it Vala AI? You’re you’re essentially trying to automate software development with AI, which is I really need. Yeah. We We were. I think everything again.

Hammer [00:09:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I think that that that was a it’s still a Decent description of what we’re doing. We’re really automating technical operations. Oh. It’s all this cancer. Yeah. All this Stuff that happens in a in a large organ a large organization with a lot of technology that kinda gets left to the sidelines that nobody really wants to deal with.

Seth [00:10:13]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:10:13]:
Like, dependency management and upgrades, your superiority, passion, and security. We’ll get to that

Seth [00:10:17]:
we’ll get to that at some point. We’ll get to that at some point kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Hammer [00:10:21]:
We automate all that, so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Seth [00:10:24]:
Oh, that’s great. So you found a niche, you’re not gonna, like, piss people off in. That’s awesome.

Hammer [00:10:28]:
That’s right. And, yeah, we have people saying, please give me not, please keep the hell out. Yeah.

Seth [00:10:33]:
Please don’t. Please. Please. Exactly. That’s awesome. And then you’re also doing the Big Brothers Big Sisters, which is really good, giving back to kids who need it. So that’s fantastic.

Hammer [00:10:42]:
It was the Big Brother of the Year. I’ve got a thing over there about it in 2013. And, for me, that I mean, I I love to talk about Big Brothers because it’s Such a great program. I I was I wasn’t raised wealthy or anything. I was raised, like, Lower middle class and then moving into, like, middle middle class. And so I had my I had parents with strong work ethic that demonstrated all the time. And so For me, the the view of the world was if you just put in enough, if you just try hard enough, you’re gonna make something for yourself. Yeah.

Hammer [00:11:17]:
Because that was my That was the world I saw. That was the reality for me. Right?

Seth [00:11:22]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:11:23]:
Absolutely. My wife and I didn’t have kids, chose not to. And when there was a point, I don’t know how old I was, but, there was a point where she could tell I was missing something about that That, helping a younger person find a direction in life Yeah.

Seth [00:11:40]:
You don’t wanna keep them. You don’t wanna be stuck with them. You wanna help them out. Exactly.

Hammer [00:11:43]:
That’s right. That’s right. And so she talked me into, becoming a big brother and, that was a big eye opener. It, you know, My little was from a part of town that I would not have gone into before that point in time. It would have been scary.

Seth [00:12:01]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:12:01]:
He came from a A background with a totally different perspective, like, his

Seth [00:12:06]:
They taught you as they taught you as much as they taught you as much as he taught them.

Hammer [00:12:10]:
I think he taught me more because he actually he, you know, that whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that I was raised with It’s complete fucking bullshit. Sorry for the language. Right?

Seth [00:12:22]:
Oh, it’s fine. Go for all these baseballs. I got here, but it is. Yeah.

Hammer [00:12:26]:
Yeah. I mean, stand here, grab a hold of your boots, and lift yourself off the ground. Good luck with that.

Seth [00:12:31]:
Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes everything’s against you. You just can’t.

Hammer [00:12:35]:
Yeah. And if you come from a perspective of my dad’s in prison my entire life, my mom’s, you know, on disability, my brother’s now in prison, my younger sisters are, like, Running the streets, stuff like that. If you come from that, and the only thing that you’ve ever seen that is success is dealing drugs on the corner because that’s where somebody gets some money, How the hell are you ever going to

Seth [00:12:55]:
how are you gonna find someone else? My bootstraps exactly.

Hammer [00:12:59]:
Right. Your bootstraps don’t even exist.

Seth [00:13:01]:
You don’t

Hammer [00:13:02]:
yeah. Mhmm. So it That’s great. Opened my eyes to that. But Isaac, went off to, he got a full ride scholarship to Lehigh University along with my brothers.

Seth [00:13:14]:
Yeah.

Hammer [00:13:14]:
Yeah. Ended up getting a PhD in, I don’t remember what the heck it it’s about Programming life to do things we wanted to do, but as a PhD from the University of Chicago in that, Brilliant kid, but because of his

Seth [00:13:32]:
coming to

Hammer [00:13:32]:
my house for the first time, right, and seeing a new perspective and having that that person that he could ask questions of was huge, huge for him, but man, it taught me so much more about the world than I knew.

Seth [00:13:44]:
That’s awesome. So what in your mind is the best thing about being an entrepreneur? Because if you’ve done entrepreneur, you’ve done an extrepreneur, extrepreneur. Always the entrepreneur. You’re always an entrepreneur. If ever, like, you can move it all over the damn place. What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur in your mind?

Hammer [00:13:59]:
You’re taking a bet on yourself. You’re not, you know, taking a bet on a team, somebody else’s idea about somebody else’s Plan, it’s it’s fully on you, and it is your chance to go and prove to the world that that’s what you need. But for me, it’s about proving to myself that, yeah, I can do this. I can I can build that thing? I can I can solve that problem? I can make the world a better place in this way.

