A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:48:03 · Cosmin Nicolaescu, Pablo Srugo
And it is likely slower in the short run, as I would constantly are optimizing for the long run. If we assume we're going to be successful in it for the long run, how do we build a company from the ground up with that mindset? And how do we make the technical decisions as well from the ground up with with that mindset? It's interesting. Like, I wonder if it's scalable or not, but another thought that [00:48:24] S1: comes to my mind is by moving people like that, you get rid of the issue of protective silos. Right? Where it's like, okay. You you're on this team doing this thing, and it's like, okay. That means this team doing this thing. Like, better continue to exist and be important for a long time. And if, you know, I got I gotta find a way to make this thing continue to be important. Right? Because it's like
00:48:41 · Cosmin Nicolaescu, Pablo Srugo
[00:48:41] S0: You're much more mindful because the code that you're writing work, that your agents are writing and you're reviewing realistically is you're gonna maintain someone else's code, someone else will maintain your code, like, there's no deep kind of domain ownership there, so I very much agree with that. And I think to your point of scalability, we do work trials, for example, example, where we spend like several days with people, typically like a couple of days with every hire that we haven't worked with, to work together through real problems. Part of it is I don't know how to interview in the day of AI, because if I just give you a problem, we're gonna give it to an agent and it'll solve it. And part of it is because I want to see what it's like to work with you. And vice versa, you should see what it's like to work with us. We try to get a bunch of people in person they would work with and kind of see if you like the culture and if it gets you excited, see the domain and kind of understand it and help you out. We could not do that if we were hiring a lot of people. That is not a scalable process. But if we hire on a person a month, much more scalable. Like, you can pay that cost. I And was gonna ask, [00:49:42] S1: you know, talking about that, like, if if that's the plan, why raise 75,000,000? Like, what what's the money being used for?
00:49:42 · Pablo Srugo, Cosmin Nicolaescu
[00:49:42] S1: you know, talking about that, like, if if that's the plan, why raise 75,000,000? Like, what what's the money being used for? [00:49:47] S0: Part of it is how you actually manage your cap table and how you think about dilution, and how do you think about getting investors to to have a, like, substantial capital involved. Like, if you get any of the large funds to go and invest, a few million dollars, even if you end up being, like, really good, like, it's just not enough dollar. Like, if I tell you I'm gonna take your $5 and 10,000 x them, you're gonna be like, okay, cool. But if you're able to put $50,000, then I can 10,000 x it, like, very, very different math to kind of use much smaller numbers. So part of it is that. [00:50:19] S1: In other words, there's value of getting the right investors on board, and those big investors with big funds need to put in big dollars.
00:50:19 · Pablo Srugo, Cosmin Nicolaescu
[00:50:19] S1: In other words, there's value of getting the right investors on board, and those big investors with big funds need to put in big dollars. [00:50:24] S0: Correct. General Catalyst for us has been like invaluable, and and in general, like both H and R Block and Armadino, they were the ones who introduced us to them. Got you. And and you're able to it's like having a top tier investor is so valuable, and and we've been fortunate to know a lot of the the top tier investors in the industry at at Stripe and in Brex as well, which I'm very grateful for. The second piece is, it's very hard for me to predict the future. It's very hard for me to predict how macro economy will work and how easy fundraising is or not based on that. There's cycles in and out. It's very hard for me to know what I should spend money on. Like, everybody last year was talking about the cost of tokens is going to go to zero. And I actually took the opposite side last year because at the end of the day, tokens represent capacity and we're very constrained on capacity. We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough data centers, and the demand is is exponential. And so if I think about it from that angle, I think actually token cost will probably increase, which is what's happening today. And so I got asked this question at a panel a couple months ago, which is if you project out maybe a year or two from now, do you think you're gonna spend more on humans or tokens? And I don't think the answer is obviously humans. I think there's actually a good chance that you spend more on tokens than
00:50:24 · Cosmin Nicolaescu, Pablo Srugo
[00:50:24] S0: Correct. General Catalyst for us has been like invaluable, and and in general, like both H and R Block and Armadino, they were the ones who introduced us to them. Got you. And and you're able to it's like having a top tier investor is so valuable, and and we've been fortunate to know a lot of the the top tier investors in the industry at at Stripe and in Brex as well, which I'm very grateful for. The second piece is, it's very hard for me to predict the future. It's very hard for me to predict how macro economy will work and how easy fundraising is or not based on that. There's cycles in and out. It's very hard for me to know what I should spend money on. Like, everybody last year was talking about the cost of tokens is going to go to zero. And I actually took the opposite side last year because at the end of the day, tokens represent capacity and we're very constrained on capacity. We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough data centers, and the demand is is exponential. And so if I think about it from that angle, I think actually token cost will probably increase, which is what's happening today. And so I got asked this question at a panel a couple months ago, which is if you project out maybe a year or two from now, do you think you're gonna spend more on humans or tokens? And I don't think the answer is obviously humans. I think there's actually a good chance that you spend more on tokens than [00:51:36] S1: you spend on humans. Are you also finding that the spend on humans, like, a per human basis is is much higher than it used to be?
00:51:36 · Pablo Srugo, Cosmin Nicolaescu
[00:51:36] S1: you spend on humans. Are you also finding that the spend on humans, like, a per human basis is is much higher than it used to be? [00:51:43] S0: We took the approach of again, not probably scalable, but everybody at accrual has the same salary. That's wild. [00:51:51] S1: I dude, I've never heard of that before. That's crazy. [00:51:53] S0: So Sid and I make less because I think it's only fair for for founders to to be in that situation, but everybody else makes the same amount of money because one, again, the roles are very fluid, like, I I don't wanna optimize for that. Two, we're hiring pretty senior folks, premature folks, and so, like, I don't wanna have different levels and and all that, like, I don't care about it at the end of the day, you're in this function and you're doing the best that you can at helping the company as much as possible. [00:52:20] S1: But does that mean some people come in, they get a huge pay raise relative to what they were making, some people taking a huge pay cut, or are you just like, you're you're hiring from the top of the mountain anyways, or or how's that how's that worked out?