A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:35:08 · Pablo Srugo, Chaz Englander
[00:35:08] S1: So it's kinda like, I mean, like data enrichment, I guess, is is the primary piece. When you mentioned the the WhatsApp part of it, does it actually go out and reach out to people for you, or it just tells you like, hey, you know these people, maybe you wanna reach out, and then you can you can do it on your own? [00:35:21] S0: I think it's heading that way. So being quite clear how the product has evolved and what it is we do. So we describe ourselves as an AI workflow product for financial services. In other words, an AI workflow builder specifically for financial services. Now what that actually means in practice is number one, well, is financial services? Our customers are predominantly, you know, banks, very large consultancies, we include kind of big four in that, and then and then asset managers. But it's very much an enterprise product. Enterprise, I mean, all the way to the extent now we, partly due to the demand, partly due the way that our business model is evolving, know, we don't really look at customers that are gonna be spending any less than maybe a $250,000 a year with us. Gotcha. Just based on what we do. Now again, when we say what we're good at, it's really material creation and verification. The verification one's interesting, so it's, you know, if you already have an output, you would go and verify that before sending it to someone. You can use really, really clever AgenSys systems to do that in an incredibly sophisticated way. [00:36:24] S1: Walk me through that a little bit more, like verifying what exactly?
00:36:27 · Chaz Englander
[00:36:27] S0: So under the hood, there's going a little bit technical is there's three different AgenSys systems. One that goes and gathers all the information that you would need in order to create some kind of output. When I say output, I just think think an email, a Slack message, all the way through to like PowerPoint, Word, Excel outputs. Think very complicated. So don't think two pager, think like 200 page PowerPoint presentation, graphs, tables, charts, logos with like all the Excel backup files, and then verification. Now the reason interesting that the identity systems are built in that way is that's exactly the same way that humans go through their sort of... We call it the cognitive flow. Right? So as a human, when you initiate a task in your head, you gather data either already in your head or you would go to the different things that you can access on your laptop or phone. You would put that together in something, and then you would check it, and then you would go to the next thing. In some cases, send things out as an example. That's what the agentic systems do, right? Where that's being used a lot is the automation of the creation of the material and the verification of the material. So on the creation, if you think about a lot of where the time goes, particularly more junior members of the team at these sorts of companies, is they are spending, these guys, you you're doing fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hour days quite often at these types of firms, and if you study where the time is going, it's not going in like what we would think is like strategy or critical thinking or analysis or anything like that, it's literally going at like creating a PowerPoint presentation or writing an email. In other words, you already have the information, you're just putting it together and repackaging it and sending it out. And so that has been very popular, and I think the timing of us coming to market in terms of the sophistication of the models and everything else was, again, I think quite lucky.
00:38:22 · Pablo Srugo, Chaz Englander
[00:38:22] S1: Tell me about getting that first customer. I mean, you mentioned it it got pulled out of you. Walk me through that story. Like, how did that all come about? [00:38:29] S0: So that was of one of those customers that were like, hey, you should do this full time. They came on as a design partner. [00:38:37] S1: And this was a a what by the way? Don't need the name necessarily, but is it a bank, it's a... What is [00:38:41] S0: it? A small adviser. It's a small investment bank. They came on as a design partner along with another firm quite quickly, and I think that's the way to go. So I would say as a playbook for b to b companies, you almost can't overestimate what a good design partner can do to speed up your iteration cycle. And I think, you know, something that Arne and I have learned, if I would say there's like a couple of things that are in the founder playbook in our head is like perseverance is definitely one, but another thing is just the speed at which you can learn. Like I don't just mean as an individual, I actually kind of mean about your customers, right? And how you can translate that to the product. So you know, when I speak to people, if you've got a design partner that you're speaking to once a week, you're almost certainly gonna fail. Right? If you've got a design partner that you are working from their office and ideally sat next to them, you're almost certainly going to succeed. In in a in a world, by the way, where there's no kind of barrier to entry when it comes to like writing code or or technology in general.