Seth [00:14:23]:
That’s awesome.

Hammer [00:14:25]:
Yeah. So this is the flip side.

Seth [00:14:28]:
You know, what’s on the flip side? What keeps you up at night? Oh, man. Entrepreneur.

Hammer [00:14:33]:
Am I like, I think there’s a misperception, and if if you’ve done this a bunch of times that you built some confidence and that you You know exactly what you’re doing and I have some confidence. I do think I know mostly what I’m doing, but there’s there’s a lot of self doubt that that comes into every decision you make. Because sometimes, I mean, I’m a big proponent of don’t make a decision you don’t have to make. Wait if you can. Right? And trying to create a situation in where optionality maintains. But sometimes you can’t. Sometimes a door can’t be left open. You’ve gotta close it.

Hammer [00:15:09]:
Yeah. And when you hit those moments and hit those decisions, there’s an I don’t know anybody that doesn’t have self doubt. Did I make the right call there? Right? Mhmm. That’s the type of thing that usually keeps me up. Did I make the right call there? Maybe it’s a hiring decision, maybe it’s Product decision, maybe it’s a market go to market decision, it doesn’t matter. It’s things like that. Currently Yeah. It’s, Like, one of the pivots we made, I think, is brilliant, but it’s also, like, Puts us in the firing line of some really large companies.

Hammer [00:15:44]:
And that, you know, that’s the thing. Like, how Are are we going fast enough that we’re gonna stay ahead of their development? You know, are we are we gonna piss them off in such a way that they’re gonna come after us versus, you know, Partner and engage with us. Right? So it’s it’s that type of thing right now. Yeah.

Seth [00:16:03]:
So then why is the most important go ahead.

Hammer [00:16:06]:
Jose, generally speaking, though, it’s that I’m gonna leave this world, and it won’t be any better for me having been here. Like, you’re you You only get the scorecard.

Seth [00:16:14]:
You’ve done with Isaac alone has made it so you made it left it better than it was before, because you’ve you know, helping out the kid along. He’s not having the PhD for crying out loud. That’s pretty that’s pretty

Hammer [00:16:24]:
big win. Enough. Yeah.

Seth [00:16:26]:
That’s a pretty big win. I mean, like, going from, like, you know, Not being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and all that bullshit, to being able to literally pull yourself up by your bull pull pull yourself up Buy a bootstraps with some help from Hammer here, and having the motivation and having the the the stableness of having someone in your life that isn’t going through turmoil. I mean, that’s huge.

Hammer [00:16:51]:
And that it’s how can you do more of that? That’s why I became like, got involved with program further and, and, you know, try to, to grow that program, so.

Seth [00:17:00]:
It’s it’s great. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Hammer [00:17:07]:
I think your friends, like, you know, find people that you you trust. You You don’t have to trust an implicitly on absolutely everything, but finding that peep that group of people that you can trust And carrying them with you wherever you go. I mean, we are Yeah. As human beings, I think of ourselves as like, we would, Even the great apes, you know, orangutans and all those are tribal. They have their group, their family group, right? We evolve that Where we are tribal and finding that tribe and carrying it with you is what makes us human. And without it, we, You know, we’re not I don’t think we’re mentally healthy if we don’t have that that group of friends that try to be there.

Seth [00:17:48]:
Even if even if it’s small. Like, it’s having a few good friends is better than having none at all. You know what I mean?

Hammer [00:17:55]:
Absolutely.

Seth [00:17:56]:
That’s awesome. So, Hammer, where do people find you online? Where’s your big watering hole? Is it LinkedIn? Is it your website?

Hammer [00:18:04]:
LinkedIn. We we try to I’ve built the update there. Yeah. The company Volo updates there. The, the other great place would be listen to the podcast. You can find it at techtastic.tech. You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts as tech tech it’s it’s it’s it’s tatastic.

Seth [00:18:23]:
Is fantastic, and it’s quick too. Like, this podcast, you know, it’s you know, you can get through it in a commute off the island in your case.

Hammer [00:18:31]:
That’s right. You you don’t well, I don’t know if you can get off the island in 15 minutes, but you can try. You can

Seth [00:18:37]:
get you can get started on your travel off the island.

Hammer [00:18:41]:
Well, Hammers You get in line to get off the boat. You get off the island. Yeah.

Seth [00:18:44]:
Exactly. The boat’s where where the bottleneck is. But, buddy, this has been so great having you on, my friend. I’m so glad we got to do this. And guess what?

Hammer [00:18:53]:
We’ll

Seth [00:18:53]:
yes. And we’ll see everyone next time. Awesome. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the marketing podcast network at marketing casts.net. Goldstein hopes you have enjoyed this episode.