No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
00:18:31 · Elad Gil, Alexander Taubman
[00:18:31] S0: and the new of the business gets a piece of the new business in some sense so that they benefit in the upside or the change that's coming. [00:18:37] S1: That's right. We're very open to that, and we've been encouraging of that because we like to win together. I mean, goes back to super positive sum about AI. We think we can make everyone happy here, customers, team members, you know, and the business founders and management who participate alongside us in the productivity increase. And so that's why I think we've been a differentiated partner. And my view is as we prove this out more and more over time and the capital markets start to understand kind of our vision and what we're doing, I'd like to think our cost of capital will keep coming down as well, which then further makes us a better partner to these folks because we can actually pay more than anyone else. Because, you know, and this is sort of what Danaher proved and TransDigm and all these great operators over many years is that, you know, if you can establish a currency, you can actually not have to lose deals overpriced because you can operate the deals better. And then, you know, you have a diversified platform that's more valuable and growing faster with, you know, better financial metrics.
00:18:37 · Alexander Taubman, Elad Gil
[00:18:37] S1: That's right. We're very open to that, and we've been encouraging of that because we like to win together. I mean, goes back to super positive sum about AI. We think we can make everyone happy here, customers, team members, you know, and the business founders and management who participate alongside us in the productivity increase. And so that's why I think we've been a differentiated partner. And my view is as we prove this out more and more over time and the capital markets start to understand kind of our vision and what we're doing, I'd like to think our cost of capital will keep coming down as well, which then further makes us a better partner to these folks because we can actually pay more than anyone else. Because, you know, and this is sort of what Danaher proved and TransDigm and all these great operators over many years is that, you know, if you can establish a currency, you can actually not have to lose deals overpriced because you can operate the deals better. And then, you know, you have a diversified platform that's more valuable and growing faster with, you know, better financial metrics. [00:19:32] S0: I guess the other thing that's related to this is you tend to grow the business as you buy. So you're not really focused as much on how do we cut costs as much as possible. You're often focused on how do we grow top line? How do we grow revenue? How do we make our employees more productive in terms of sales and serving customers? Can you talk a little bit about that and how you approach that?
00:19:32 · Elad Gil, Alexander Taubman
[00:19:32] S0: I guess the other thing that's related to this is you tend to grow the business as you buy. So you're not really focused as much on how do we cut costs as much as possible. You're often focused on how do we grow top line? How do we grow revenue? How do we make our employees more productive in terms of sales and serving customers? Can you talk a little bit about that and how you approach that? [00:19:48] S1: Yeah. For us, growth is And customer experience and growth and expansion is the top priority. So [00:19:55] S0: And by the way, this is very true for tech companies, but it's not very true for many other types of companies, I think.
00:19:59 · Alexander Taubman
[00:19:59] S1: Well, it's interesting. I'll tell you, so this is kind of a non obvious thing that I've observed, which is actually most of these service companies are growth oriented. And most of these founders built these companies from their bootstraps over twenty, thirty, forty years by knocking on doors and, you know, figuring out how to, you know, convince people to use their service in a certain market. But it's actually now it's really painful to grow because in these industries that are very labor intensive, if you grow 20%, you might need to go hire another 20% people. And then you got first, you got to find them, you got to train them, then you have to manage them. And if you're already making a lot of money and you're kind of, you know, you don't you know, it's this and then, by the way, so you do all that work to hire those people, and then you only keep 20¢ on the dollar of every incremental dollar of revenue that comes in because, you know, most of it goes to incremental labor. So that's like a very high marginal tax rate essentially on the growth activity. So what we've done with AI is when you make your existing teams 30%, 40% more efficient and they can handle more customers, it changes the whole mindset of the organization. Now you're growing. You look like a software company now, where you're now growing with high incremental margins, and that allows you to invest more in growth, be more growth oriented. And that actually is one of the most interesting and exciting things about sort of this whole AI flowing through the ecosystem is we're seeing our partners, and, you know, you could call any of our CEOs, and some of them have been running their businesses for decades. Think I they'd tell you they're having the best time of their career now with us because we're actually growing like a software company, and we're seeing our team members are getting paid more and are happier and our customers are happier. So it's been a lot of fun.
00:21:34 · Elad Gil, Alexander Taubman, S2
[00:21:34] S0: Thanks so much for joining us on No Priors. [00:21:36] S1: My pleasure to be here. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. [00:21:38] S0: Great first interview. [00:21:39] S1: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [00:21:42] S2: Find us on Twitter no priors pod. Subscribe to our YouTube channel if you wanna see our faces. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That way you get a new episode every week. And sign up for emails or find transcripts for every episode at nopriors.com.