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?
00:11:42 · Guillaume Moubeche, Ben Cera
[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? [00:11:51] S0: I mean, the the the tagline would be click a button, get a company. Polsia is an AI that builds and runs companies autonomously. You give it your idea, and it's gonna go and build the product, fix the bugs, run support, do competitive analysis to figure out the right pricing, gets a Stripe account, gets a Meta Ads account, gets an email address on its own, can run ad campaigns, has analytics built in. So essentially, it's like business in a box with an AI that like has access to today a lot of a lot of ways to build a business. Tomorrow we'll have literally every single sort of economic activity you can think of, Polsia will be able to do, meaning it will be able to assist you on anything. If you need to hire a contractor to do... To renovate something as part of your business, well, it's just about going into freelancer marketplace, looking for the right talent, agreeing on price, and having an AI manage that person in the... Which probably will be the the most fair and empathetic manager they will have or have. Right? And pay on time. If you need an accountant or lawyer, well, we can give you an AI version, if your business becomes very serious, maybe you want you want to hire a firm. Same thing. AI should be able to do that. If you want to if you want to do anything, Polsia should be able to do it. Okay.
00:11:51 · Ben Cera, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:11:51] S0: I mean, the the the tagline would be click a button, get a company. Polsia is an AI that builds and runs companies autonomously. You give it your idea, and it's gonna go and build the product, fix the bugs, run support, do competitive analysis to figure out the right pricing, gets a Stripe account, gets a Meta Ads account, gets an email address on its own, can run ad campaigns, has analytics built in. So essentially, it's like business in a box with an AI that like has access to today a lot of a lot of ways to build a business. Tomorrow we'll have literally every single sort of economic activity you can think of, Polsia will be able to do, meaning it will be able to assist you on anything. If you need to hire a contractor to do... To renovate something as part of your business, well, it's just about going into freelancer marketplace, looking for the right talent, agreeing on price, and having an AI manage that person in the... Which probably will be the the most fair and empathetic manager they will have or have. Right? And pay on time. If you need an accountant or lawyer, well, we can give you an AI version, if your business becomes very serious, maybe you want you want to hire a firm. Same thing. AI should be able to do that. If you want to if you want to do anything, Polsia should be able to do it. Okay. [00:13:24] S1: And and can you now, like, give Polsia, like, your credit card so it run ads for yourself, or how does that work exactly?