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How do you start a tech company in Silicon Valley? Ask Max Dunn!

Max Dunn · 10 July 2023

Entrepreneurin
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Key topicsProduction Values — What Seven Adobe Tools Do in the Cloud With No One at the KeyboardMax Dunn has automated Adobe technology since founding Silicon Publishing in 2000, and his team of more than 20 includes engineers who built InDesign itself. Most companies picture generative AI as a person at a screen typing prompts, when the work at scale runs the other way: jobs go into Firefly Services, Photoshop, InDesign, Express, Frame.io, Premiere and After Effects through the cloud, and finished assets come back without anyone opening an application. He walks through the mechanics of that pipeline: where the data comes from, what the machine decides against what a person still approves, and which jobs break as volume climbs. Listeners leave able to tell which of their own creative work is a candidate for this, and which still needs hands on it.Cut and Paste — What the Desktop Revolution Says About Who AI Actually TrimsMax Dunn has worked at publishing automation since the mid-1990s, which means he watched the industry's last upheaval from inside, back when layouts were still assembled by hand. Most leaders treat AI as a clean break with everything before it, but he argues the desktop shift ran the same course: the tools ate the manual steps, the craft moved up a level, and the people who learned the new machine kept the work. He founded Silicon Publishing in August 2000 to automate Adobe technology, grew it from two people to over twenty, and hired some of the original engineers who created InDesign, several of whom have now lived through three of these transitions. He is candid about what the earlier one cost and who it passed over. Listeners leave with a realistic timetable for their own teams, and a clearer read on which jobs change shape and which quietly disappear.In Good Hands — Why the Engineers Who Built InDesign Still Do the Work ThemselvesMax Dunn has automated Adobe publishing technology since the mid-1990s and grew Silicon Publishing from two people to over twenty. Some of those twenty are the original engineers who created InDesign, which is why a shop that size takes on cloud automation work usually handed to far larger vendors. He argues that bench depth beats headcount, because the people who wrote the software know what it will and will not do before anyone writes a line of code. Listeners leave knowing how to judge a small vendor's bench, and what to ask a big one to find out whether it has anyone like that at all.View all topics →

About Max Dunn

Max Dunn, podcast guest

President

Since 2000 Co-founded and leads Silicon PublishingBertelsmann Former Director of Software DevelopmentAdobe Publishing automation partner since the 1990sInDesign User Group speaker on automation and AI

Since August 2000 I have run one company on one platform, which is the opposite of the advice most founders are given.

I co-founded Silicon Publishing with Alissa Whitney, now our CTO. There were two of us. We are over twenty now, and in all that time we have never moved to a second platform: everything we build automates Adobe technology. The conventional warning is never to tie your business to another company's software, because the vendor can change its pricing, its direction or its whole product line without asking you. I took the opposite bet and went deeper, and I can say what a quarter of a century on someone else's platform actually demands of you.

Before that I was a software engineer at Bertelsmann in the 1990s, building early systems that combined automated pre-press and database publishing with workflow management. I have worked in publishing automation since the mid-1990s, which means I watched the last great upheaval in this industry from the inside, back when layouts were still assembled by hand. It is the closest thing we have to a rehearsal for what AI is doing to creative work now, and I am candid about what that earlier shift cost and who it passed over.

The part of the business I am proudest of is the bench.

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