The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:17:14 · Ed Elson, Gabe Stengel
[00:17:14] S1: so scared [00:17:16] S2: of using AI as like a buzzword. And mind you, when we started Rogo, it was pre chat GPT. And actually, we prototype Rogo using very anachronistic NLP, natural language processing techniques called, like, context free grammars. But when we were starting Rogo, we didn't wanna feel like we were just, you know, tying into some buzzword y trend and we were, you know, hopping on the back of this big shift. I mean, we wanted to seem legit. I think that was a mistake. You should use these terms. They're powerful terms and, like, we are an AI tool. Why were we doing all this, you know, verbal gymnastics to not say AI? Because we were, like, kinda self conscious and, like, thought we were, like, holier than thou. That was dumb. [00:17:56] S1: But it worked. I mean, you you raised $2,000,000 in your pre seed round. And now here you are. You're at a million dollars in revenue. I mean, what do you think your investors liked about you? I'm sure it made you appear I think so. More specialized.
00:17:56 · Ed Elson, Gabe Stengel
[00:17:56] S1: But it worked. I mean, you you raised $2,000,000 in your pre seed round. And now here you are. You're at a million dollars in revenue. I mean, what do you think your investors liked about you? I'm sure it made you appear I think so. More specialized. [00:18:10] S2: At the deck. The deck is worth it's a whole another episode of this just to look at how bad that deck is. It is one of the worst fundraising decks of all time. Kevin Ryan, let our pre seed. Kevin Ryan is an enormously successful entrepreneur. He's a titan of New York City VC and entrepreneurship. Started MongoDB, Gilt, Business Insider, Zola, and so on. I think Kevin just thought, these guys know finance. These guys know technology. I'm gonna bet on them. I'm gonna bet that they can build a tool that actually disrupts financial services. And I think that's what it was. [00:18:41] S1: And what do you think you did right that made him believe that you were the guys to do it? Because I'm sure there are thousands of startup guys around the country saying, I'm gonna build the AI for finance. Yeah. AI for whatever it is. You kind of hit the jackpot. You're now the AI for finance guy. What do you think he actually saw in you?
00:19:00 · Gabe Stengel
[00:19:00] S2: I mean, at at Lazard, I had a really interesting role. I was working on both m and a work, financial services work, but also on their data groups team. This team called LDAG, Lazard Data Analytics Group led by David Wang. He's super smart. And so I got to see what it was like to work at the intersection of technology and financial services at a firm with very cutting edge technology and data science and AI capabilities. And I think that was an incredibly unique background. And that was only possible because, you know, I'd been I'd been I'd come there after having worked in software engineering and quantitative trading and writing my thesis at Princeton on AI for econometrics analysis and financial statistics. I think that the story made sense to Kevin. And when you're a guy like Kevin, you're looking for a story that makes sense. Right? You you wanna believe that Gabe Stengel is gonna change financial services, that he's gonna be the next Bloomberg. You wanna you wanna fit the pieces to that narrative, and I think the pieces were there. And I was just tremendously lucky. I mean, John, my cofounder, and I were just... And Tomas were just incredibly lucky to have all been in the right place at the right time, interested in the right things, and, you know, having said the right words and meeting the right people.
00:20:08 · Ed Elson
[00:20:08] S1: How have you convinced yourself of that story? Because the story that you describe is a pretty big one, and the expectations are high. And you mentioned this sense of overconfidence. Did you need to convince yourself that that story was true? Do you believe that that story is true?
00:20:27 · Gabe Stengel
[00:20:27] S2: Early on, frankly, when we raised money, when we raised that first $2,000,000, I thought to myself, you know, this this might not be the thing that makes me enormously successful, but it's gonna set me up well. Right? Like, I'm going to do this thing. I'm gonna do it as well as I can, and then I'm gonna have a lot of opportunities afterwards. That really shifted over the past year. Shifted to the idea that, no. No. This is gonna be my big thing. This is going to be my life's work. This is the best opportunity I have to create a massive company that's valuable not just to the people that invest in us and myself, but to the people and the clients we serve. And it's gonna be enormously valuable to our customers. And I think that thinking has changed in part because of what we've been building and what we've been able to accomplish and, you know, the trends in generative AI writ large. And I think it's a... It's not that often you find yourself at the center of this changing dynamic system in tech where there's a new technology that's enabling so much rapid growth, and you're situated selling to a clientele that has the most appetite for increases in efficiency and increases in intelligence than anyone on Earth. And I think we have a tremendous opportunity, and that did change. And frankly, it wasn't that I had to, like, sit down and convince myself, hey, Gabe, you're gonna be able to do this. It was like as more pieces of evidence accumulated, my thinking changed. And I wish I could be really thoughtful about, like, how I thought about it at the time and how I thought about it now. But I think, frankly, like, as things ebb and flow and you're more successful and less successful, you make products that work better or you work that work worse, the thesis develops.
00:22:03 · Ed Elson
[00:22:03] S1: Would you say that you're sort of... Throughout your entrepreneurial career so far, you've been shooting from the hip in a way? That's that's kind of the way it sounds. If you go out and you just try as many things as possible. I mean, sounds like you haven't actually overthought I mean the journey too much.