Scaling Europe
00:38:17 · Dimitris Samouris
[00:38:17] S1: Yeah. So there's a couple of things. We are... We have just launched our voice agent product. So we are expanding the suite of voice intelligence solutions. We started first with transcription. We're now adding voice agents which we think is gonna be a huge part of the enterprise toolkit outside of consulting as well going forward. And then dictation. I have personally cut my use of a keyboard by probably a third over the last Yeah. Couple of months. We've built Junior Dictation into the platform and I I think this feeds into like our overall view of the world as one where enterprise runs conversations, whether it's you talking to the machine or you talking to other people. So that's that's one set of things. The other is product expansion to other types of research workflows. So our customers do loads of surveys. They do loads of market modeling. Every work stream that a consultant does on a diligence will be covered by Junior in the very near term. And then finally, think it's a lot of ICP expansion. So first couple of years we're consulting. We've managed to do a great job of cracking into the very top private equity funds that like the top 30. The next step for us is investment banking. Very rigorous compliance requirements, which is really one of our strong suits and we we built Junior along with chief compliance officers at some of the the biggest funds, But we really see this world as orbiting a single product, which is an M and A transaction. And we think that it's important for us to help connect the various players in that ecosystem, the private equity sponsor, the bank that's running the deal and the advisors, CDD, FDD, ODD, etcetera, that are supporting the sponsor and making that transaction.
00:40:19 · Sebastian Johnson
[00:40:19] S0: How big would you like Junior to be in twelve months?
00:40:25 · Dimitris Samouris
[00:40:25] S1: I don't... I'm gonna push back on... I don't think about the world in in that way. Also, I'll take it slight... Like, two two angles. On the head count side, I really think it's a vanity metric. Yeah. And I I think the most important thing to think about in the new world, because we have this, like, phenomenal opportunity now to build an AI native startup from the ground up, is, like, I just need to find the right set of people, not the right number of people, but the right set of people and amplify them as much as possible and you can achieve like heights hitherto unknown with a small like tight knit, you know, special forces group of like very high agency individuals. I also like on a personal note, something that, you know, we decided with Nico really early on. And another piece of advice for founders just getting into this. I think it's first round capital that have this phenomenal survey, co founder survey that you... I might get the fund wrong, but there's there's this exercise where you list like there's answers to a 100 questions about the type of business you want to build and the way that you work. And we did that with Nico really early on. One thing we both landed on is like we do not run or want to run like a big business in terms of head count. Like, I I will feel uncomfortable the day that I can't... I don't know the personal story of everyone that walks the the halls of Junior. So there's always gonna be this like pull to actually like rein in hiring. Now I know that might sound a bit rich given that we've tripled over the the last year, but we will slow down and we'll digest, and we'll see how far we can push the envelope with a really close knit team. Because the bigger you get, the harder it is to manage and communicate. On the revenue side, I think we can triple again in the next year. But one of the things that I I have learned the hard way and it's been a very humbling experience in this journey is that especially at our stage of company, like, looking forward more than ninety days is a fool's errand. It's a complete waste of time. You should just do very cursory forecasting for what you care about. Yeah.
00:42:38 · Dimitris Samouris, Sebastian Johnson
But really stay focused on just building really good quality for your users and going full circle to what I told you, the most rewarding part of this is seeing the smile on consultants and investors faces when they don't have to do the donkey work. The dollars follow that. You have to worry about making money. Build something that people want and they'll pay [00:43:00] S0: you for it. And what about funding? You still happy bootstrapped reinvesting money or do you think you'll you'll tap external funding at some point?
00:43:06 · Dimitris Samouris
[00:43:06] S1: Yes. So we completed a small angel round very recently. This is in the last month. This is more to get the right people on the cap table. I think what I've learned is that this is an industry that works on relationships and the warm introduction from consulting partner to their client is literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of cold outbound marketing. And so we work to get over a 100 senior partners in consulting and private equity on the cap table. That was a huge pain of a round to run compared to going to a fund and But getting it's already paying massive dividends in terms of the go to market motion. Whether we take financing in the future honestly is like, it's a it's a question of what you wanna do with the money as a tool. And so one one thing that I really don't like about... Because the traditional startup space is that the fundraise is the achievement. Yeah. You see it everywhere. Every time I go to San Francisco, all I can hear about is I raise x much from this person and that is the badge of honor that I as a founder or as an engineer, I work at a company that raise x y. People and maybe this is like reflects my bias coming from a world outside of that. Right? I come from a world where private equity buys all sorts of businesses that are, know, family run that have not tripled every year for the last five years and in that world financing is a tool. It's used to get you to the next level and it's not really something that you like aim to do or brag about. It's something that helps you build a resilient business that critically, if we go all the way back to first principles, generates cash and profit, which is something that this industry has completely forgotten. Also, by the way, I think now you can do that a lot earlier. Like what you can do with a very small amount of money as an entrepreneur in 2026 boggles the mind compared to ten years ago. Like you don't need a lot of cash to spit up a first product, get your first customers and prove that people will actually pay you for something and then hire your first team off the back of it. So it's a long way of answering your question, which is like, I don't know. But it's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about.
00:45:47 · Sebastian Johnson, Dimitris Samouris
[00:45:47] S0: If it can be used as a tool and you need the tool, Yes. Maybe when the time is I want to ask two final questions. Yeah. More personal. [00:45:53] S1: Yes. [00:45:54] S0: What has been the lowest moment or the hardest moment where you think you've really come up against a wall and you're thinking, gosh, how are we going to get through this? And then the last question would be the flip, the positive. But I'm curious to hear, like, is the the hardest moment been in your founder journey? [00:46:13] S1: There's two moments that come to mind that are like the same underlying principle. The two times I have lost sleep in the last four... Like genuinely, I could not sleep throughout the night. May 23 when Microsoft... This is at the end of our design partnerships. Microsoft announced Copilot. I still remember the super sexy sleek marketing video that came out. When I looked at my co founder and I was like, are we totally cooked? Now I have yet to come across a person who said they use Copilot to their satisfaction in enterprise, which is not to knock Microsoft like they will do... It's too important for them to not get right, but it's not there yet. [00:46:59] S0: Yeah.