00:01:40 · Ben Cera
[00:01:40] S0: Yeah. I mean, first of all, I wasn't co founder of, like, the the whole venture. I co founded a business division under Travis. I joined, like... I was one of the first employees he hired after he joined CloudKitchens, and and sort of bought the initial company that was built a couple years before that. But I was so lucky that, like, you know, I had made a great network, and I was able to, like, join CloudKitchens right when he joined that company and and and became CEO. And yeah, it's been... I mean, it it it was like... I think it had been the best five years of my life. I would say now now is the best year of my life, actually. But I think that, like, I needed to have those five best years of my life to be able to build what I'm building right now. I think, you know, there was a lot of, like, you know, a lot of controversy around Travis when he started CloudKitchens, and in... Meaning at the end of him running Uber, I was always such a fan. Right? Because obviously, I think that... Obviously, a lot of things happened that, like, you know, I wasn't I I just saw from the outside, I'm not gonna comment on, but I, being an entrepreneur myself, I know how difficult it is to build anything, and to even get to product market fit, and then and then and then to also scale product market fit, and then to scale it, and then to build new business divisions, like, you know, Eats, and then, like, and then self driving cars, which, you know, if he was still out around, probably, like, Uber would be a trillion dollar company at this point. And so I was just such a big fan, and, you know, honestly, starting to work with him in 2018, I was amazed at at the fact that, you know, he's an engineer, so everything is very logical, and it's very principled. And I'm an engineer too, so it was like a, you know, a breath of fresh air to just... I have a boss that's just like... There's there's no ambiguity. There's no... You know, it's like it's all, you know, data and principles, and and he empowered me so much. Like, I remember the first the first meeting I had with him. So he hired me as a product, sort of like a senior product manager. Right? And at first meeting, was like, okay, cool. So what should I do? And he was like, I don't know. I arrived a month ago. You tell me.
00:03:59 · Ben Cera, Guillaume Moubeche
And he was like he was like, I want you to, like, essentially, like, talk to everyone in the company, figure out, like, every customer problems, everything we could build, and build, like, a whole product road map of every single pillars of the products we could build. And then you tell me which ones you would like to work on. And I love that because I was like, you know, it's not like he's the boss. It's like he empowers people. He hires great people and then he empowers them to just be autonomous, which is what I'm doing at Polsia with AI. [00:04:34] S1: And what do you think was the number one thing you've learned from working with Travis during all these years and the things that you wanna take away for maybe like building the next project you're on right now?
00:04:47 · Ben Cera
[00:04:47] S0: I mean, I think that, like, there's a few there's a few episodes of me building with Travis that resonated a lot as I was building Polsia, and I would say two different phases. Right? I think the first phase was... I remember clearly... Because essentially at CloudKitchens, I built a business called Future Foods, which is a service that helps restaurants with their digital marketing. What we do is we create it... We create... We have a portfolio of, like, virtual brands, like, sort of, like, online food brands, and then we license them to restaurants and take on the whole operational marketing flow of onboarding them the platforms, marketing them, you know, figuring out pricing, etcetera, so that the restaurant can just do... Cook great food and and utilize their kitchen better and make extra revenue. And so very early on, I started building that initially for kitchen customers, so customers in all their kitchens. And then I told Travis, hey, Travis. Dude, there's like millions of restaurants in the world. They could all use that service. So today, we focus obviously on our kitchen's customers because they are like our most beloved customers because... But at the same time, it could be a huge business. And I remember him telling me like, dude, trust me. Because I was like, can I hire a few people? Can I hire a salesperson? And he was like, no. Trust me, you don't wanna scale something that doesn't work. Trust me, you don't want. So go... So essentially, what you're gonna do is you're not gonna hire anyone. You are good. You're the salesperson. You go sign up 10 restaurants. Like, I like the idea, but like, you go sign up 10 restaurants, and you prove to me that it works. And so I did. So myself, I started calling commercial restaurants. Or like, I I called also restaurants that like, had a kitchen in in in our dark kitchens, and said, well, you have a second restaurant. What about this one? We could do it there. Right? So just hustled my way, and a week later I came back to Travis and said, okay, I have 10 restaurants. And he was like, okay, cool. You can hire a salesperson. And so I think that was like the first thing. Essentially, moral of the story is do not... Like, be patient, and product market fit is actually some...
