The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:31:52 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
It's like, hey, which divisions would it make sense to start this in? How is that gonna align with like some other initiatives we have? How's that gonna align with our internal build? I guess those sorts of questions that end up dominating these these conversations. [00:32:05] S0: When I had Harvey's, CBO, John Haddock on the show, he almost said to me, like, prestige was their go to market motion. Right? They had, like, some big law firms held on, and that became a proxy for trust. [00:32:18] S1: Yeah. [00:32:18] S0: And I see that, like like, I think humans work on that, like, you recognize a logo. I guess a two part question. One, was that part of the Rogo story, like, using big logos as a proxy for trust? And two, were there trade offs? Like, one of the conversations I have with a lot of founders today is it's kinda like a carrot to chase the big logo. Yeah. But as you'd know, it takes a lot of resource and time and money to service them. And I kinda say the founders don't go after the big logos early on because then you have to hire like a sales team just to work on one account. Yeah. And if they churn, you have a big hole in your budget. So I'm curious, yeah, tell me about the proxy for trust and then when did you feel big customers were right to service?
00:32:55 · John Willett
[00:32:55] S1: Yeah, totally. I mean, you're right that going with Lazard and going with some of these other bulge bracket names kind of that I don't have logo rights for us or can't reference publicly, but you can probably guess where they are, helped us a lot kind of going down market. It wasn't like that galaxy brained or or like intentional. I feel like there was some element of... We knew people at these institutions and we've been talking to them for a lot. I also think like the partnership pitch actually works better at a large organization where there's more kind of like stability that's required, there's more like hands on change management that's required, security is more important. So having folks who are fully focused on your firm and on your industry is actually more of a selling point than going to like a 10 person private equity firm or boutique bank. So those are the reasons that we started there. To your point, it was a huge risk from a p and l perspective and a huge risk from a product roadmap perspective to serve these institutions early on. Like, were constantly getting pulled into very bespoke features that they that they wanted and we had to have a good nose for where something was helping us find product market fit with other firms versus building something that's that's really, really bespoke. And that was kind of a painful thing early on like that whole first year of commercializing where there was really only like one to two big customers, and we would occasionally tell them no because we're like, hey, we don't think that's gonna apply to other firms. It did take a lot of discipline. It definitely has paid off overall, and and every conversation is easier when we can start it by saying, hey, these are the 10 banks where we have over 5,000 bankers deployed, you know, at each of these, and and you can call the CTO and they'll say good things. But I would say honestly, what's what's kind of hilarious, and and ironic, what I've noticed in Europe is at times it's almost like an objection we need to handle because they're like, oh, is rogo one? Are they too, like, focused on the American banks? And so that's something that we've needed to really start telling the story. Now we're working with a lot of the big European banks as well and and, you know, really showing that we're we're building local here.
00:34:52 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
And the second, which I never saw coming, if you told me this, like, five years ago and I've been like, this is incredible, is, like, is Rocco too big to, like, focus on our needs as a G SID bank in in in The UK? [00:35:02] S0: And what do they mean by that? [00:35:04] S1: What they mean is it's like, okay. If they are working with all these bulge bracket banks, we don't necessarily want the exact same tool that all those banks are using. We actually want more of a tailored partnership and a build partner who's gonna build a lot of custom stuff for us. We don't wanna show up to meetings with the same exact pitch book that these large banks in The US are showing up with. We want something that's super differentiated, etcetera. And so when I hear that, I mean, I know it's clear that I haven't told the story well because that's just not the right way to think about it. The right way to think about it is a provider like Rogo. We are in the business of creating tailored versions of the platform for different firms and having tailored partnerships. And actually, a banker at Molus and a banker at BNP Paribas ask a question in Rogo, the answers are gonna be very different just based on the firm intelligence that we've created for them, all the workflows, all the agents, all the skills. So there's actually more of a divergence than a convergence in terms of the the types of answers that folks are getting and the types of materials that we're creating.
00:36:06 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:36:06] S0: I wanna come to go to market in a second, particularly, like, comparing and contrasting the different regions you're building. But before that, one interesting anecdote came up in my research is how you and Gabe decided who should be CEO and decision making. I think the amount of founders I see that stuff up because of that, where egos get in the way is incredible. Right? You see it... You're seeing it right now with a lot of the AI labs, like, it's playing out in public. There's so much ego at play. Whereas folks, when I spoke to them for research, they said, you guys are pretty cordial about it, and maybe it goes to your... This low ego approach to life that we talked about at the start. Was that an interesting conversation on, like, being... Because I think you were co CEOs initially and then Gabe became
00:36:45 · John Willett
[00:36:45] S1: a CEO. Sort of. When we first started it, yeah, and then when we raised the first round from Ali Corp, they were like, there's... They were like, someone needs to, like, be the boss day to day, and and they're obviously right about that. It was interesting at first. I mean, I, yeah, I like the angle that I'm super low ego and it just all easy and, and probably not quite true. I was like, I can't believe I'm, I'm quitting to start a company. I'm not even the CEO. And it was pretty clear, like if it was gonna be one of us, it should be Gabe. I mean, like partly because he had a better investor network and partly because Gabe is just... Gabe is one of these people who like that dude is a CEO. Like you meet that guy and you're like, that guy is gonna be the CEO of... Hopefully it's Rogo that makes him like a legendary CEO, but if it's not Rogo, it'll be some other company where he becomes like a Travis Kalanick figure, like a Brian Chesky thing. He's just incredible in so many ways. And so like that was just pretty clear. And that wasn't even me being like humble. That was more me observing the kind of guy that that Gabe is. And then within a few months, it's like we're a real company. Like we've hired a couple engineers, we're trying to do stuff and like all of my energy and thought are just directed towards how do I actually try to like make this company successful. And everything else is just so kind of like stupid to, to think about. I have more like scope and stress and responsibility and like everything that I know what to possibly do with. So there's no there's no semblance of like, oh, I wish I had like way more.
00:38:02 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:38:02] S0: Tell me about it on the social signal point. I feel hiring's a good example of that as well. And like you said before, you've hired a lot of ex investment bankers that have left a part that perhaps had more prestige and more financial upside, at least back then Yeah. When you joined Rogo. How have you gone about that? Because, again, I know firsthand, like, convincing someone to join a company. Maybe now it's a bit easier because you've got the credit and you've got the valuation and [00:38:26] S1: the [00:38:26] S0: investors and all that, but maybe the first couple of years, like, till maybe your series b, it might have been tricky. Again, any stories on how you convince some of these like smart people to Yeah. Yeah. Come work for you instead of Anthropic or OpenAI? [00:38:40] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a good point or good question. I mean, definitely in the early days, every conversation that you have potential hire, it's like you're like raising money. Like you're doing the full, like, end to end pitch. Like, this is our right to win. This is why we're here. This is what your equity is gonna be worth. [00:38:54] S0: Maybe you can use Europe as an example. Tell me... Let's... That could be an interesting case study. Like when you decided you're gonna come on the ground in Europe, how did you build a team?