00:38:41 · Chaz Englander, Pablo Srugo
[00:38:41] S0: it? A small adviser. It's a small investment bank. They came on as a design partner along with another firm quite quickly, and I think that's the way to go. So I would say as a playbook for b to b companies, you almost can't overestimate what a good design partner can do to speed up your iteration cycle. And I think, you know, something that Arne and I have learned, if I would say there's like a couple of things that are in the founder playbook in our head is like perseverance is definitely one, but another thing is just the speed at which you can learn. Like I don't just mean as an individual, I actually kind of mean about your customers, right? And how you can translate that to the product. So you know, when I speak to people, if you've got a design partner that you're speaking to once a week, you're almost certainly gonna fail. Right? If you've got a design partner that you are working from their office and ideally sat next to them, you're almost certainly going to succeed. In in a in a world, by the way, where there's no kind of barrier to entry when it comes to like writing code or or technology in general. [00:39:43] S1: It's funny you mentioned that, like, Legora, which we just had on, you know, became, I think, took a 1,800,000,000 company in in two years. Exactly like that. Right? Like, was in the office with the law firm for the design partner phase. And a huge change in that speed of put something out, get some feedback, the nuances, the qualitative stuff, like you just...
00:39:43 · Pablo Srugo, Chaz Englander
[00:39:43] S1: It's funny you mentioned that, like, Legora, which we just had on, you know, became, I think, took a 1,800,000,000 company in in two years. Exactly like that. Right? Like, was in the office with the law firm for the design partner phase. And a huge change in that speed of put something out, get some feedback, the nuances, the qualitative stuff, like you just... [00:40:00] S0: Yeah. If people hadn't... I I assume... I don't know who that was, but if it was Max, Max is a... Yes. Max is an absolute genius. [00:40:07] S1: Yeah he's a G. He's an absolute G. [00:40:09] S0: I think the way, and again Max, you know I think the way that a lot of these AI application companies, their themes as to how they've gone from you know zero to one and beyond, they are very very similar. You know, I think the design partnership phase is is mission critical, the speed of iteration is mission critical, I think the work ethic is also super important, particularly when the market gets validated. You know, if you think about that really your only tools, the speed at which you share product and the speed at which you iterate, you know, that's really it. That's like kind of the... Your only competitive advantage, be honest. [00:40:45] S1: So I'm assuming you worked from the office of this design partner? Yeah. And were they a paid partner? Like, how did you structure that, and how did you... Did you make sure that they were gonna give you x amount of time a day, or was it just like a friendly relationship? Like, what's the structure?
00:40:59 · Chaz Englander
[00:40:59] S0: So really good question. I would say as well, I don't think there's like a right or a wrong and I also appreciate that everything I'm about to say is in an idle world and founders ultimately just have to play the cards that they have in front of them, but if they could choose, I think that paying is nice, but it's only a way to validate one very important thing which is how serious they are about what it is that you are doing. Now the reason I said that kind of caveat beforehand is that ultimately, if you're just doing anything to get a design partner, you'll take anything. And learning something is better than learning nothing. But in an idle world, you would get that individual or company invested in the company. And we did that by the way. So this company invested in the company. And the reason is because you get that additional level of buying. Now given some verticals that may not be possible, but you definitely wanna make sure that from the very very top, the person that's actually making the decisions of the firm, they are 100% bought in. You've also gotta be mindful of like a lot of people, lot of CEOs, particularly, you know, particularly if they've made money, they can be quite flighty, in other words they get excited about all sorts of things. And so really test whether this is like absolute buy in, but you can also make a mistake. You might choose one, it might not work, it can move on to another, but it's just the speed that you go through that. But when you find one that's willing to give you really, really, really good feedback and that can help you iterate and enable you to focus in the way that you want to, yeah, you just build, build, build as quickly as you can.