00:22:27 · Eric Landau, Sebastian Johnson
[00:22:27] S1: it's like, [00:22:28] S0: we need the gap to close between the technical ability and the most possible versus the needs and the emotional stuff that we know versus the ability. [00:22:38] S1: Yeah. I I... Maybe you could adjust the quote to build something people will want. Exactly. Right. I think the the key is as well, like, to that is, you have, like, a very strong focus on problems. Yeah. And that's always been the useful anchor for us is, even when talking to customers is, actually, don't even tell us the solution you want. Just tell us the problem that you have. Because if we know the problem, then we can find the best solution to that problem, and the problems won't go away. Those are very, very sticky. So these AI tools, sometimes I see, hammers without a nail where, the problem isn't really manifest, but the the tool is cool. And I'm not... I'm pretty bearish on those exam... But for, the tools where it's solving a real problem, people just haven't realized that it solves it, that's where, you know, there there will be, like, more adoption. [00:23:26] S0: Nice. Alright. I wanna do some quick fire. What is your personal favorite AI tool that you either use in your professional or your personal life?
00:23:26 · Sebastian Johnson, Eric Landau
[00:23:26] S0: Nice. Alright. I wanna do some quick fire. What is your personal favorite AI tool that you either use in your professional or your personal life? [00:23:36] S1: Personal favorite AI tool. I am... So I I use ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude. I'm now getting, like, more, more aligned towards Claude more than anything. I I see that that's the one that I come to the the most often, and I use it for a lot of... A kind of personal scripting, like, pulling data and information from different sources, putting them to dashboards. And, I used to have to kind of go through a few iterations before it did the right thing. [00:24:09] S0: Yeah. [00:24:09] S1: So I'd say, oh, it doesn't work or, like, this package is wrong. And now you can basically one shot it, and it gets you the information that you need, just from, you know, from the first time. [00:24:19] S0: Yeah. It's amazing. In the future, five, ten years, twenty years from now, do you see open source or closer... Closed source LLMs winning or being used the most?
00:24:19 · Sebastian Johnson, Eric Landau
[00:24:19] S0: Yeah. It's amazing. In the future, five, ten years, twenty years from now, do you see open source or closer... Closed source LLMs winning or being used the most? [00:24:28] S1: There will be both. And again, like, the the world of the future is not... I don't think it's one monolithic singular AI. I think it's, hundreds of thousands, not millions of AIs, all in different shapes and sizes. So the... There's gonna be this AI proliferation similar to, like, a human population, and some of them will be, closed source and API driven and kind of run-in a big data center. Some will be open source and run on, you know, physical embodied devices. I I I think that there's going to be a lot of room for multiple different types of of winners in the space and not just one... Like, I don't think it's a two horse race essentially. However, I I do see that, this exponential, like, throwing of money and compute into an open source model seems a little bit untenable that, unless you can, like, capture a good amount of revenue. So I think open source will probably carve out into different niches where it adds value versus just trying to play the the scaling game forever. [00:25:32] S0: Got it. Okay. That's interesting. As a CEO founder, what's your favorite to least favorite? Selling, building, raising. Raising is definitely least favorite. [00:25:43] S1: But but but... And then followed by selling, and building is is by far the favorite.
00:25:43 · Eric Landau, Sebastian Johnson
[00:25:43] S1: But but but... And then followed by selling, and building is is by far the favorite. [00:25:49] S0: It's your favorite? Okay. When when you've been on the raising journey, you know, this is series c now. Yeah. What has been the biggest pushback that you've had across either the different rounds or more recently? [00:25:58] S1: Yeah. It's funny because we we raised our series c, and we hadn't touched our series b money. So we were still we were still working on money that we had raised from 2021. Yeah. That was when we did our seed round. And one of the unexpected pushbacks that I got was, why haven't you burned more money? And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I I wasn't expecting that, like, our cash efficiency would be like an objection, but that was something that that came up, quite a bit in the series c, funny enough, is that we, according to investors, like, we should have been throwing more money, at things rather than, being cash efficient. [00:26:33] S0: And are you changing that now that you've got even more cash? Are you thinking, actually, we do need to be more aggressive maybe on margins or on expansion?
00:26:33 · Sebastian Johnson, Eric Landau
[00:26:33] S0: And are you changing that now that you've got even more cash? Are you thinking, actually, we do need to be more aggressive maybe on margins or on expansion? [00:26:40] S1: Or can I? Like, we want to build a real business, and I... So we're not here just to, go after, like, the VC ladder and just try to spend and raise the most money. Ultimately, we wanna build something that's generational and that, has the durability, for a generational company, and that means that you have to think about what is going going to bring ROI when you make these make these investments. And we are going more aggressive, but in areas where we think that it will pay off in the long run. We don't wanna just spend money for the the sake of it per se. [00:27:12] S0: Yeah. Got it. Okay. If I gave you £10,000,000 today to invest in either a public or private tech company, what would it be? Probably wouldn't invest in one company. My my finance brain is like,
00:27:12 · Sebastian Johnson, Eric Landau
[00:27:12] S0: Yeah. Got it. Okay. If I gave you £10,000,000 today to invest in either a public or private tech company, what would it be? Probably wouldn't invest in one company. My my finance brain is like, [00:27:24] S1: you have to diversify. So I'll go after index or or portfolio. However, like, of the the big ones that I say, I... I'm I'm quite bullish on Anthropic, because you can see that their, strategies of really focusing maniacally on enterprise and on coding Mhmm. Has has really started to pay off, and they are now the clear winner in that category. And that's gonna be an enormous category. Yeah. It's not to say, like, consumer won't be a big one and all these other things too, but they they weren't taking on a lot of projects that they could have. And because of that, they've gotten a clear a clear edge in, like, a very large market. So of, like, the major model providers now, if I could put money in into any of them, I would put in [00:28:06] S0: That's interesting. I've heard that when I've asked people that question before, that's actually the most common answer [00:28:10] S1: Yeah. [00:28:10] S0: Especially from founders and partners of VCs. That's the one that people really feel bullish on.