00:02:03 · Sebastian Johnson, Chaz Englander
[00:02:03] S0: You had a... Kind of went into this space because you were seeing some real life experience about it, but the companies that you founded to date have all been pretty varied, you know, like quick commerce to AI. What was that transition been like? [00:02:16] S1: So I think that I... I've seen the first two were quite similar. They're quite sort of brand heavy consumer businesses. The second one was probably a little bit more operational because it was vertically integrated, so we had, like, drivers and warehouse and everything else. Everyone always says to me, you know, like, why why have you started a b to b business, particularly in financial services, which is, like, notoriously difficult? I think, to be honest with you, you know, given given the changing landscape in in artificial intelligence, like, everyone is really running a consumer company. In other words, like, we don't, like, don't know what we're selling in twelve months' time, and the customers don't know what they're buying. And therefore, we kinda have to be incredibly user led. So as an example, like, if you were selling a CRM five years ago, you're selling a CRM. People know what they're buying. You know what you're selling. In our world, just purely based on the speed at which these products are changing, nobody knows. So in that respect, I kind of look at us more as a b to c company or certainly a b to b to c.
00:02:16 · Chaz Englander, Sebastian Johnson
[00:02:16] S1: So I think that I... I've seen the first two were quite similar. They're quite sort of brand heavy consumer businesses. The second one was probably a little bit more operational because it was vertically integrated, so we had, like, drivers and warehouse and everything else. Everyone always says to me, you know, like, why why have you started a b to b business, particularly in financial services, which is, like, notoriously difficult? I think, to be honest with you, you know, given given the changing landscape in in artificial intelligence, like, everyone is really running a consumer company. In other words, like, we don't, like, don't know what we're selling in twelve months' time, and the customers don't know what they're buying. And therefore, we kinda have to be incredibly user led. So as an example, like, if you were selling a CRM five years ago, you're selling a CRM. People know what they're buying. You know what you're selling. In our world, just purely based on the speed at which these products are changing, nobody knows. So in that respect, I kind of look at us more as a b to c company or certainly a b to b to c. [00:03:20] S0: And that's interesting because I saw you talk about FDEs. Yeah. And I guess maybe that's a... That kind of ties in with it as well. Right? That you sort of need people from your team to be almost embedded to sort of show people what it is that you're you're capable of.
00:03:20 · Sebastian Johnson, Chaz Englander
[00:03:20] S0: And that's interesting because I saw you talk about FDEs. Yeah. And I guess maybe that's a... That kind of ties in with it as well. Right? That you sort of need people from your team to be almost embedded to sort of show people what it is that you're you're capable of. [00:03:35] S1: Well, yeah, I think actually a big part of that is kind of what I just said there, you know, in in a world where you are building product this quickly, and we'll talk maybe in a little bit about how quickly you can build products in the AI world. But, like, you have to stay as close to the user as possible. So, literally, if we can have people working out of our customers' offices, that is, like, the best way to do that. And I think everyone is kind of realizing that. In other words, like, if you look at companies as large as Salesforce as, you know, small as a two, three person start up, everyone is realizing, like, you've just gotta be as close as you can to to the customers so that you can learn as quickly as possible in order to iterate, I think.
00:03:35 · Chaz Englander, Sebastian Johnson
[00:03:35] S1: Well, yeah, I think actually a big part of that is kind of what I just said there, you know, in in a world where you are building product this quickly, and we'll talk maybe in a little bit about how quickly you can build products in the AI world. But, like, you have to stay as close to the user as possible. So, literally, if we can have people working out of our customers' offices, that is, like, the best way to do that. And I think everyone is kind of realizing that. In other words, like, if you look at companies as large as Salesforce as, you know, small as a two, three person start up, everyone is realizing, like, you've just gotta be as close as you can to to the customers so that you can learn as quickly as possible in order to iterate, I think. [00:04:18] S0: Yeah. No. And that makes sense. Can we touch a bit on your fundraising journey? So in many ways, you know, being a repeat founder, you are... You... You're like a hot commodity in the VC world, you know, two two companies under your belt, two exits. I think I saw that you're... The company was founded in 2023. You then announced your... I think was it seed or pre seed or like a very early round at the beginning of last year, is $12,000,000. I guess what was it that unlocked that round? Was it the kind of the pedigree of founder that you are having these exits under your belt? Was it some product that you've been building and had seen good traction with before you got to that round? What was it that gave those investors the conviction to invest?
00:05:01 · Chaz Englander
[00:05:01] S1: So I think, first of all, the the first round definitely... Like, your very first round, which was last fairbish, you know, being a second, third time founder, yeah, for sure does make that easier. You've ultimately built trust with a number of people. A lot of people that invested in our previous businesses ended up investing in that round. You know, there was a lot of private individuals that we... We've known for a long time. So... Yes. I think the second round, like, I mean, you don't raise 75,000,000, like, pretty much twelve months after launch, if not under, you know, without having serious traction, to be honest with you. And, like, you know, frankly, our growth rate and our customer references sort of spoke for themselves. And that's a big thing. Like, I do think that, you know, particularly in a world where there's a lot of trials going on and things like that, it is actually like, you know, you need to really lift up the bonnet and think about how much the underlying user is actually enjoying using the product. And, you know, it it was preempted as well. Right? So I was actually in San Francisco. I was in San Francisco onboarding a customer of ours at... We were spending some time with them. And over kind of a three or four week period, it kind of just exploded. And we ended up, you know, having about five or six, you know, lead type offers and ultimately closing in the way that we did.
00:06:18 · Sebastian Johnson, Chaz Englander
[00:06:18] S0: I mean, it's huge. Yeah. It's $75,000,000. Yeah. And it was, yeah, I think it was November. It was announced and the first round was February. And so obviously you saw, you must have seen amazing traction, amazing customer feedback last year. Is there anything that you can say to that? Like, was there a specific growth? Was there a number of customers? Is there some metric that you can show that you're particularly proud of? [00:06:41] S1: I mean, yeah, between kind of probably July and maybe even October, beginning of November, we 10 x the business. Like, it was like... And and, frankly, we've almost 10 x again since then. [00:06:54] S0: Blimey. [00:06:55] S1: I think, like, if you look at our world, so we we went heavy on workflow automation. So our view was these general research type products, so like a chat based type interface. Don't get me wrong. They are absolutely epic. I love it. But when your workflows are, like, pretty complicated, so think, like, ending in a Excel model or a 100, 200 based PowerPoint presentation, etcetera, there's only so much you can do in a chat based interface. Like, to to actually automate that workflow, you need to build a a workflow automation, like, specific type product. And so I think what happened with us was, you know, that ended up just being what the market wanted. And, you know, frankly, people were willing to pay for it and, you know, still are. And I think that, yeah, that's kind of where the growth came from.