00:18:03 · Dan Lifshits, Sebastian Johnson
And I think that we do have a good answer to our specific kind of industry and in our specific case. That's back to my initial point that I'm not as close to the other industries to be able to comment with regards to how long term defensible the long term modes are in the other industries. [00:18:18] S0: Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. I guess what you're sort of doing is you are buying comp... Because I guess what you're saying is you expect companies to be able to do these types of things themselves and become almost AI native eventually themselves, maybe it takes five or ten years. What you're doing is you're massively accelerating it by buying them, doing it for them and that becomes the moat I guess because then you own these businesses, you know, you own them. Right? And so you own the distribution. You own it all. Correct. That's really interesting. Correct. How are [00:18:44] S2: you And and I would only say that kind of to to to to some extent, right, that the company will be able to do that. Obviously, we're pushing the limits on the frontier. So what is achievable? So I'm not sure that kind of call it, some of the other companies would be able to replicate it to the same extent and degree of what we're achieving, but some fraction of that value would be kind of taken inside by those companies for sure.
00:18:44 · Dan Lifshits, Sebastian Johnson
[00:18:44] S2: you And and I would only say that kind of to to to to some extent, right, that the company will be able to do that. Obviously, we're pushing the limits on the frontier. So what is achievable? So I'm not sure that kind of call it, some of the other companies would be able to replicate it to the same extent and degree of what we're achieving, but some fraction of that value would be kind of taken inside by those companies for sure. [00:19:05] S0: Yeah. Mean, it's really interesting because in other industries, you're almost seeing, that it's a different model, they're selling the AI services, right, as opposed to buying the company and implementing AI. Super interesting. I'm curious, like, how do you think about building Dwelly to be native? Right? I mean, you're turning businesses into AI businesses. How are you building your own to make sure that you are as well equipped as the business can be with AI?
00:19:05 · Sebastian Johnson, Dan Lifshits
[00:19:05] S0: Yeah. Mean, it's really interesting because in other industries, you're almost seeing, that it's a different model, they're selling the AI services, right, as opposed to buying the company and implementing AI. Super interesting. I'm curious, like, how do you think about building Dwelly to be native? Right? I mean, you're turning businesses into AI businesses. How are you building your own to make sure that you are as well equipped as the business can be with AI? [00:19:32] S2: That's an amazing question. I think something that... Another thing that keeps us awake at night, I think that my honest view and probably kind of really I would contribute here, but I think would be that you only can become as AI native as possible by, I think, pushing yourself as the founder and kind of you as an individual to become as AI native as you can. I think that otherwise, it's it's just simply impossible. I think you need to be at the edge of the capabilities yourself. And this way, you'll be able only to drive the whole organization kind of onwards as well. Plus, obviously, you need to have the right kind of skill set and the right people around to kind of... To be able to then disseminate this knowledge. But I think that the amount of time, probably, Ilya Moore or Ilya, but, like, both of us anyways, I think, spend on VoIP coding this day is pretty meaningful. I... Quickly, I think the other day just sitting down and cleaning up all his calendar and saying, okay. Going to the god mode now. Kinda we're gonna build everything.
00:20:29 · Ilia Drozdov, Sebastian Johnson
[00:20:29] S1: No. It's like... Jokes aside, actually, from from the following week, I'll be building myself kind of three days a week. And during these three days, it's only kind of teams that are kind of entrenches with me kind of I will be having meetings with them. For the manager mode, I'll just leaving basically two days because I think if kind of you are not feeling on the finger... Fingertips what actually it means to to to build the product yourself right now. As a nonengineer, you cannot, like, drive the change at the kind of organizational and industry level. And I'm super excited. We are pushing to production, hopefully. The the first product I've built myself, not being an engineer. I spent probably kind of real... Really spent kind of clean time, maybe, like, twelve, fifteen hours on that over the course of last couple of weeks, and it's production sort of ready to to start kind of working with real clients. What it means for the whole organization, I think, is that everyone can follow this path, but it was hard to understand even a month ago what it actually means before walking this journey myself. [00:21:29] S0: And what role do you prefer? You know, do you prefer being, you know, CEO? Do you prefer being product manager?
00:21:29 · Sebastian Johnson, Ilia Drozdov, Dan Lifshits
[00:21:29] S0: And what role do you prefer? You know, do you prefer being, you know, CEO? Do you prefer being product manager? [00:21:37] S1: But CEO role is not well defined. CEO should be focusing on the kind of most important things in the organization, helping to expand the frontier. And I think today, I just, like, deeply feel that we will not be able to expand the frontier if I'm not, like, on the frontier. And I just like... Yeah. Yeah. I to build myself for the fur... Like, for the first time, I feel that I have to be CEO building alongside with the team. Otherwise, I'll just be just like redundant CEO of a big American corporation, kind of old school, whatever. Right? I think [00:22:10] S2: it's to which extent you need to understand the capabilities of Frontier itself. Right? And I think that as long as some fundamental shifts would continue happening, I think it's just not just kind of a nice desire. I think it's essential to kind of to remain on this Frontier just to understand on the fingertips what's going on. Then as we discussed otherwise, kind of how to disseminate this knowledge.
00:22:10 · Dan Lifshits, Sebastian Johnson
[00:22:10] S2: it's to which extent you need to understand the capabilities of Frontier itself. Right? And I think that as long as some fundamental shifts would continue happening, I think it's just not just kind of a nice desire. I think it's essential to kind of to remain on this Frontier just to understand on the fingertips what's going on. Then as we discussed otherwise, kind of how to disseminate this knowledge. [00:22:34] S0: Yeah, mean, it's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing to hear you kind of like, people are talking about founders are getting back involved, coding and developing a building, but it's amazing to hear that you're pushing to production your first product. That's like so cool. How are you thinking about capitalising the business and you're quite unusual as a tech company to like traditional SaaS companies, know, they used to invest loads of money in R and D and engineers and research whatever and you know then scale up to GTM and B2B sales. A very different type of business with a very different business model and focus. How are you thinking about deploying the capital internally to make sure you've got the right team and what does that look like? Is it like an M and A department? Is it just like an implementation department who are kind of helping you these businesses become an AI first business? What does your own org look like?