00:06:55 · Ben Cera
You don't want to scale something that doesn't have real product market fit, and so don't try to just grow something that doesn't work, because it's a waste of time, it's a waste of money, it's a waste of sort of like everything, wait until you really understand that you're adding value to the customer and that you understand your customer before scaling. So that's the one thing I I took off. And that's why, you know, I built I built Polsia alone for a long time. And I was alone for a long time. And I was like, why would I add someone? Like, I don't know if I market fit yet. So why would I waste... Yes, I raised a little pre seed that I I almost didn't spend any of it, but I was like, yeah, it's not because I have capital that I should spend it. I should reserve that capital, and so that I can use it when I have rock market fit and I need to put fuel in the fire, which by the way, I did recently where like, you know... Because I was like, you know, I didn't optimize all the costs, and I was like, you know, when things start scaling, you're like, oh shit, I need to really look at margins because I'm spending a lot of money on Anthropic. So I think that was the first good learning. I think the second learning was around scale, and that's something that like I have, is really top of mind right now, as I believe the product is not perfect, but, like, there's product market fit. Meaning, it really answers a pain point that a lot of people have, and it gives hope to a lot of people that have great ideas, that wanna be entrepreneurs, like, maybe are scared, maybe they, you know, they don't have like... Maybe they think they're not worthy, or they're not good enough, or maybe not this enough, or bad enough, right, which is like a lot of a lot of the blockers of usually people... Of people trying to to start companies. And Polsia is a little bit that hope of like, know, they try the onboarding and in three minutes, you have an AI who does... He creates a scaffolding in three minutes researching... You researching the idea, doing a market research report, you know, looking at competitors, pricing, creating a mission document that's very inspiring, creating a landing page, tweeting about it, sending you an email. And so you're like, okay. Well, clearly, seems like this AI is really smart. And if they're my cofounder, maybe I can achieve things. Right?
00:09:08 · Ben Cera
And and so in that next phase of me trying to scale this, which is not necessarily scaling revenue, because obviously revenue is like a metric, a vanity metric that I share because it's good marketing and it's inspiring, but the real metric is getting billions of people to... On this platform, on this economy. Right? And to get there, there's a lot of playbooks that I saw... Because Travis was... Is... You know, he built Uber so fast that, like, when I was working with him, he wanted to... He he built CloudKitchens so fast too. Was like, well, this is a winning tech goal. Let's just go everywhere at once. Right? Which was really fun to see. And I think that, like, right now, I start start to have the same thinking process of like, okay. So what do I need to do to go from whatever 6,000,000 run rate to 50, to a 100, to 200? But really turning it around, it's like, do we get it to 5,000 customers? Paying customers to 50,000, to 500,000? What are the steps? What is the internationalization of it? What... How does pricing look like at scale? How do we make it profitable so that I can be customer obsessed, which customer obsessed is you obsess over the customer, but you're also obsessed about having enough profits to pay the bills to grow more. Right? Because if you're unprofitable, you're not customer obsessed. Because that means that, like, you're gonna go your... You know, you're gonna go into bankruptcy, and then you're gonna have to shut down the business for everyone. So, you know, think about profits, thinking about the right amount of profits, thinking about pricing, thinking about capabilities, thinking about what, you know, sort of securing the platform, thinking about how to make it fair with customers that they feel safe, so that they feel like they, you know, they give their hands to AI, but like it's still their business. How to create economic outcome to... For people. How to create like a marketplace of businesses that you can buy and sell. Like, all those ideas, which which end all deal means, how do I make Polsia a net positive for you... For for humanity, and how do I make it into a successful business so that, like, I can reinvest in making maybe the product cheaper or maybe create my own models so that I can...
00:11:16 · Ben Cera, Guillaume Moubeche
I don't have to pay, like, premium prices, which means the subscription is expensive and make it way cheaper so that more people can do it, which was what... At Uber, they were like Uber, you know, Uber X. They were Uber Black and then Uber X, and then like Uber Pop. It's all this idea of like, people want this product. How can I make it more affordable so more people can experience it? Right? So all those, I I would say those are the learnings. Yeah. [00:11:42] S1: And for people who don't know what Polsia is, like, how would you, like, pitch it in, let's say, one sentence?