00:33:43 · Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:33:43] S0: You know, a great question. I think the first one is it's curiosity and a willingness to learn. Because I really believe AI is a revolution, not an evolution. And it's interesting to me how many founders I know who have not, frankly... And I think every founder, certainly ones who are nontechnical, should do this. They should take a week off from work, and they should determine before before they take that week off, what is the thing that I wanna build at this company that I feel like I keep asking my product teams to do and they're not doing, and I'm not getting in the place I wanna do? I just want it done, and I wanna figure out how to make that happen. I should take a week off, figure out what that thing is, take a week off, and then go build it with Bolt and Lovable and all kinds of other tools that are out there to to make that happen. Because it is shocking to me the number of people who, like, who work in tech, who are founders of tech companies, who do not deeply understand, like, how AI is going to change the way in which they build product. That is biggest thing. So I think it's the curiosity around learning how these kinds of things can shape our business and reshape our business. I think a second thing is just having... Is people who can explain clearly, like, without a deck. So no no decks. I'm a big believer in docs over decks. And I want people to be able to talk in plain, English about... Well, whatever language you prefer, about what it is that they're doing, why they're doing it, and why they think it's gonna be successful. And so for me, it's just it's just those two things. Because when you're investing, like, you're investing in the person. I think at an angel and at a seed level, like, you have no idea what that product is gonna turn into, but you have to have belief and faith in the person. And so I think it's very much about the characteristics of that founder versus necessarily the thing that they're building.
00:35:33 · Sachin
[00:35:33] S1: Yeah. And you... When you reflect on that curiosity to using new AI tools and thinking about how to build differently in this age, How are you doing that currently with your new company?
00:35:42 · Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:35:42] S0: Oh, yeah. It's just like, you know, I'm hitting the limits. There... There's so much around it where it's like, I... I'm a one person company. Right? Like, I'm a designer. I'm a developer. I'm a product manager. I'm a marketer. I'm a whatever. You name it. I do it all. And AI is my cofounder, and it's every employee I don't have. And I talk with it, like, constantly. I'm like, what do you think about this? How would you consider that? Where would you do that? And then I'm trying to, like, critically analyze it myself as well to figure out, like, where is it wrong in its in its thinking and where does it go? Like, one thing that I struggle with at times with trying to think about AI is, like, there's so many models out there. Right? There's the big three, of course. Right? There's, like... There there's there's Gemini and OpenAI and and Anthropic. And, like, you can't keep playing with all of these because the biggest thing is you you have to have context. You have to maintain context. You have to work with AI that understands how you wanna work and where you're gonna go with it. So you sort of have to pick one. But every time you pick one, there's all these news articles. Oh, this one's come all this way and doing all of these things. I'm like, oh, but I can't pull away from where I am and start all over again. I'll be going backwards. And then there's open source models as well. And so for me, my stack around it is on a day to day basis, as I'm coding, I'm typically using Cursor and working with Claude within it to be able to do it. I have my own custom fine tuned LLM that I'm doing things with that I just have used with open web UI and stuff to actually grow and develop my own questions and content. And then I also am significantly using Claude as well to be able to do just the day to day things that you're working through, figuring out the approach of how it should go. And it's, it's kinda like a mix of of all of these... Of all of these tools.
00:37:26 · Sachin, Mina Radhakrishnan
[00:37:26] S1: Yeah. I think it's, a really exciting time to be building a company right now, and it also places companies that started a few years ago in really awkward times as well because there's like a whole new playbook right now. Like, everyone that's building a company now is thinking an agent first approach. They're thinking about how they can have leverage on their code base. And now it's like, if you're a company that was built a few years ago, you're almost stuck a little bit, because now you've also got all these competitors that are coming up against you and doing things often a lot more efficiently and pricing lower. Yep. So it's a really interesting time to be building. [00:37:57] S0: Absolutely. Yeah. It's... It is super challenging. Like, it doesn't mean that, like, if you built a company too several years ago, it's over your dub. There's nothing you can do. No. But you have to reshape. You have to really seriously ask yourself. I think if you're a founder or a CEO, you need to be talking deeply with your CTO or whoever it is about, well, what is our plan? How are we using AI? And not just from a panicky, oh my god, what do we do? Wow, here's this incredible tool. And yeah, we've got all this other stuff that we've built. But if you've been working through it, you should be deeply understanding your customers. You should know what it is that they need. Like, value doesn't go away. Right? Like, you you can continue to maintain value. You just have to figure out the right way to deliver that value and the right price to deliver it at.
00:37:57 · Mina Radhakrishnan, Sachin
[00:37:57] S0: Absolutely. Yeah. It's... It is super challenging. Like, it doesn't mean that, like, if you built a company too several years ago, it's over your dub. There's nothing you can do. No. But you have to reshape. You have to really seriously ask yourself. I think if you're a founder or a CEO, you need to be talking deeply with your CTO or whoever it is about, well, what is our plan? How are we using AI? And not just from a panicky, oh my god, what do we do? Wow, here's this incredible tool. And yeah, we've got all this other stuff that we've built. But if you've been working through it, you should be deeply understanding your customers. You should know what it is that they need. Like, value doesn't go away. Right? Like, you you can continue to maintain value. You just have to figure out the right way to deliver that value and the right price to deliver it at. [00:38:39] S1: Yeah. And I think it's also asking yourself, do you need to be using AI as well? I've spoken to some friends that worked with some really notable fintech companies, for example, and the founders there were, like, really pushing, like, an AI first approach, but they didn't actually need it because this company, they had enough of a moat because of all the sort of regulations they're involved in, the difficult, payments infrastructure they were binding together. So some companies won't need AI. And so knowing, like, do you have a competitive advantage or not?
00:38:39 · Sachin, Mina Radhakrishnan, Adam Miller
[00:38:39] S1: Yeah. And I think it's also asking yourself, do you need to be using AI as well? I've spoken to some friends that worked with some really notable fintech companies, for example, and the founders there were, like, really pushing, like, an AI first approach, but they didn't actually need it because this company, they had enough of a moat because of all the sort of regulations they're involved in, the difficult, payments infrastructure they were binding together. So some companies won't need AI. And so knowing, like, do you have a competitive advantage or not? [00:39:03] S0: Yeah. And I think, yes, maybe not on their day to day product. Right? But it's... I I think that there's always gonna be applications or AI. Whether or not it's about how your product teams work or where you go. And, of course, you have to be thoughtful. Think especially as a larger growing company, you don't wanna feed in all of your proprietary confidential data into servers randomly who knows where. But there's lots of tools to be able to come around that. Like, I just think AI is gonna be a huge part of how we build product and tech. [00:39:31] S2: What do you think makes a brilliant product manager?