00:24:18 · Nik Storonsky, David Senra
[00:24:18] S1: Well, many things, Anders. I think we're just in the beginning. So, we automated customer support. So, 90% of all customer support team is automated now. We're doing the same. Before it used to be 5,000 people plus, now it's much less. Obviously, is automated as well. We increased the speed of engineers by 30%. Translation, cross selling as well done by LLMs now. A lot of things. But I think ultimate goal is... Or least a bet for us now is to be able to build like full stack AI employee. I think it's completely doable with our current technology. So it's it's not like a chat tool or another like interface where we tell what to do and then it it produces something. No. It's it's more like AI employee, which can join calls with you, which have email, which have Slack account, which have access to all internal back office system and can do work. So I think that's kind of their their ultimate goal that... I mean, sooner or later, you know, majority of companies will come to. [00:25:23] S0: Yeah. You keep mentioning over and over again, like, I don't know if you use the word bureaucracy. I don't think you did, but like, you you hate politics. You wanna minimize that. You want like data. You're much more like just, I don't care what you say. It's like, did we hit the numbers or not? And is this growing or not? What's your organizational structure? Do you just have a shitload of direct reports? Like Alexander Wang was sitting in that chair like two weeks ago, and he has some crazy shit, like 200 direct reports. [00:25:45] S1: Oh, really? Yeah.
00:25:45 · Nik Storonsky, David Senra
[00:25:45] S1: Oh, really? Yeah. [00:25:46] S0: So like, what's your... How how are you organized? [00:25:48] S1: So I have about 50, 51, 52. Reality, I'm not even gonna speak... Well, I I speak with my direct reports, but I also go deeper. Right? I I go down to individual contributor in in important projects. So I can speak directly with design or product owner, with developer. Philosophy is very simple. Right? So whenever you hire smart self guided people, you don't really need to manage them. So you just need to show them direction and then ensure that they're all synchronized. So it's like an army. Right? So you need to ensure that all people are using the same standardized equipment. Right? That's what you need in the company as well. You don't need their... Every single team or department to reinvent their own bicycles. Right? Or their own weapons. Now it has to be the same standard approach. And then if someone invents, you know, some additional kind of tool or additional instrument which allows us to move even faster, then we need to standardize it across all all the teams and departments. And that's what I I do very well. I'm I'm very good at spotting our innovation in one team or one department, and then actually spreading it across the whole company. [00:26:55] S0: Can you give me an example of you spotting an innovation and spreading it through the other departments?
00:26:55 · David Senra, Nik Storonsky
[00:26:55] S0: Can you give me an example of you spotting an innovation and spreading it through the other departments? [00:26:59] S1: For example, recently was we... For for design, we always used Figma. Right now, I spotted that one team is actually producing designs much faster using LLMs. And then instead of actually designing in a certain interface, probably they simply uploaded our design system on the code level to LLM. And then they prompt to produce certain flows based on our design system. As a result, the whole design is not really a frame in Figma, but it's like a live interface on your laptop or on your simulator. So you can click through things, it reacts and so on. But the most important thing, you can do it three, four times faster compared to doing frames in in Figma or screens in Figma. And then I'm pushing the whole system to to all designers now. [00:27:51] S0: Have you spent any time, like, reading about, like, entrepreneurs, like, from the past at all? [00:27:55] S1: Yeah, of course. [00:27:56] S0: Yeah. Like anybody stick out that you admire, you studied? Yeah, of course. [00:28:02] S1: I read books about Henry Ford. I'm glad you
00:28:02 · Nik Storonsky, David Senra
[00:28:02] S1: I read books about Henry Ford. I'm glad you [00:28:05] S0: said Henry Ford. You're sitting there talking about like, you're building a machine. You're like observing these innovations in all different parts of your machine. I need to make sure that it's spread throughout this entire machine. That's like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie. He would travel around the world. Now we obviously, technology could proliferate. Somebody could tell you about it, can see it online or whatever. He'd have to like physically go and travel to the factories because they're building physical stuff. And I'm like, oh wait, this idea in Britain, take, I'm gonna take back to America. And that's the way Carnegie forwarded this to, but Carnegie specifically sounds exactly like you, where he's just like, I don't care if it's a 5% improvement in 1% of our business. Like if there's a better way to do it, we are going to do that. And he was moving against usually older competitors that would not invest in technology. And in fact, when they found out that he was spending so much resources on it, they thought he was fucking crazy and actually gave him... Because he ran the company for thirty years, it actually gave him this compounding advantage that by the time... Like, his his competitors could never catch up. He was, like, so far ahead. But it's like you you were thinking very similar to Carnegie in in what you were just describing.
00:29:05 · Nik Storonsky, David Senra
[00:29:05] S1: I think it's super important to us. It's just building the machine, which moves fast and which you choose the goals. And then if if you spot innovation in certain part of the machine, you need to spread it as as fast as possible. [00:29:15] S0: Yeah. And so this idea that you you kinda hate, like, managers that just pass along, like what to do, correct? You've eliminated them from your company? [00:29:26] S1: Yeah, exactly. I've seen so many by now, ten years. Just simply what they do, okay, they take information from individual from individual contributors and then pass it to, I don't know, stakeholders. Right? I mean, it's like, what was what was your value add? Right? Did you change direction of the team? No. I mean, they know what they're doing. Okay. Did you bring any innovation? Did you identify the easiest way to achieve the roadmap? Right? No, not really. But I mean, what was your job? Like, you know, just, you know, taking numbers from them, passing to myself. I just don't get You prune your team is what I've heard. [00:30:01] S0: Yeah. And you're searching for, I think, what you call self guided missiles? [00:30:04] S1: Yes. Self guided people. Yeah. [00:30:05] S0: It's almost like a founder and employee form is what you're going after?
00:30:05 · David Senra, Nik Storonsky
[00:30:05] S0: It's almost like a founder and employee form is what you're going after? [00:30:10] S1: I always joke that, you know, self guided people are self guided missiles. Right? So you've got brilliant people. You don't even need to tell them what the goal is. So they self identify the the goal, and then they self reach it. Right? So they're like self guided missile, which also identify the goals. Then people who are good but not excellent, you need to tell them the goal. And then there, without any kind of iteration, they they will reach the goal. Average people, you tell them the goal, and then you need to spend weekly iterations with them to direct them, to tell them what to do, and then they will reach the goal. Right? So you spend management time. That's what I I don't want. And then below average people, okay, you you give them the goal. You spend time with them, and then most likely they will not heal the goal. Right? So that's the problem. So in order for you to have as many direct reports as possible, you just need to minimize management time spent on each of them. [00:31:05] S0: Let's just assume you've gotten rid of all your below average people anyways. How do you identify the average people, and then do you just fire them as well? [00:31:13] S1: I do. Yes. Like, a lot of people I know who are very good executives, they struggle with this. [00:31:20] S0: Why do you think they struggle?