Founders in Arms
00:59:15 · Jean-Denis Greze
[00:59:15] S2: of you? Yeah. I mean, there's lots of reasons why it could fail. Right? I mean, things I stress out about are whenever the models get better and our competitors get better, we have to get better too. So there's, like, a... There's flat cost to building an AI, like, a horizontal AI company. So whenever, you know, whenever OpenAI has a new feature, we have to be capabilities competitive. So I think that's one thing. It's very costly when you're starting to do that. I think number two, the market's gonna be playing really quickly, and so we need to keep hyper growing so that we are part of the discussion and get to scale quickly. Because I think in the past, if you're a startup, you might have years before incumbents could start to be product competitive with you, and now you have weeks to months. And so speed, like, you know, the reason we're fundraising how we do is because applying dollars to grow faster is absolutely critical. Like, we have to hit critical mass. Number three is we need more network effects. So our product is pretty good, actually, network effects within companies. It has a decent amount of word-of-mouth virality, but whatever we can do to build up the network effects faster, like, on the order of months, is absolutely critical. So we have one feature, which I won't say which one it is, but it's, like, highly network effect and has a very high rate of the person on the other side being like, wow. I want that. And just, like, pushing on that as hard as possible. And if we don't if we don't build the network effect before we're just in a distribution war against better players that are gonna go after our markets, then it's kinda game over or, you know, get acquired by somebody. And then there's like... I think right now we are counter positioned for some things nicely. Like, we're counter positioned against Muse because we're for work, and we have a bunch of theater practices that work for work. And we're counter positions against the labs on this idea that if you're a business, you kind of don't want... You want someone to be neutral to the models for the long term, like that is to your advantage. And it is possible, like you mentioned, GrokBot, using both... There's... It's always possible that your counter positioning goes away. And then, obviously, there's... It's still a world where we have start up competitors.
01:01:32 · Jean-Denis Greze, Felix, Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri
So, like, my current goal is to be the only start up that is funded in the space. So that is us versus established player, but, you know, we have more winning to do to get there. So those are all things that I think about that could kill us, and, you know, there's probably a 100 more. [01:01:49] S7: The speed to scale... Scaling the network effects like that that the [01:01:52] S2: building software. I mean, that's the... You said it very well earlier. Like, the cost of building software has gone way down. That's... What that actually means is that product advantage in the market is worth much less than it used to be. And so you have to have brand network effects, other things, process power, something else that gets people who wanna use your product. You have to establish those things so much faster. But if you can, you can still be big, but you don't have, like, five years to do it. You have six months, nine months to to get there. So [01:02:28] S0: First, in the early days, how [01:02:29] S1: do you guys cut through the noise? [01:02:31] S0: I guess, for Mercury, it would be early days, but then for for Town and and for Tribe. So the question is, in the early days, how do we cut through [01:02:38] S1: the noise? You're talking about, [01:02:39] S0: like, marketing noise or what kind of noise? Yeah. I mean, here, there's there's gonna be, like, a system app popping 11. Right? There's gonna be chat apps that's AI based. Right? And then probably early days, there's a lot of deal banks as [01:02:50] S1: well. Well,
01:02:50 · Rajat Suri, Immad Akhund, Jean-Denis Greze
[01:02:50] S1: well. Well, [01:02:53] S0: thankfully, launched in 2019, and the world was not so crazy. So there was not really any good business new bank for a long time after we launched. So I think, actually, Jean is probably the best one to answer this. [01:03:09] S2: I don't think we've won enough to answer it. I was... It's funny that... Not funny, but you're not quite answering the question, but I... You know, if you ask me, someone's gonna start a bank in 2019, I [01:03:21] S0: would be like, what are [01:03:22] S2: you doing? Like, you know, there's lots of banks out there. If Chase is a very capable company with great interest.
01:03:22 · Jean-Denis Greze, Immad Akhund
[01:03:22] S2: you doing? Like, you know, there's lots of banks out there. If Chase is a very capable company with great interest. [01:03:28] S0: And and I would... I guess, as a as a maybe, like, a more direct thing because, you know, even if there wasn't that many new banks, that would do businesses, there were one other banks. And, also, you you still have to win people's attention. Like, you have to, like, do something that'd okay. I think it kinda ties to broad market, but, I guess, In my experience with Mercury and Mercury's company, we also had product market then towards the end. Like, when you really have strong product market then, like, the market is pulling you, and, actually, like, you don't have to work that hard to go through the noise, which isn't, like, a very fulfilling answer as a founder. I'm just saying, like, make something good. But, like, it is kinda... At least my reality has been, like, you make something compellingly good enough, and then, like, the... For the first year, we grew, and we had to do nothing to grow. Like, we just had to, like, keep up with the scale, and we grew, like, 40% a month. So it's not really fulfilling answer because, like, you can't make that happen necessarily. But, like, at least my experience with SMB and all consumer is, like, when you have product market fit, like, you you... Like, the product itself is, like, the thing that's getting through the noise. [01:04:41] S2: And then you can
01:04:41 · Jean-Denis Greze, Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri, S8
[01:04:41] S2: And then you can [01:04:42] S0: talk about, like, what are the factors that makes, like, a strong product market fit, which, I guess, I could I could entertain her, but it's a longer story. [01:04:50] S1: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of elements to it. Right? Sometimes it could be a launch that gets people attention. Sometimes it could be, like, winning a major customer. Like, for when I asked them for Presto or when we won Applebee's, We have to put our tablets on their tables. That's when we... That's when everyone started taking notice of us. It's like, oh, you know, big chain is using you guys now. Right? And so, like, you know, there there tends to be moments, and you never know when that moment will come. It could come five years into your journey as it did with Presto. Right? It took many years to get to that moment. And so you never know when things will will break out. I mean, you could look at companies like Hugging Face. Right? And, you know, their winding journey to get into product market fit and took many years, and they did and many pivots in. So... But you are looking for those moments, and when those moments happen, you gotta capitalize on them. It was happening [01:05:37] S0: with Town. [01:05:37] S1: Right? So... [01:05:41] S2: Go ahead. [01:05:42] S8: You know, how do you define the success, like, metrics internally and externally? Like, for example, do your business for Town? Like, what is the ROI that you're demonstrating? And other metrics, it's very different with AI native.
01:05:42 · S8, Immad Akhund
[01:05:42] S8: You know, how do you define the success, like, metrics internally and externally? Like, for example, do your business for Town? Like, what is the ROI that you're demonstrating? And other metrics, it's very different with AI native. [01:05:56] S0: So the question was how do you define success in one of the metrics? I have, like, maybe a controversial opinion, but the only thing that matters is how much worse profit you're making. So I feel like people can spend a lot of time justifying success in lots of different metrics and, like, your core metrics should be gross profit. You can have, like, secondary KPIs, but maybe it's controversial. Do you