Founders in Arms
00:44:47 · Rajat Suri
[00:44:47] S1: Yeah. I totally agree. I think, you know, we're building a next generation group chat app at Prive, and and we're we're primarily human driven product. So what I learned the most by talking to users, and and, you know, I I try to do regular calls with them and and hear their feedback, and then they always have something interesting to say about, you know... And and clearly developing just more features is not solving the problem in many cases. The bottleneck is the human brain. It's like, how much can a human brain absorb at any given time? And they can only absorb so much. Right? So you never wanna be too new in a consumer product. You have to have some precedence installed in your product so people know how to use some stuff. But humans like something new. They don't like everything the same. So you have to insert the newness in a way that's delightful and and gives them the feeling, hey. This is cool. This is something I haven't seen before. But if it's too new, they'll turn off as well. So, you know, getting that that balance right is always tough. And then, you know, you have to make sure you're solving a real problem for them as well. And and that, I think, only comes from... You know, in business, you can talk to the businesses, and they'll tell you the problems. And I do think, you know, we're so early on AI. Like, there's just so much... You know, we're probably... The whole world is, like, 1% penetrated or 2% in in how it's like... There's so much upside even in developing the same thing that's working, you know, here in Silicon Valley and and getting it out there and just having a good great go to market strategy and great brand and great services and great support. Alright.
00:46:18 · Immad Akhund, Jean-Denis Greze
[00:46:18] S0: Yeah. We should go to the next question. I have one other interesting thing to add. I think, like, good... Well, some good AI actually collapses the features that are required. So I'll walk you through an example. Right? Like, bill pay is, like, quite a complicated feature. Like, you you can use some create new... You know, upload an invoice, and then you can go through it and say, like, oh, this account number matches. This right number matches. Like, it's a really nice UI. You can imagine in the future, right, I just CC an agent, and I never even see the bill. Like, I just approve it right at the end. And, like, you've actually collapsed, like, a bunch of features that are, like, currently Bill Pay has. So I think, like, you can use AI to solve things like, like, an abstraction above Yeah. Which can simplify, like, features and [00:47:03] S2: remove software. We got... That... That's true today. Yeah. Like, this this week, I did a bunch of that, including signing NDAs. There was my agent taking my signature, putting it in. I took all my expenses. But I literally said, from my last three trips, find every expense and put them in in, you know, in my bank software and go with it. And it just it just does all that. You know, you're you're already... You're... This is already, like, the the normal. And it doesn't matter that in the app, was a 100 buttons or five buttons. The buttons were clicked. The expenses were filed. Right? The bank account and account routing number were added. [00:47:41] S0: Yeah. Alright. Let's go to that.
00:47:41 · Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri, Jean-Denis Greze
[00:47:41] S0: Yeah. Alright. Let's go to that. [00:47:44] S1: It feels worse than you've already seen. Mercury beats Silicon Valley Bank on software, disrupted that business. What company would you name today that you worry the most about doing the same to you, disrupting your business? Do you think your bank license will be a moat against disruption? [00:47:59] S0: Okay. So the question was, we beat SVB and, I guess, other banks by building amazing software. What am I most worried about and whether a banking license will be remote. I think the main thing I worry about is, like, you know, are we doing things good for customers? Are we still innovative? And, like, you know, have we built a good company culture and all that kind of stuff? I think as companies scale, like, those things tend to erode over time. I think if we can hold that bar, we obviously have all the advantages that we didn't have when we were tiny, and now we have a team of customers and and a product. So, yeah, I'm not, like, super worried about disruption. I'm I'm mostly worried about, like, making sure we're gonna still building a company that, like, I would enjoy working at. You know? And if that point got to the core of your question, but let's keep going. Yeah. I'm curious about [00:49:00] S1: the case. I wanna go back to it when you're, [00:49:02] S2: say, trying to find the right people who will hire, and everybody's using AI tools. But does... Can AI identify case? Like, how do you filter out the right people if AI is not good at case? Like
00:49:02 · Jean-Denis Greze, Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri
[00:49:02] S2: say, trying to find the right people who will hire, and everybody's using AI tools. But does... Can AI identify case? Like, how do you filter out the right people if AI is not good at case? Like [00:49:16] S0: like, how would you solve for that? Because a lot [00:49:18] S2: of people can filter it out in the environment because AI can't identify taste. [00:49:22] S0: Mhmm. I see the question. So your so your question is that in recruiting pipelines, everyone's using AI to filter out candidates, but AI doesn't do a great job of filtering out candidates on... Based on taste. So it might be filtering out great candidates with good taste. Yeah. I don't know. Do you use AI to filter candidates? Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a step where AI looks at resumes first. Yeah. Just because we have, like, in... The problem is that is there's an infinite stream of resumes because, like, it's, you know, everyone is using AI to submit resumes. So, you know, [00:50:03] S1: it's like [00:50:04] S0: people don't apply for one... You know, 20 jobs. They apply for 10,000 jobs. Mhmm. So, yeah, there's definitely a filter, but I think it's more done on, like, here is the job profile, and this is the candidate we would be willing to look at. So it's like, you're... You know, if we're expecting a tech or banking background for, like, a compliance role, we will filter on that. I don't I don't think the filters are really making, like, like, case judgments. I should check that.
00:50:04 · Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri
[00:50:04] S0: people don't apply for one... You know, 20 jobs. They apply for 10,000 jobs. Mhmm. So, yeah, there's definitely a filter, but I think it's more done on, like, here is the job profile, and this is the candidate we would be willing to look at. So it's like, you're... You know, if we're expecting a tech or banking background for, like, a compliance role, we will filter on that. I don't I don't think the filters are really making, like, like, case judgments. I should check that. [00:50:34] S1: There's definitely an element of selecting talent that is taste based, but it's very hard to do in the resume stage. You know? It's more like when you know somebody's, like, you know, are they the right thing for you? [00:50:44] S0: Yeah. Only 60% of us is... Only about 30% of our job offers are to people who are inbound. Yeah. Most of it is referral and outbound. Yeah.
00:50:44 · Immad Akhund, Jean-Denis Greze, Rajat Suri, S4
[00:50:44] S0: Yeah. Only 60% of us is... Only about 30% of our job offers are to people who are inbound. Yeah. Most of it is referral and outbound. Yeah. [00:50:57] S2: So just one more. People with Taste usually have built things with Taste before, even if it's just their personal website and whatnot. And so I like to, when I meet somebody, I like to ask, find something they've built and ask them why they built it, what choices they made. And sometimes people have really good answers about things that at first don't look like they have taste, but you realize they made some trade offs so that it is the way that it is, and there are good trade offs, and you're like, that person has a different kind of taste than just it looks good or whatnot. But I think asking people about their thought process behind it. And to your point about AI, it's somewhat AI just thought their way to something that looks really good. I mean, looking really good is not really taste, but I think some people sometimes are blind to that. You ask them questions about it, and they don't have any good answers, that you know they don't have the kind of thoughtfulness that you might want at your company. So I think it's, again, it's resume staff. But, you know, history is always a good indicator, I think, of future [00:52:00] S1: behavior. Yeah. [00:52:04] S4: Couple. Been Mercury customer for a few years. [00:52:26] S2: Yeah. So